Serpent - AKA the class that hates you.

Rajan

Technically two: flay, bite camus.

Iocun

My camus macro flays just fine on its own.

Talonia

Couldn't you write macros to evade in a direction then snipe back into the room you just came from?

Iocun

I could, but I don't.

Tvistor

Camus infinitely more satisfying than snipe because melee is manly.

Xith

I find macro-smashing akin to button mashing in old-school fighting games. No finesse.

Wilhelmina

How are illusions best used? And, which type of things should I illusion?

Tvistor

I sent a message because that question is really, really vague.

Jarrel

Bites - 3 letter beginning - scy/cur/aco/sli/gec

Dstabs - 3 letter beginning with D, and first letter of venoms - dkc/dac/dcp/dal 

Hypno - 4 letter beginning - impa/disr/conf/hype/hypo

Change auto illusion - 3 letter denoting illusion ending with i - scyi/curi/acoi

manual illusion - 3 letter beginning with i - icu/iaa

was my set up. Serpent is momentum based but has the ability to burst afflict unlike apostate, only difference really. Illusions are support. Timing on snap/hypnosis coming up is crucial, learn how to stack, what can replace certain afflicts etc. 

One day it will just click, thats how it worked for me.

Jarrel

Also, aliases are the way to go for maximum fluidity, don't bother with macros.

Mizik

Jarrel said:

One day it will just click, thats how it worked for me.

I just had this epiphany yesterday, advising Trasiva.

"Eating kelp first, scyth stack."

*eats ginseng first*

"Oh god, illusion scyth."

Locked. I never thought about the cause and effect before.

Vaehl

Wilhelmina said:

How are illusions best used? And, which type of things should I illusion?

Yeah, this is pretty vague. Illusions have lost a bit of usage due to anti-illusion in systems, so now I'd just use it to change target's priorities, eat up a focus balance, or force an eat to get ahead of herb balance.

A couple years ago, when people were on Vadi-M, I'd abuse illusions that either crashed, slowed, or temporarily shut down the system to lock people as serp, but lots of people found it lame (even though it would be pretty easy to manual before quickly fixing it) and most of these tricks got patched after SVO. Now I'm the exact opposite, I prefer illusions that almost always work like a vomiting illusion or claustrophobia illusion because they have fewer methods of AI.

Jarrel

Mizik said:

Jarrel said:

One day it will just click, thats how it worked for me.

I just had this epiphany yesterday, advising Trasiva.

"Eating kelp first, scyth stack."

*eats ginseng first*

"Oh god, illusion scyth."

Locked. I never thought about the cause and effect before.

If illusions scyth works on high prio, imagine what dstab darkshade/euphorbia + illusion scyth would do?

Vaehl

Jarrel said:

Mizik said:

Jarrel said:

One day it will just click, thats how it worked for me.

I just had this epiphany yesterday, advising Trasiva.

"Eating kelp first, scyth stack."

*eats ginseng first*

"Oh god, illusion scyth."

Locked. I never thought about the cause and effect before.

If illusions scyth works on high prio, imagine what dstab darkshade/euphorbia + illusion scyth would do?

Would do something less efficient than curare/kalmia + illusion scyth.

Sohl

Not exactly Vaehl. darkshade/euphorbia + scyth illusion means they'll be prioritizing three ginseng eats in a row.

darkshade/euphorbia + scyth illusion

they eat ginseng x 2

you get balance back before the third eat, dstab kalmia/curare, snap impatience

wait for third ginseng eat

immediately illusion scyth again

they eat ginseng again, impatience hits

dstab slike/gecko

gg

Edit: ^ I think, never actually been trans serpent

Vaehl

No, I think they meant paralysis > scytherus > asthma, from what Mizik said about eating scytherus before kelp.

Sohl

Jarrel's point was different from Mizik's, though. Jarjar was pointing out how far behind you can put an opponent's herb curing if they prioritize scyth, because of the number of ginseng affs. 

