What Happened To You Today?

Stheno

Eleusis responded fine with twice our numbers? The downside to stacked room damage is built in, in that it hits everyone. There is no benefit to arc/crucible/miasma if your allies are present in equal or greater numbers. Vengeance is more of a trick shot now, and I rarely see it employed in anything but the most suicidal strategy.

Having spent most of this crusade lagging and dead, a lag check would be nice.

Lyrin

Vengeance has been nerfed pretty hard

To me, this says more about the state of the skill when it was released than its current state.

Crucibles/Guises are a much bigger part of it, but also not the full picture.

I agree crucibles/guises are a big part of it in sense that they contribute a large portion of the damage.  My point is that it's the Mhaldor class skills on top of this which give rise to an imbalance in whether and how factions are able to capitalize on this damage.

The downside to stacked room damage is built in, in that it hits everyone. There is no benefit to arc/crucible/miasma if your allies are present in equal or greater numbers.

If the only abilities being used were arc/crucible/miasma, I would agree with you.  

It is the presence of factional abilities vengeance/pitiless (room damage that only hits enemies of the user), agony (5% heal per enemy+ally struck by arc, no eq cost so will proc again if balance is reset from conqueror), conqueror (balance reset on kill), on top of baseline AOE that causes an imbalance which heavily favours one side. 

If you have two teams of equal size and distribution of lowbies/midbies/highbies, the team that has suffered a couple of additional ~30% chunks from vengeance/pitiless and have been able to auto heal their AOE DPS engines for ~40% a couple of times will (and do) come out on top.

(I know that pitiless and conqueror are mutually exclusive for each Infernal.  Still a pretty good choice to have given the dearth of similar options available to other factions)

Stheno

That sounds like a hypothetical of those abilities and trinkets being used in square fights, where the math might edge out in Mhaldor's favour. It's really being used, in conjunction with factional class skills, to even engagements where Mhaldor is fighting outnumbered, and is thematic for a faction that has historically done so. It's a fight evener, not a fight winner. Infernals are a phalanx of knights known for ignoring pain and fighting down to the last man.

(I know, I know, I'm getting story mixed in with the combat again. My bad.)

The counterplay to a bad room DO NOT STAND HERE is to not stand (or be made to stand) in that room, until the danger is removed by another play (usually beckon/LoS).

On second thought, I agree with @Lyrin. Nerf arc.

Lyrin

Case in point - you dieing to Dunn's arc just procced vengeance for 30% more damage to the opposing team. A similarly skilled, artefacted and levelled druid/priest/alchemist/occultist cannot have the same degree of impact on the fight that is decided within a 6 second lag spike.

I feel that the crux of this issue is that these abilities have been justified by a numbers imbalance and I can sympathise with that.  I just think they're poorly designed in that they rapidly turn from a balancing factor to an imbalancing one when Mhaldor isn't fielding a small team against a larger one.

Stheno

I didn't proc vengeance at all. Vengeance is situational, smart damage that you gamble with, and again, the play is very rarely "everyone stand around vengeful while we arc" unless we're feeling especially Sarapin-y.

Sobriquet

So your answer to this is not engage?

There has been a theme from the Admins over the past few years for more and more high AOE damage, with Crucibles and Maisma being used by pretty much everyone who fights and, while you can't take those in isolation given the class skills people are talking about, it's yet more items that are now commonplace that can totally unbalance a fight.

Shecks

IMO the best solution is some kind of mechanic that incentivizes breaking up these massive death ball groups into smaller groups somehow. Easier said than done but I think it'd be a lot more fun if city vs city broke out into various groups engaging each other on various fronts, before the survivors ultimately group up into a final showdown somewhere.

Not only would that defacto make these arc/vengeance gimmicks less prolific but it'd also significantly decrease the advantage you get from simply having more bodies. Whatever mechanic would theoretically be used should be enticing enough for a group with more people in it to prefer breaking up into groups somehow, which would normally tilt the fight heavily in their favor (assuming on average people are around the same threat level).

One example of such a mechanic is Deliverance, which prevents using Arc (but not holo and I think also not Radiation), at least until the Monk is killed, relocated, or otherwise forced to drop it. It's not a great example of a solution since it has numerous pitfalls, notably the huge delay and channel, and also that there are no such tools against the other really ugly abilities.

I emailed a suggestion in many weeks ago about an idea to fix them, which would simply be having the damage fall off for larger numbers of players hit, for example:

1-5 players: normal damage

6-10 players: progressively lowered damage (to all players hit), e.g. 90%, 80%, 70%, 60%, 50%

11: players: 40% damage to all players hit.

