Knight in a nutshell (Warning : Spoilers)

Wessux

So, I keep reading where people say, "No Knight is fine, don't worry." or "Knights don't need that they have <blah>." But if we're all being honest with ourselves right now there are four good Knights that I can confirm. Myself, @Aerek, @Exelethril‌, and @Kenway‌ the rest just copy paste exactly what we tell them to do. No one else plays knight because it has a lot of problems. People will try it out, realize they were better off monk by a long shot and switch back, looking at you @Iakimen‌. (MUCH LOVE I PROMISE) Now don't get me wrong, I'm not calling him out for it. If I had more money and was less stubborn I would have switch to Blademaster or maybe Serpent by now. Now if I understand how Achaean politics work things only get changed once it is either no longer fun to play as that class or if it's just boring. So I'm gonna go ahead and post some charts (because everyone loves charts) and some helpful tips so everyone can not die to Knight anymore.

Lets start with parrying. The forums are bound and determined not to give Knight a good and reliable way to get around parry. Like for instance vinewrithe, airfist, sweapkick/roundhouse kick, staffcast air, and trip. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few in there, but that should put it in focus. EVERY OTHER CLASS CAN GET THROUGH PARRY NO PROBLEM. Just in case you didn't read that last sentence EVERY OTHER CLASS CAN GET THROUGH PARRY NO PROBLEM. Knights on the other hand have several tricks they've had to develop to get around it. So now I'm gonna tell you how to pretty much be unprepable to a Knight. (Notice I said pretty much cause there are still a thing or two you like them eating the wrong herb due to timing and what not)

Step one : Keep your parry stationary. One freaking leg and you're good. If you move it that mean I will eventually prep you.
Step two : Apply mending to arms over other limbs. (including head) This will keep most epteth or epseth loops from getting you.
Step Three : Run/Shield/Web on arm breaks. (any breaks really) This will keep them from doing the two broke arm method on you. Unless you can't run for X reason, they have buckawns, and they razeslash the other arm through shield, but if arms are prio'd they will get 1 dsl through it before one of your arms are fixed.
Step Four : If you can, buy Buckawns. This will keep them from using the web method to get around parry.
Step Five : If your attacks are longer than 2~ seconds then try and attack just after they dsl that way they can't just delph you.
Step Six : If they break your leg, switch your parry to the broken one. This will keep them from using the break leg delph method
Step Seven : When prone switch your prios to apply to legs instead of arms. This will keep you from getting epteth locked on the ground after putting arms above other limbs as directed above.
Step Eight : Fitness/Tree/Classcure when you have paralysis, slickness, and asthma. This will keep them form doing the Gecko method to get around your parry. Which is only a 50/50 shot anyway, but why let them have it at all!!!
Step Nine : If fighting a Runewarden with double Nairat on his blades, run from time to time. Leap, Mount jump, fly (random tree curing could work too) This will stop the frozen parry bypass.

***CONGRATULATIONS*** You're near unprepable. Now you may be thinking, "But if they do the two broken arm method they still slowly set you up!" You're right random citizen they will! Now let me put that time into prospective.

Lets say you dsl at 1.9 seconds because you have good rapiers, but not godly ones that you have to be rich and extremely lucky to get. Average health is lets say 5000 so average break point is 14-16 slashes depending on weapons. Lets go with 16 for arguments sake. That's 15.2 seconds per limb Then another 5.7 to actually get one hit in. So you're looking at 36.1 seconds to get OOOONNNNNNNNEEEEEEE hit in, one. So you're looking at little under 5 minutes to prep OOOOONNNNNEEEEE limb. I believe the other limb prep classes can prep either your own body or at least 4 limbs in the time it takes to prep those two arms just for the break. With the new limb reset time of 3 freaking minutes if you don't slowly prep the other leg with it they can just switch legs once they realized you've prep it.  And if not careful you could just lose the limb altogether. Man it would be rough if we were being hindered this whole time too. I'm not sure how we could handle someone that is good at par...............wait, we ARE being hindered this whole time! So just add in some extra time for failed attempts in case they manage to run or stop us one way or the other. And with these tips I just posted above we are gonna be dealing with this now. Some people are probably gonna quit the class, maybe just play alts for a while. But the number of Knights are gonna dwindle a little bit more for sure.

