Things To Remember When Fighting An Alchemist

Cynlael

Requested by @Sherazad to be taken from: http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/2509/strongest-classes (thanks to @Jhui for clarification on some things)

Alchemists will typically open with vitrification (causes you to bleed when using balance), or phlogisitication (consuming EQ will lessen the effects of moss/potash) - Following, they will move onto their offence.

Tempers are split into four separate humours: (if you're just wracking, you don't need levels for afflictions)

1. Sanguine: Increasing amounts of bleeding damage per level of humour. - Level 0/1 allows truewracking of haemophilia, Level 2 is recklessness and Level 3 paralysis.
   
2. Phlegmatic: Each level will increase your smoke balance. Level 0/1 allows truewracking of clumsiness, Level 2 is weariness, and Level 3 is asthma.
3. Choleric: Each level has an increasing chance for your random curing abilities to fail (tree, etc). Level 0/1 allows truewracking of Nausea, Level 2 sensitivity, Level 3 slickness.
4. Melancholic: Each level makes potash/moss have an increasingly reduced effect. (around level 3-4 makes it heal for next to nothing). Level 0/1 allows truewracking of stupidity, Level 2 anorexia, Level 3 impatience.

A basic alchemist combo will generally be temper <target> <humour> + truewrack target <affliction 1> <affliction 2> - you can also truewrack via  just the humours, if you don't care about sticking particular afflictions. Doing it that way, will hide the affliction that's shown, and just show that your humours have been wracked.

They can also combo symbology attacks, though this'll generally slow down their affliction rate since all symbology attacks are decently slower if you take nimble (which you should be doing if you wanna pvp). - Will also be slowed due to the fact they can only wrack a single affliction when educing, rather than truewracking for 2 (e.g temper <tar> sanguine; educe tin; wrack <tar> sanguine) - Humor levels increase by 1 on tempering, but can be increased up to 3 (this is cut off at 2 after you have 5 levels) if you temper a humor when they have a specific affliction from that pool or 2 if they have a general affliction from a different pool.

Following this, is the Inundate ability, which you should probably find the lines for to highlight. What this does, is drains all the fluid from whichever humour they inundate to do a specific effect;

1. Sanguine: Bleeding. About 250 per fluid level.
   
2. Choleric: Health loss. Each level will cause about 7% of your health to chunk away. (~70% at max) - Not affected by sensitivity.
   
3. Melancholic: Same as above, but for mana.
4. Phlegmatic: Randomly afflict with afflictions from: anorexia, slickness, weariness, lethargy. -- All four at a level 10 inundate.
   

The final part of their offence that you need to most definitely highlight / pay close attention to is homunculus corrupt (which can be combo'd with inundate). This causes bleeding to affect your mana rather than health, and your clotting to consume health rather than mana - do note that you can still, obviously, die from clotting if your health reaches 0.

Lastly- shielding against an Alchemist is useless, please don't sit there spam shielding. Tempering goes through shield, and they can combo their afflicting with shield stripping and lose literally 0 momentum if they pay attention and raze as soon as shield is put up.

That's about all there is to Alchemist combat- Their finishers: 1) Aurification requires you to be below 60% of both health as well as mana, and 2) Reave requires 2 tempered humours for them to start a channeled instakill (it's about 12 seconds with only 2) - each tempered humour decreases the cooldown by between 2-3 seconds (for a minimum channel of about 6-8)



PS from @Jhui: Do not wait until the You bleed <blah> message to clot.  This is 100% going to get you killed if you don't pre-clot
PPS - If you have anything to add, feel free!

Herose

Thanks!  This is actually really helpful.  I've found alchemists to be a complete mystery to me so far.

Hellen

I'll toss some stuff in in a bit! I'm also pretty sure it still needs some fluid in the two humours you're going to use Truewrack on, but I'd like to double check before I say for sure, just to be safe!.

Cynlael

Only if you want to truewrack higher than the level 1 afflictions.

e.g: Sanguine at level 4, no other tempered, you can truewrack paralysis+stupidity, but not paralysis+impatience.

Aerek

Jhui said:

-Choleric/Melancholic is 7% per level of humor when inundated, not affected by sensitivity.