Other options could be to have negative consequences for huge number of players hit, such as larger balance times or some kind of kickback effect (e.g. if Radiation hits more than 10 players it does significant damage and/or stuns the user). A more lightweight solution would be to have Willpower/Endurance scale heavily with number of players hit, to the tune of hitting 20 people using up like 20% of your Endurance.

Not to sound like a broken record, but another thing that would help in general would be fixing fast travel, with the main offender being earrings. In the old days fights tended to devolve and get split up a lot (and they still do) but back then you couldn't just global teleport back to your party on a 1.5s delay on a whim. If you got split up you either had to fight your way back or work your way through hindrance/monoliths/totems/etc to rejoin your group. Not directly related to AOE attacks, but I do think it contributes to the reason huge AOE attacks are so powerful - which is that everyone is constantly clustered up.

Peak

@Kog @Eryl this is so much better. Battlefury focus speed is my new bff.

Proficy

@Lyrin

Just so your aware for your rant. Agony only heals if the target is bleeding over 100 when the hit actually lands, and it does NOT fire on every hit. It was modified to only fire so often now to prevent your case on the ability. Second, arc does not hit you if your shielded. The Crucible and Miasma do, but then again they also hit everyone in the room, as well as vengeance when it does fire.

The point im trying to make, is that it is not a factional super ability. It is a more of a last resort type of style for when we (the usual smallest group) are forced to go against the masses. Which could be a single city or some times all of sapience. You never see us even attempt this in anything close to a fair fight.

Just putting it out there so you can target your gripes a bit better. As soon as you start complaining about something and your facts are straight.... your entire argument is thrown out the window.

Austere

Arguing ability strength based on the size of a faction is a dangerous stance to take in a world filled with oath breakers.

Lyrin

Hi @Proficy, thanks for taking the time to post.

Agony only heals if the target is bleeding over 100 when the hit actually lands.

As was established in the last forum thread about agony, the arc hit gives sufficient bleed to proc agony on that same hit. You can see this in logs where the first arc is the only source of bleeding in the engagement and agony procs. This has been bugged and judged to be 'working as intended'.  Whilst "subsequent agony checks have a diminishing chance to fire" per classlead post 65, you can still see it firing a ridiculous amount.  In the log a few posts back, you arced twice.  The first had agony proc 4 times on 6 targets hit, the second 6 times on 8 targets hit.

hit everyone in the room, as well as vengeance when it does fire.

Happy to retract my claim that Vengeance (unlike Pitiless) only hits the user's enemies. I did check this and though the Vengeance ab file wasn't clear on the point, I did note the Pitiless ab states that it hits enemies only and aside from the fact it forces people to pray, was otherwise identical to Vengeance.  I've spoilered the bit I was referring to below and will leave it to you to typo the ab file and have it corrected.

Spoiler Warning

When channeling the pitiless focus of the Lord through your hellforged armour you shall strike out at all of your enemies with His vengeance when you fall. This is similar to the necromantic method of doing so, though with a single difference: any who are truely slain by your vengeful blow shall immediately plunge into the Halls of the Finality.

While I'm correcting things, I'll also note I neglected to include the additional self heal that comes from conqueror procs (in addition to the balance reset which allows another arc+agony round)

The point im trying to make, is that it is not a factional super ability

In my opinion you have not been successful in making this point.

Taryius

Pitiless doesn't hit just enemies, hits everyone. That helpfile is poorly written apparently. Also worth mentioning that Pitiless is a choice the Infernal must make over bloodlust or conqueror, and Apostate vengeance only procs on truedeath and obviously not if the source of that death was a miasma or vengeance proc. And miasma takes priority over vengeance and pitiless, can't have both go off and pitiless is stripped on burst.

I think that arc might actually be interacting with crucible and miasma in a slightly different way than other AoE but I'd have to double check.

But anyway, I'm not entirely convinced the bonuses infernal get to arc is much stronger than other factional AoE (thornspray -and yes I know it's forest only-, radiation, chaos rays). And I know there are several counters that I'd use against it that I've only seen used once or twice, mainly by Cyrene. But all that will surely be considered during classleads, because it may very well be too strong right now. I'm not sure I can accurately say that as I know I have bias.

Reyson

I'd be fine with agony being re-worked to calculate at the end of multiple attacks, instead of line-by-line. It could have a set diminishing return on heal/afflictions healed according to bleeding, to make it standard and not crazy powerful (and capping out at a certain amount of hits).