But lets move past parry a moment, I believe I covered that well enough. Lets talk about DSB. @Antonius‌ or some other guy who's name starts with A pointed out a very nice damage chart of DSB damn that he made. It was based off strength and to be honest it was awesome. It was well made and I love it. It showed us you really need to be strength build to kill someone. But even with 19 strength it can be hard to just kill someone with Dsb. "But Wessux Dsb's damage can't really be up'd because then it would be too easy for people to die to it." Random citizen, you're making some great points but let me point something out for you. IT TAKES 5 MINUTES TO PREP ONE LIMB IF THEY PARRY WELL. (Which everyone should now) That should simply be an insta kill for the time it takes to do. And I do mean with torso damage otherwise I agree it could be pretty easy to abuse. "Man Wessux that's crazy. How would people keep torso damage off of them, or at least avoid death." Well random citizen it's not very hard, but you're a newb so I'll give you two ways. Tumble after the second leg break, or the easier way of simply applying to torso first. If you Tumble you'll be fine. The damage is not that bad and if you have 5000 Health you'll be able to run and/or health before they can damage you out. Or you can simply apply to torso and just eat that little bit of damage and move on with your life.  Make a reverse limb counter. There are plenty of free reverse limb counters flouting around as well. SLC has been reverse engineered and handed out to people. (Sorry @Ernam, but know it wasn't me. I suck at programming) "What about Infernal!!!" I'll get to that in a second, but lets deal with the other two knights who don't have frenzy and vivisect. So Dsb takes forever to do and is extremely easy to avoid a death from it. That's my point in a nutshell there. So some solutions.

Solution 1 : Make Dsb with Torso damage a insta kill. We worked for it, we deserve it.
Solution 2 : Use one of the parry bypass methods that @Exelethril or someone else suggested. I'm a huge fan of razeslash "knocking away" their parry and letting the other slash through as long as rebounding and shield aren't up.
Solution 3 : Both 1 & 2!! Now giving Knights one would probably be enough but both would be great.

Random citizen brought up a great point with Infernals. I don't have to worry about parry. Between frenzy and the threat of vivisection I can always get around your parry in a much shorter time than the other knights. And I can simply do a Dsb setup that if you don't restore I'll vivisect you and if you do I'll dsb you. So I'll kill you either way. Applying to torso is still and option, but with frenzy I can do some nasty stuff to you while you just wait to be able to fix things. So a couple of options we have here.

Solution 1 : Remove Dsb from Infernal. I don't like this option because Dsb is badass, but I have vivisect and frenzy and I've got plenty of tricks to get you with it eventually
Solution 2 : If you restore and TWO crippled limbs are fixed you can't be impaled . That would keep people from abusing restore on Runewardens and Paladins, and also keeps Infernals from abusing restore on you. (This idea just popped in my head so I haven't number crunched it to see if I can still abuse it)
Solution 3 :  Keep Dsb the same for Infernals, but let at -least- runewardens have insta kill Dsb. Paladins do have Damnation.

Unfortunately that is all I have off the top of my head.

Another change I would like to suggest is Frenzy having a speed cap of 1.6. It needs the speed cap so you can't get three attacks in one restoration apply. But it's still a great skill for midbie Infernals to use so they don't have to find amazing weapons, and it is great for allowing vivisect to be possible. I'd hate to see the skill go, and a 1.6 second cap is a great compromise.

I apologize in advance for grammar mistakes But it's 3:40am and I'm exhausted.

P.S. Sorry for not adding charts. You'll have to live without then for now, but I'll look into making some.

P.P.S. I missed ACC applications again, can this be mine?

Now to Tag people to look at this!!!!

@Tecton @Makarios‌ @Jhui @Mizik @Santar @Vaehl‌ @Hasar @Tesha @Mishgul‌ @Dunn‌ and everyone else who wasn't tagged who's name I couldn't think of off the top of my head.

Seftin

I read this, some good points, quite a lot of condescension and venom.

Wessux

Mostly returning how knights are being treated when they suggest things. But it was venomous and I apologize. But it feels like my points are gotten across better that way. 

Mishgul

Patience

Seftin

Knight is strong in certain places and weak in others, most notably the upper-levels of combat where sketch thurisaz x 3 and dsl curare/pref wont work due to arties/level/leaving the room, and disembowel becomes a minefield of stress.

