Serpent - AKA the class that hates you.

Iocun

Nah, every venom corresponds to a key. As I said, it was just a short spar that ended after a few dstabs. I automated illusions during that fight too, so there really wasn't much to do.

Synbios

@Arador: Achaeans - churning out operatic geniuses. Just challenge them to a spar, receive instant musical masterpiece.

For instance, here's a log of a five minute spar between me and Achilles while in mir stance(3 mins fighting, 2 mins preptime).

As you can see with the crescendo, I was actually trying for a quad break there, but, as denoted by the long sequence of staccato notes, I had been experiencing some lag, so I couldn't land the arm and legslashes quickly enough.

Arador

@Synbios Oh indeed. I just found a piece that came out of the Tirac Kalvon spar. Note the 6 limb setup with the riftlock that Tirac used to try an keep kalvon off salve balance for the vivisect only to have the damn falcon knock him off balance, requiring a change of key to still get the kill. The parts where ever key on the piano are slammed is where Tirac was going "F***, F***, F***, why won't you die?!" (x16) while kalvon responded by running up and down the to dodge Tirac's Vivisect finger.

Xer

Liked solely because it's Yukari's theme.

Aerek

Are you telling me that when Iocun kills me, I'm losing to Beethoven's Fifth?

Iocun

The main motive of Beethoven's Fifth would be a rather poor combo. Three gecko bites, a slike bite, three vernalius bites, a darkshade bite... I hope you don't die to that!

The more useful combos sound more like Stravinsky. Some like Bartók.

Arador

Aerek said:

Are you telling me that when Iocun kills me, I'm losing to Beethoven's Fifth?

Be proud of that. Turns out he can kill me with nothing more than "Mary had a little lamb"

Synbios

Arador said:

Aerek said:

Are you telling me that when Iocun kills me, I'm losing to Beethoven's Fifth?

Be proud of that. Turns out he can kill me with nothing more than "Mary had a little lamb"

That's alright, dude. I killed Glint with "Chopsticks". 

Tvistor

I just sing at my computer.

I die a lot.

Xith

Jester must look something like the theme to Jaws... until you get enough fashions, and then it's dubstep.

Daslin

@Tvistor stop being a bard and you might not die.

Tvistor

Harlot.

Asmodron

A question I have is concerning Biting. Recently I was looking over skills and see how Doublestab is far more useful and superior to biting the venom in. However biting bypasses shield and rebounding, so it makes me think if there is a way to focus on it. If not...well the Venom skill seems largely useless except for 3 venoms that cant be secreted. What are the benefits in combat of transing venom before hypnosis?

Halios

Just a random piece of advice:

instead of trying to make an alias for each dstab or each deadeyes or curse, in my experience it is much easier to have a macro for dstab, or deadeyes, or curse, like F1.

Then, set that macro to contain the following: balance/eq check, enemy rebounding check, and deadeyes @target @affliction1 @affliction2.

This way, you save yourself on spam if you're spamming F1 during balance loss, it won't give you the "you need to recover balance" which takes up space even if it is gagged.

You then use aliases to set @afflict1 and @afflict2. When I was an apostate I used to use 1, 11, 111, 2, 22, 222, 3, 33, 333, 4, 44, 444, etc. as my aliases. it's easier to type in repeaters and while it is not a mnemonic device or short-phrasing for the actual action, muscle memory takes over anyway eventually. 

This way you can be setting your afflictions on the fly and then spamming your deadeyes macro when you need to.

This can work for a number of things including dstab, curses, etc.

As a serpent you also can program a variable for your illusion, then each alias that sets venom combos for dstab can also set the definition for the illusion variable.

This way, you can use the same 'if' checks for balance, eq, enemy rebounding, etc., and you don't need separate inputs for illusions etc.

Others may have different techniques but this worked for me very well as a snake and as an apostate especially.

Halios

Asmodron said:

A question I have is concerning Biting. Recently I was looking over skills and see how Doublestab is far more useful and superior to biting the venom in. However biting bypasses shield and rebounding, so it makes me think if there is a way to focus on it. If not...well the Venom skill seems largely useless except for 3 venoms that cant be secreted. What are the benefits in combat of transing venom before hypnosis?

Biting is used when someone shields, or when you're facing someone who is not super-arti-dragon-tank and a couple camus relapses would kill them and you have them hindered for a bit.

Tanris

Relapsing is one of the most underappreciated serpent kill strategies there is. It is not only untanky people you can kill with relapses: artifacted dragon level players can very easily die to the damage as well. However, benefits of transing venom:

- Scytherus: one of the best venoms in the game, only useable t hrough venom.
- Instant purge and no need to ever buy venoms: good enough to make it worth transing on its own.
- Biting in general: lock seals, getting through shield, relapse. Ability to illusion/bite rather than  dstab/illusion, situationally potent.

Halios

Tanris said:

Relapsing is one of the most underappreciated serpent kill strategies there is. It is not only untanky people you can kill with relapses: artifacted dragon level players can very easily die to the damage as well. However, benefits of transing venom:

- Scytherus: one of the best venoms in the game, only useable t hrough venom.
- Instant purge and no need to ever buy venoms: good enough to make it worth transing on its own.
- Biting in general: lock seals, getting through shield, relapse. Ability to illusion/bite rather than  dstab/illusion, situationally potent.

Agreed. Relapsing can stack some massive damage and be completely unexpected.

Cain as snake was shit with afflictions but he had a level 3 arti bow, level 3 dirk, and silver fangs.