So, let's say that I hit 10 people for 150 bleeding or whatever arc is, I'm not sure. In order to keep its functionality not-obsolete for 1v1, keep the first heal/affliction cure threshold the same. Then double the intervals, maybe, so that if you rack up 150, you get the first health heal amount, at 200, the first aff cure, at 450 the second heal, at 600, the second aff heal, at 1050 the third health heal, at 1400 the third aff heal, etc. Maybe condensing it so that it's just one line at the end of the attack cuts down on the spam and lag? I don't know if that's workable or not.

Additionally, maybe arc could be condensed, instead of giving line-by-line?

You swing your weapon around in a wide arc with the venom curare (so you still know what you're hitting with) and strike Bob, Jim, Frank, and Amy.

<Agony line depending on how much bleeding you've racked up>.

You say that punishing having a lot of low-level people in a mob is an excessively punitive gameplay mechanic, I say the opposite is equally as annoying, from my three-plus years of playing in Mhaldor. Getting mobbed to death by a bunch of new characters with scripts and zero combat awareness just triggering their offences is pretty lacklustre as far as fun goes. If we took the same attitude that there's no counterplay to a mob, we wouldn't engage pretty much ever. In Nish last night, the first few engagements were won with LoS, so this idea that Mhaldor only wins with arc is pretty disingenuous, though I do understand how annoying it must be to try to fight. I don't like getting smoked with constant entangle, either, but ce'st la vie.

There are definite counters to the arc strategy, like @Taryius pointed out, and Eleusis actually has a class that could do us huge amounts of harm when we try it, but it'd require some more complicated planning and moving around than I usually see Eleusis engage in, or plan for.

I'm sure conqueror will get looked at (I'm not opposed to it having a window where it can't fire again, like, I don't know, three seconds or something after it fires once, so that it can't just keep going), but really, in the end, your issue might be artefact interaction. The group that carves through Eleusis is pretty high-level, very artefacted, and obviously has a few cool talismans, too. That's rough, but artefact imbalance definitely swings back and forth.

Farrah

If Mhaldor gets factional advantages based on "often being outnumbered," I need to classlead some sublimation buffs because Mhaldor is usually twice our size! In all seriousness, though, factionals are not, and should not be, balanced around a perceived idea that any one faction should be able to fight greater numbers than other factions can.

I do think AOE is generally speaking fairly balanced though, simply because it's inherently a double edged sword. We don't really like relying on AOE either, since it's pretty self destructive. Having some shot at doing something against greater numbers is nice, though.

Savira

" And I know there are several counters that I'd use against it that I've only seen used once or twice, mainly by Cyrene."

Think the main issue with it all as stated by Adrik is that as soon as the arc spam start, at least from my point of view (sometimes it sucks to live in the EU), the game pretty much turn into a powerpoint presentation with 2-4 slides with aprox 10 seconds between each slide and an effektive block of input commands so I cant even queue touch shield. And then I spend another minut getting spammed by my own touch shield commands that go through when I'm a soul after having died to the spam.

The second I see someone from Mhaldor use arc I bail the room, not because it's to strong or there's no counterplay, but because I know if a second arc goes through while I'm in the room I might as well reboot my comp and make a new pot of coffee because that's a quicker recover from the massive lagg that is caused by the arc spam then it would be to wait it out with the client running.

Might just be my connection that sucks, might be the servers which cant handle the pressure, might be something in my client that freaks out, who knows? I just know that's the reason I'm not enjoying large scale raids with or against Mhaldor anymore, small skirmishes and minor raids though are still enjoyable.

Saonji

Radiate goes brrrrrr

Atalkez

I just want some factional aoe so I can be involved in this discussion. Paladin rework pls.

Stheno

@Farrah It isn't a factional advantage though. It's crowd control, like radiation. The intent is to even-keel big fights, which is why you get ASCII fireworks when you wipe out 10-20 people with the Morning Star. You can still bring a larger group and roll through Mhaldor, given we lost half our engagements on Nish. Counterplay exists, and I'd read through what people who play the class are saying (without them explicitly spelling out how to beat it).

Astarod

@Atalkez inb4 Paladin gets "Fire Sword Swipe" which sets targets on fire and reduces max HP by 40%. Only enemies get lag spikes and perma-sensitivity until they truedie twice. If an infernal arcs within 5 seconds of this attack, a guardian angel backstabs that person, causing stun and 3 randomly veiled afflictions. If a sublimation alchemist is currently doing radiation they get hit by a chunk of the galley that took out the Eye of Dawn causing a true instakill. If an occie does chaos rays, then it closes mudlet, opens google chrome, and logs them on nexus (a fate worse than death).