But as peopel say, changes coming - patience

Makarios

Although some of your points are pretty valid, you're also wrong about a commonly held misconception. The worst way to get changes to any class are for people not to play it. People playing a class allows for issues to become more readily apparent and a wider set of solutions to be presented. I shall use the shaman and alchemist classes as sutable examples.

In the case of knights, I'll say we're aware of the issues involved and leave it at that for now.

Arador

Excellent points and nicely put together. Saying that Knights do well against certain classes at and certain tiers is something that frustrates me. Certainly there is nothing wrong with being stronger in certain fields and weaker in others but to be completely futile against any single class is pointless.

Knights are very one dimensional at high tiers where little damage stacks and tricks do not work. You basically have to put in the massive amount of frustration to get to setup only to have it easily ruined and countered. I lost interest in fighting when I realised that every single time I would be dodging death 10 times as I was prepped over and over while just trying to get to a single full prep of my own.

Knights have taken a few massive nerfs recently, usually in the form of buffs to other classes and mechanics.
1. Pipe lock is now out of the question with pipe balance being around 1.5 seconds. You simply can not drain someone's pipe fast enough.
2. Limb damage now resetting at 3 minutes makes fine sense when every other limbreaking class can fully prep an opponent in 1-2 minutes at most, but Knights still have ridiculously high numbers of hits required on limb and with no mechanical bypass (like EVERY other limb breaking class has) I do not even see the point of going for DSB.
3. Blademasters can now parry prone. I am not sure why they needed this but it was a bigger nerf to Knights than to monks who can still paralyse to get past it. (I mean come ON! Did we not take 10 years to eventually get rid of Occultist Orb? Why bring this back in?)

Then of course there are things that could make Knight interesting but are denied even for consideration.
1. Giving Knights an option to lock, if not through Impatience, then through a way to make a rift lock stick on someone with fitness or other active healing abilities. (We are always told that a limb breaking class with Impatience would be completely overpowered, yes let's see......Bard, Blademaster, Dragon, Sentinel.....)
2. Shortening Knight setups. This would bring them in line with the speed at which other classes prep.
3. Giving them a decent parry bypass, like RSL.
4. Giving Knights a way to stop active curing abilities that meshes with their offense. It is easy to say "Just stick weariness" but when your breakchain is solely focused around stacking salve cures, keeping a herb stack on someone during it is not feasible. Something like stopping those abilities while prone with broken arms would mesh better. The Knight still has to put in extra effort to achieve this but in a way that can actually be accomplished.

Of course any of these would be accompanied by a scaling down of other aspects like raw damage etc to balance knights in the midbie tier, while still giving them a better chance at the high end.

I know "New Knights" are coming, but with the recent nerfs, the mind numbing tedium of the class and the usage of the famous "Soon(tm)" I wish we could at least see something that can make Knights worth playing until then. Otherwise we might as well log out or sit around and drink tea all day until that is finally done.

Kaden

Juuuuuuuuuust saying that staffstrike air isn't really a parry bypass unless you mean breaking a leg with air and prepping the parried leg. Couple that with the fact that magi just isn't all that good at hindering and, well, there's a reason I've moved away from staffstrike preps.

Seftin

Kaden said:

Juuuuuuuuuust saying that staffstrike air isn't really a parry bypass unless you mean breaking a leg with air and prepping the parried leg. Couple that with the fact that magi just isn't all that good at hindering and, well, there's a reason I've moved away from staffstrike preps.

to be fair, you only need to prep one leg in retardation to start the pain-chain..

Kaden

This is a fair point, though there is merit in having more than one limb prepped!

Kenway

While I think it's reasonable to preach patience on the one hand, and we all look forward to whatever changes are in store for Knights, I think a lot of the frustration stems from the solutions seeming to be very simple for those that play the class. Making DSB an instant kill does not seem unreasonable because there are two chances to stop it from happening before it goes through, assuming you let us prep you. Speeding up prep time doesn't seem unreasonable because other classes prep so quickly. Something as simple as capping DSL speed and making it scale better with weapon speed would be a huge quality of life improvement. 

I don't think anyone's asking for a huge overhaul or a 'fix'. We know that the admin and ACC are hard at work on the changes and I think we all trust them to bring us something fresh, fun and viable. But something to tide us over and alleviate some of the tedium in the meantime would be nice and make it a lot easier to be 'patient'. Even something that gets revoked as soon as the new Knight stuff comes around like I'd imagine an instant kill dsb would.