If the opponent prioritizes paralysis above scyth, of course, you'll need to do a different lock to prevent tree.

Vaehl

O, in that case illusion scytherus/vomiting/darkshade/clumsy/whatever, curare/kalmia on eat with a scytherus illusion, snap and yeah what you said. Same combo, but faster. Yay.

Iocun

Few people actually prioritize scytherus that highly until they actually start relapsing. There's no real reason to do so.

But yeah, sticking asthma if they prioritize paralysis over it isn't an issue anyways. The important part is stopping fitness/tree (and not getting hindered/shielded).

Vadimuses

And now some tips from the other side

• turn on anti-illusion (yeah pretty basic, can't believe the amount of people that don't)
• keep your system updated (because illusions get patched all the time)
• go through fights and add triggers to ignore illusions (pretty easy to as well for basic stuff)

That'll do for now it's a pretty obvious and basic list, but if everyone did it, they'd be so much better off.

Iocun

Also: learn how to change things in your system on the fly. Watch how your opponent is attacking, and be able to adapt your curing to it. There are too many people who never change their priorities, even if a low paralysis prio keeps them constantly hindered, or a too high one too easily locked, or fitness upkeep perma-unbalanced, or ignoring single-venom dstabs/bites very easily stuck with affs (I love when people do that and never change it :P), and so on. A good system is invaluable, but never just trust it blindly.

Vadimuses

The system tools are there for you to use, for certain get to know the common priority switches (and make your own, it's very easy to) and yes, work the knobs, don't do silly things and be completely oblivious what the opponent is doing to you.

Jarrel

As long as someone doesnt shield every 2 dstabs, and even then in most cases you have a arguably good chance of killing most people. Don't get stuck on any one tactic, with most people within a few dstab and illusions you should have a pretty good idea of what will work and what won't.

Tvistor

If someone is dead set on turtling whenever they're within two doublestabs of a lock though, things get really hard. Being able to relapse kill is nice though.

Iocun

People always shield/hinder/run when I try a relapse kill. Post-trait tankiness and poison-resistance from venomous blood and antidotes means that it generally takes a while for someone to die from relapses, even if you add in sensitivity, leaving them plenty of time to shield and heal up.

Main problem is that serpents don't tend to do damage during their "regular" attacks, so if you start taking any significant damage at all versus a serpent, it works as good a warning sign that you should shield.

Jarrel

I've never had a problem bursting people down, hypnosis has ginseng afflicts to make it even harder to get scytherus, prefarar, silver fangs, thoths dstab speed and lupine snipe can burst people very, very fast, especially if you can abuse their priorities to get them to cure something else. My personal favorite is to start a relapse stack with ginseng stack and then go for a very quick lock while they cure ginseng but most of the time it's really easy to achieve the same effect with easier tactics.

Iocun

Thoth's and lupine become much less relevant if they start shielding repeatedly as soon as they start relapsing though. The hypno ginseng affs are useful, but the delay between hypno affs tends to be rather long in average, so it takes a while for both of them to get in, plus hypno affs further invite shielding.

But probably I just haven't tried hard enough.

Jarrel

Don't get me wrong, it's all about target selection based on their curing, if I get them to the stage where relapsing starts, they're nearly always dead unless they numb or get very lucky with curing, even then it's a toss up. There's people I won't even bother trying to relapse because of how they cure. I always have impatience coming up soon after when I expect relapsing to start so if they try to go for the ginseng stack of usually 3 I have another avenue of offense to continue with, even if they shield I'll be expecting it and prepared to flay and counter either with a lock or bites of darkshade/notechis/euphorbia, I also have to point out that when I was last serp bite was broken and actually slower than herb balance which was fairly retarded and made me stop relying on scytherus as much so it might not necessarily have been as effective as I remember, not sure if it still is broken.

Iocun

It's still slower than herb balance.

Mizik

you guys work entirely way too hard for kills