Incidentally, sensitivity not affecting Choleric was recently 'fixed' as a bug. Now, not only does sensitivity affect it, but every time I've been hit with it, sensitivity's been boosting the damage by 60%, instead of the usual 30%.

Alchemists should enjoy it while it lasts.

Hellen

Cynlael said:

Only if you want to truewrack higher than the level 1 afflictions.

e.g: Sanguine at level 4, no other tempered, you can truewrack paralysis+stupidity, but not paralysis+impatience.

Just checked, you're absolutely right! That one slipped by on me. That changes how we fight one on one, but I'd still recommend the usual temper-educe-wrack method for group combat, just because in that kind of situation you usually need damage more than afflictions.

Cynlael

temper sanguine;educe iron;wrack paralysis is the goto combo that every alchemist should initially have. There's situations where truewracking can be beneficial too- such as if you have a blademaster voidfisting. (in a support role, where you already have enough damage, and want to lessen damage from the opposing team via clumsiness+stupidity truewracking, on top of strike neck from blademasters on non-priority targets)

Mizik

Learned something new today. Temper Choleric does this:

3934h, 5330m, 20770e, 22794w cexkdb[sanH(5) choH(10) melaH(6) bld(122)]-

Cadarus glowers at you with a look of repressed disgust before making a slight gesture toward you.

Sudden pain radiates throughout your body.

Cadarus sketches out a symbol in the air with his finger in the shape of two isosceles triangles set 

base-to-base.

Ashen flames engulf your body, burning your skin with their frigid touch.

The bounty on your head placed by the City of Targossas has been completed.

You just received message #11920 from Achaea.

As the icy flames claw at you, frostbite sets in as your body ceases to produce sufficient warmth to 

keep alive.

You have been slain by Cadarus.

Assuming artied: Does about 7% max health per level, so 70%. Comboed with Educe Iron, you get a one shot. Don't let them have lv 10 choleric.

Max health 4360 with lv2 magic resist mog and simulacrum.

Bukariin

Yeah I've been killed by Alchemists both ways.  Either I push the humours to the top level and get locked or I push the humors to the bottom and get bled for 2000. 

Ernam

I would say that the class is pretty amazing, if it didn't hinge so much on people sitting around allowing them to stack afflictions indefinitely.  I would certainly hate to be an alchemist in any fight that didn't involve standing in one room until one of the two fighters dies.

Cynlael

For once, I would have to agree with @Ernam. The class is absolutely amazing, but it's pretty damn easy to not get killed by them if you're paying attention. Evade/Mountleap + maybe horkval/sentinel leap? bypasses homunculus block, and pretty much anyone has access to one of those things. Chuck up an icewall, and it's game. Monks can also just mind throw them while they're off balance (tempering has a ~2.35s balance, educe has about a 3.5 with diadem) and move away... Yeah, if you're insistent on outpacing them and staying in room with them, you're most likely going to die... Otherwise nope, not unless you just outright screw up / unlucky to not have one of those things.

To demonstrate what happens when you're determined to stall versus an alchemist: https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/9f048d2d (not the best log, I know, but still shows the point... Also ignore the ret-mess up, forgot mudlet crashes so ruined my rebound tracker >.>)

Jovolo

Mountjump/leap should not be bypassing homoblock. That leaves evade, tumble and fly. Considering homoblock is balanceless, all they have to do is follow before you escape and call homunc back.

Jovolo

Homoblock isnt balancess, homunc return is*

Cynlael

Was bypassing without any issue when I sparred Drual. Was nearly two months ago now, so maybe it was bugged/got fixed... Or she activated her hidden Hermes power and got lucky and managed to mount jump out 7-8 times in a row on her first attempt

edit: technically block is balanceless. Passive that comes into effect when it starts attacking someone.

Aerek

Fly is blocked, too. Tumble and Evade are the only real options.

Edit: Apparently Aerial isn't blocked, but Fly is. Might need to bug that for some consistency.

Hasar

Aerek said:

Fly is blocked, too. Tumble and Evade are the only real options.

Edit: Apparently Aerial isn't blocked, but Fly is. Might need to bug that for some consistency.

Aerial far longer EQ than RoF's balance time, but similar to normal fly balance iirc.