Ernam

Wessux said:

Make a reverse limb counter. There are plenty of free reverse limb counters flouting around as well. SLC has been reverse engineered and handed out to people. (Sorry @Ernam, but know it wasn't me. I suck at programming) 

Regarding the post as a whole, it's interesting and I might comment more when I get a moment, but regarding SLC - the system is and always has been free (donations for those who can afford it are appreciated).  Only thing you get by not getting it from me directly is not being on the update list*.

* Which is a bit overdue thanks to a few developments on my end as well as the recent changes to limb damage.

Mizik

Weird. I never had any problems beyond unblockable damage being resisted by resist all.

Kenway

Mizik said:

Weird. I never had any problems beyond unblockable damage being resisted by resist all.

A lot has changed since about a year ago (which is to my knowledge about the last time you were a Runie? Could be wrong though.) It's a lot of little things adding up to make the situation worse. A while ago, I think Knight was in a really good place. New abilities in other classes, new scripts, and more than anything else, the spread of knowledge has caused things to change.

Easiest example:
I never saw mind throw used to counter impale six months ago, even fighting people like Kross or Iakimen but now near everyone knows they can do it. People figure things out and then it spreads exponentially till it's common knowledge.

Knight just happens to be a thing that you can figure out how to just not worry about, and that's becoming more common knowledge.

EDIT: Also, you're Mizik.

Exelethril

I think knight combat is still viable with fast enough rapiers. It's just that the vardrax venom doesn't work in the arena, which is one of the stronger(strongest?) points of not having to rely on dsb and prepping a leg.

One of the key things to remember is, if they parry legs, you have free reign over their arms, which lets you rift lock from a kelp stack. For runewardens, going from a riftlock into a focuslock is possible against someone with an average mana pool and lucky pithakhan procs if you break head with focusing venoms to try and stick anorexia.

Infernals definitely have the edge over other knights because of vivisect and how vivisect forces you to cure, since you're forced to take the dsb and forced restore/mending scenario with frenzy makes prepping speed faster than paladin/runewarden. Also, the 2 limb prep free kill against anyone that doesn't have vivi-curing.

tl;dr - Knights are okay outside the arena but suck big time in the arena. Like @Wessux said, infernals are really op because of how reliable their skills are.

Dunn

I think that with knight changes on the horizon, this was a waste of an intelligent post.

Vaehl

Infernal is op mainly because vivisect curing isn't really that amazing yet.

You can do stuff like applying mending to a limb instead of restoration so they set off the break chain and waste it when you cure everything. You can just not cure resto arms in most situation and avoid vivi, but cure it if they are going for rift lock. Can only apply restoration if you have equilibrium. There are so many tricks people don't use to avoid vivi.

Honestly when an infernal breaks me I just pause and manual like not applying resto, applying mending instead, doing wonky stuff with my prios to throw them off, restoring only if I have eq.

Remember, they can't see what you're applying. Just when you apply. You can fake them out really hard if you just pause your system and manual.

Yay now we can all avoid most vivis.

Mishgul

infernal is OP in the sense that it's really hard to think under pressure to defend against it for a lot of people, because you have 4-5s to react before you definitely die post first break. 

I used to pause after first break and go full manual but it's not easy. However I like how it is and feel like more classes should be on infernal level, just hard to balance from ideas whilst also maintaining diversity, originality and fun.

Vaehl

Infernal is all mind games where each has their own advantages. Infernal has burst of speed from frenzy (which may be a bit too fast), and is the one directing the vivisect minigame with when he uses breaks and afflictions. The victim has the choice of which salve to use when, and the infernal can't see what type of salve you used. A choice of curing all mending breaks instantly using EQ. Can ignore certain limb breaks at certain times. 

That is what makes vivisect fun. Both players are put in a highly reactive game where each person has advantages. The problem is most people use their systems for vivi which just makes it infernal vs system, but the system normally does the same things with flaws every time. Carmain, Xinna, Xer, Jovolo, myself are a few people that manual vivisect completely. If you introduce shatter to the equation for the infernal it adds another dynamic.