Astarod

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT__WcbNWpY&ab_channel=OceanConservationNamibia

Double post so this ^

Phaestus

Ahoy!

Stepping in here to address the original complaint about lag. We've done a ridiculous amount to streamline and optimise combat skills, especially aoe ones, in addition to the huge messaging rework we put in very recently. It's possible there's still a few outliers that are still causing issues, but having been present for several of these arc spam fights (rarely in room but more commonly out of room) without any noticeable lag, much less enough latency to lead to an entire group dropping dead without chance of counterplay, in addition to all the profiling tools we have in place, I can say with relative certainty that in almost every case the lag you're noticing is entirely clientside. There's a bit of slowdown with crucible procs in the larger fights, but even those really shouldn't be noticeable (quarter-second or so at the largest we've seen, and that was with many many deaths). We'll continue keeping an eye on this and optimising where we can, but the bigger culprit for most players impacted by this is almost certainly a personal issue.

Now, with the level of automation on some players, the very poorly optimised code that features in most public scripts, and the sheer amount of text in that sort of roomwide spam fight (in addition to spamming one another with obscene amounts of information, in some cases), it's not surprising that some people are locking up for several seconds at a time, but by and large it's not a problem with the game. There's a few things we'll discuss to potentially mitigate this issue (potentially cutting down on the number of times you see agony proc, though that has other implications, so I'm not saying this will happen, just an example), but by and large we're not looking to solve the problem of poorly optimised player scripts.

That's not to say anything about the ability itself, or factional imbalance, or what have you, so please feel free to continue that discussion. I'd say perhaps somewhere a bit more on-topic, but I don't think this thread has ever really been on-topic.

Adrik

Friggin stupidy sexy scottish-sounding pirate...

Thanks for the reply! I'll turn everything off one of these days and try to see just how bad it is (or, if an admin is willing. I'd totally try it with some dummy characters to just compare/try to pin down the exact culprit since a huge amount of players experience it. I'm guessing SVOF.)

Dominius

@Phaestus

Being a horrible coder myself, what are some issues that people could handle better? Is it curingsets like an old forum post by Jhui adressed or more offense that's causing this? I like to fight and I know my code is horrible but it works for me on most part. I've tried both updating in-game aliases to updating variables on Mudlet and sending those, but I find no noticeable difference. If it's public scripts, maybe tell us which so we can ask around for someone to rewrite them? I mean, people like me love this game as well and want to stay competitive and keep the game cool for non-coders who wanna do their own style as well. I don't like having other people write stuff for me cause I like discovering some things as well, but I do use public scripts which I edit to find new ideas.

Kog

Meanwhile in Cyrene:

https://imgflip.com/i/553hzr

Peak

Class/Spec   -> Unartied change -> Full artied change

2h       -> -6%       -> -7%

😐️

Morthif

You viciously jab a redwood-handled dirk into Bruyan, the town crier. You see Bruyan, the town crier shout, "Hear ye! Oh yez! Handsome, charming, delightful town crier makes final announcement before being brutally cut down by ignorant Primes with neither taste nor style. Oh.".

8411[75%]h, 9403[96%]m, 99%e, 98%w XX|EEM  36.1% [TD][+1]0

You have slain Bruyan, the town crier, retrieving the corpse.

A monarch's ransom of golden sovereigns spills from the corpse, flying into your hands before they can reach the ground.

You feel a surge of energy course through your body as a sycophantic shoulder cape feeds upon the lifeforce of your fallen foe.

Morthif

oops..

Shecks

I don't agree that AOE is balanced as being a double edged sword because as we all know, it's rarely used as one. It's almost always used by a small group or one individual against a large group of enemy players. Combined with gravehands (no limit to targets) you can effectively instantly kill an infinite number of people with 3-4 people. Just gotta make sure your resistances / healing are set up and you can't lose.

As has been mentioned before and will mention again, it's also a bit meta but it'd really only Mhaldor (and mayyybe Hashan?) that is fine with killing its own citizens, so that element alone makes many of these tactics pretty one-sided. These are ideologies which are effectively out of player control (at least in Targ/Eleusis), so this does tall under team combat balance in my book.

Stheno

Killing your own team is the definition of a double-edged sword.

I too hate when factions have identity, ideology, and tactics, and would prefer a grey slurry that equates to a numbers game.

Reyson

If 3-4 people could 'instantly kill an infinite number of people,' I can guarantee life would be much, much rougher for the rest of the game. That's an incredibly wild assertion to make.