I killed him 1v1 as snake usually but he didn't even have to try nearly as hard to get kills.

One think to remember about relapses is that unlike other damage it is not balance/sip time contingent. If a snake hits a sick relapse combo after stacking a couple of afflictions the sip balance is just not quick enough and you will take a huge chunk of damage that you will not catch up on if they continue with it.

Vaehl

serpent is fun

Asmodron

I actually thoroughly enjoy it. It is so fun and sneaky, also feel there is so much possibility to it

Tvistor

Venoms is useful, but arguably the least useful skill if you're strapped for lessons. I took survival over venoms and didn't regret it since focus is pretty vital and I had the vast majority of venoms available via dstab, although the fact you can illusion then bite is pretty amazing.

Avto

^ add to Tanris list: single command double affliction in retardation. Rarely used as all Serpents just evade/snipe right away, but small prep before that could seal the deal.

Cooper

Halios's macro/alias to wait until you have eq/bal to try to attack is terribly bad advice. You need to chase eq/balance to be most effective.

Tvistor

I just use deleteFull() which was in Omnipave's scripts on my balance lines.

Iocun

I must be the only serpent in existence who doesn't ever manage to kill without a lock Everyone always raves about sticking scytherus, but I can't pull it off against anyone even slightly good defensively.

Venoms is mostly good for a few things: transsecretion, so you don't have to bother with buying vials, and scytherus for killing (despite what I said above, it is extremely potent both after a lock, as well as a part of obtaining a lock, as well as in group situations). Loki can sometimes be useful, but it's really not needed at all. Notechis isn't very useful. Nechamandra is way too slow for any effective use (might get a bit better with the nechamandra classlead put into effect, but still won't be amazing).

Biting normal venoms is also extremely useful against people who ignore bites completely, which is surprisingly many. Against the others, it would be potentially very useful, but is too slow currently (it used to be great for Rajas pre-traits).

Last but definitely not least there's straight camus, which is a great thing to have when you go to melee in group fights.

All in all though, venoms is not a crucial skill for serpents. Hypnosis tends to be more important, although trans venoms is a huge convenience factor.

As for biting on shield: works well against Omni, less against Svo. Svo tends to be a lot better about not getting sileris stripped for good.

Halios

Cooper said:

Halios's macro/alias to wait until you have eq/bal to try to attack is terribly bad advice. You need to chase eq/balance to be most effective.

How does what I said encourage anyone to wait for eq/bal to try to attack? If you're spamming the macro it goes through as soon as you get bal/eq back.

Sena

Halios said:

Cooper said:

Halios's macro/alias to wait until you have eq/bal to try to attack is terribly bad advice. You need to chase eq/balance to be most effective.

How does what I said encourage anyone to wait for eq/bal to try to attack? If you're spamming the macro it goes through as soon as you get bal/eq back.

The point is that you should send the command before you gain eq/balance. You said the macro contains a balance/eq check, implying that the command isn't actually sent if you're off balance/eq.

Halios

Sena said:

Halios said:

Cooper said:

Halios's macro/alias to wait until you have eq/bal to try to attack is terribly bad advice. You need to chase eq/balance to be most effective.

How does what I said encourage anyone to wait for eq/bal to try to attack? If you're spamming the macro it goes through as soon as you get bal/eq back.

The point is that you should send the command before you gain eq/balance. You said the macro contains a balance/eq check, implying that the command isn't actually sent if you're off balance/eq.

I see what you mean.

Maybe I only used to have the enemy rebounding check. Been awhile.

Iocun

Spamming the dstab is fine, but I advise against spamming illusions along with it. This easily leads to accidentally illusioning while you have equilibrium but not yet balance, or have balance and are hindered by something, throwing you off eq and thus prolonging the time until you can dstab again.

Spamming the dstab and waiting with illusioning until you have balance back for sure can be a good compromise (I do that myself). It just has the downside that there sometimes will be a gap between dstab and illusion then, which is bad for some kinds of illusions that need to come in before your opponent has time to react to the dstab, especially if your opponent has one of those insanely fast pings.

That's why waiting for balance for both dstab and illusion is justifiable as well, as long as you have a good ping.

Vaehl

Iocun said:

I must be the only serpent in existence who doesn't ever manage to kill without a lock Everyone always raves about sticking scytherus, but I can't pull it off against anyone even slightly good defensively.

Venoms is mostly good for a few things: transsecretion, so you don't have to bother with buying vials, and scytherus for killing (despite what I said above, it is extremely potent both after a lock, as well as a part of obtaining a lock, as well as in group situations). Loki can sometimes be useful, but it's really not needed at all. Notechis isn't very useful. Nechamandra is way too slow for any effective use (might get a bit better with the nechamandra classlead put into effect, but still won't be amazing).

Biting normal venoms is also extremely useful against people who ignore bites completely, which is surprisingly many. Against the others, it would be potentially very useful, but is too slow currently (it used to be great for Rajas pre-traits).

Last but definitely not least there's straight camus, which is a great thing to have when you go to melee in group fights.

All in all though, venoms is not a crucial skill for serpents. Hypnosis tends to be more important, although trans venoms is a huge convenience factor.

As for biting on shield: works well against Omni, less against Svo. Svo tends to be a lot better about not getting sileris stripped for good.

Lol'd at the thought of a serpent actually meleeing.

Iocun

If I want to evade out and snipe, I have to press two keys. If I bite camus, only one.