There is one simple way that you can make internals have to atleast resto break 4 limbs to vivi. So many tricks to use, but people just rely on their systems and die. Manualing it is fun and you are put under pressure (also fun).

tl;dr More infernal-esque situations. Really fucking fun.

Kerria

"Just stack runes"
has anyone ever tried that as a runewarden, while against an opponent who knows what they are doing?

that is a whole reason why I personally have  to find/barter/pray for faster weapons. You can't when someone knows to disrupt you. Your better off just leaving tunes on rapiers and the occasional ground rune. 

A whole ole line of runes that are nearly if not worthless against someone who knows what they are doing

Seftin

Vaehl said:

Infernal is all mind games where each has their own advantages. Infernal has burst of speed from frenzy (which may be a bit too fast), and is the one directing the vivisect minigame with when he uses breaks and afflictions. The victim has the choice of which salve to use when, and the infernal can't see what type of salve you used. A choice of curing all mending breaks instantly using EQ. Can ignore certain limb breaks at certain times. 

That is what makes vivisect fun. Both players are put in a highly reactive game where each person has advantages. The problem is most people use their systems for vivi which just makes it infernal vs system, but the system normally does the same things with flaws every time. Carmain, Xinna, Xer, Jovolo, myself are a few people that manual vivisect completely. If you introduce shatter to the equation for the infernal it adds another dynamic.

There is one simple way that you can make internals have to atleast resto break 4 limbs to vivi. So many tricks to use, but people just rely on their systems and die. Manualing it is fun and you are put under pressure (also fun).

tl;dr More infernal-esque situations. Really fucking fun.

I keep meaning to manual vivisect but forget that I am fighting.

Mishgul

weapon stats are a major roadblock for the majority of midbie knights more than anything. Hopefully that is addressed soon.

Rakon

 

Mizik

Kerria said:

"Just stack runes"
has anyone ever tried that as a runewarden, while against an opponent who knows what they are doing?

that is a whole reason why I personally have  to find/barter/pray for faster weapons. You can't when someone knows to disrupt you. Your better off just leaving tunes on rapiers and the occasional ground rune. 

A whole ole line of runes that are nearly if not worthless against someone who knows what they are doing

Disembowel does how much %. Let's say my unartied DSB did 90%.

Okay, how much damage do I need for kill? How much would be a waste?

Falcon and hugalaz were enough to kill 95% of the population. The other 5% needed one thurisaz.

Use Lunge or shoot for follow up killshot. Your most damaging abilities that bypass rebounding. 

If you sit in room sketching overkill runes dudes will run. Sketch one thurisaz out of sight, come in with the hugalaz into breaks. By the time they see rumble it is too late. 

Mizik

Kenway said:

Mizik said:

Weird. I never had any problems beyond unblockable damage being resisted by resist all.

A lot has changed since about a year ago (which is to my knowledge about the last time you were a Runie? Could be wrong though.) It's a lot of little things adding up to make the situation worse. A while ago, I think Knight was in a really good place. New abilities in other classes, new scripts, and more than anything else, the spread of knowledge has caused things to change.

Easiest example:
I never saw mind throw used to counter impale six months ago, even fighting people like Kross or Iakimen but now near everyone knows they can do it. People figure things out and then it spreads exponentially till it's common knowledge.

Knight just happens to be a thing that you can figure out how to just not worry about, and that's becoming more common knowledge.

EDIT: Also, you're Mizik.

I was Runie like 2-3 months ago. Knight as easy today as it was then. I gular'ed throwers. Tumble for dsb/engage is death. Only Numb can't be beat.

Wessux

Rakon said:

 

You're back!!!

Kadin

4 good Knights and that's it? I disagree. Vicious isn't terrible and Jhui will have good things rolling soon enough. I remember splitting a set of duels with you. Guess that makes me half good. Ha. Only kidding. The parrying is a bit of an issue but I'd be interested in seeing weaponry changes before making any changes to Knights. 

Wessux

So everyone is just gonna ignore the crazy amount of time it takes a knight to prep? Probably the biggest problem with the class, and the easiest fix? Fine, soon(tm) will have to be enough for now 

But if I here one more person so focus lock is a viable option I'm gonna tear my eyes out. No one is gonna let you drain their mana all the way down. Its just not gonna happen. (Unless total scrubs)

Terra

Both infernal and paladin don't need to bypass parry (unless fighting bard trueparry). Runie has an additional option of making your opponent walk through nairat and bypassing parry on transfix.

Also, staffstrike air isn't any different from delph/delph dsl.

I'm not saying knight doesn't have the hardest time bypassing parry (of classes who need to do so), but the OP isn't entirely accurate.

And dsb is fine as a finisher, unless tumble is still too good against it. I haven't looked into the tumble/torso damage changes yet, but it seems likely that they provide a good enough means of ensuring a kill after prep.

Edit: A number of the issues with knight were addressed in this last round of classleads, so I'm not sure how the OP can say that knights have been completely ignored and told to simply wait for knight changes. Paladin damnation became MUCH more viable, eliminating the need for paladins to bypass parry, and disembowel became better against tumble, to name a couple.

Jovolo

The idea of a focus lock isn't to drain mana, it's lock affs + mental afflictions. This is not that hard to do as a Knight. It doesn't require a parry bypass so the prep time is also significantly shorter than disemboweling.

I agree that the largest problem with Knight is the prep time past parry, but I also think it's the only significant problem. RSL bypass ideas are so frustratingly boring as an attempt to resolve the issue. A better way I and others (I believe Cooper, and Vaehl, at least) have put forward is to just increase the limb damage a Knight has (tag it onto Swordplay). 

Going to throw in some math here, in regards to current estimated prep times. I'm going to work with what I consider "Slightly above average weapons" - God rapiers don't count here. They are the exception.

Let's say as a Runewarden, you DSL with a pair of 72/150/237's, runed. That's 1.9s dsl speed assuming transcendent weaponry. I won't cover Infernal or Paladin here, because they have alternate kill methods and don't really require a bypass in the sense that Runewarden does. With that pair of rapiers, it would take 7 dsl's to break a limb on a target with 5,000 max health.

1.9 * 6 = 11.4.
11.4 * 2 = 22.8.
22.8 / 8.5 = 2.6 [that means you'll need at most, roughly 2 razes.]
2*2 = 4. [Estimate for raze, though I think it's milliseconds quicker].

That's 22.8 + 4 = 26.8 for a two arm prep. We can round it up to 35 for having to potentially raze their shield, or go on the defensive with a fitness or self shield.

Then you break while they're off balance and drop their rebound. Regular left arm break, right arm break, hit parried leg with delph/delph. Hit it again with whatever mending salves they cure. They should catch up at this point and stand if they prioritize leg cripples, at which point they still have a broken right arm/crippled left arm. One more dsl before they fly, or mending arm/shield, etc. after this rebound comes up anyway. That's roughly 3 dsl's. Let's say you do this in one rebound cycle, so 8.5 seconds to bypass parry with 3 dsl's.

That brings the total to (26.8+8.5)*2=70.6. We can raise that to like, 90 seconds for defensive play. You're going to need to do this twice for the prep. Three times for people with 6k health or more. That's between three minutes and four-and-a-half minutes to bypass parry for the disembowel setup.

This is too much in modern Achaea's combat scene, imo. Every other prep class has an insanely quick prep time. 

I think it would be fair if Swordplay raised limb damage on DSL, RSL and Slash by 20%. That brings most prep times within the three minute mark.

Disembowel itself is potent enough. It doesn't need to be addressed. It's just the prep times that are over the top.

Kenway

@Terra
~7% increase per torso level.
From my testing that's ~46% with a level two torso if I'm remembering right.

@Mizik the point had nothing to do with throw mechanically. The point was that nobody used it, and then everybody did. In a similar fashion the ways to avoid parry bypasses are rapidly becoming more common knowledge, which makes slow prep slower.

Tumble off impale no longer hits engage.

DSB numbers as I recall them from the math post the OP refers to:
18str = 85
19str = 87
20str = 90

I'm really not worried about this all so much because I'm assuming the changes will come soon enough. But I still think a buff to dsb would be nice and would have a very limited effect on the balance of combat while just making things a little less frustrating for the average knight player.

EDIT: dsb -is- fine as it is and really the prep time would be the better thing to change, but assuming the overhaul is incoming a buff to dsb seems more simple for the time being since it would just reward lengthy prep versus reworking how the prepping process actually happens. Probably easier to add 10% to dsb damage than it is to rework the limb formula for one class that is going to be changed anyways