The Big Change - Combat

Valaria

Jukilian said:

A crystalline golem raises a single crystalline appendage to point at Kraal. For an instant nothing happens, then as if from nowhere comes a flash of incandescent brilliance. When the light fades, nothing of Kraal remains.
You have slain Kraal.

Resulted in the following deathsight:

- 2015/01/05 14:27:34 - Kraal has been slain in The Stadia Coronae by Master Jukilian, Magus of the 

Night.

Colour me disappointed.  

from look of it, there will be no corpse for kraal to be rezzed (except for a soul rezz)

Tesha

Ninja'd 5 hours ago.

Aegoth

New Magi seems to have an -extremely- high skill barrier. The timing and intricacy on salve pressure, thus far, seems to leave very little room for error and you need to be very creative in order to foil decent priorities. Timeflux does help (and it's not that hard to land with the damage we have), but even the tiniest mistake will have you starting over from scratch with not much to show for your effort. As well, I would't want to fight an affliction heavy class like Serpent or Occultist as Magi right now. Ever. These are just my initial findings, and this may change as I grow more comfortable with it and try smoother tactics. What do the rest of you magi think? @Saeva @Tesha @Hasar @Tharvis etc

Addama

I tested with Tesha a bit.  Protip: Freezing somebody who is burning reduces their burn levels, but you can burn somebody who is frozen without thawing them!

Trey

Aegoth said:

New Magi seems to have an -extremely- high skill barrier. The timing and intricacy on salve pressure, thus far, seems to leave very little room for error and you need to be very creative in order to foil decent priorities. Timeflux does help (and it's not that hard to land with the damage we have), but even the tiniest mistake will have you starting over from scratch with not much to show for your effort. As well, I would't want to fight an affliction heavy class like Serpent or Occultist as Magi right now. Ever. These are just my initial findings, and this may change as I grow more comfortable with it and try smoother tactics. What do the rest of you magi think? @Saeva @Tesha @Hasar @Tharvis etc

You can -bitchslap- people with your GOLEM. What the fuck more do you need?

Aegoth

Addama said:

I tested with Tesha a bit.  Protip: Freezing somebody who is burning reduces their burn levels, but you can burn somebody who is frozen without thawing them!

I actually found that not to be true. It looked to be detrimental to be applying burning while using freezing at the same time. The two canceled each other out. ie. I was using inferno, then tried to freeze them, to no avail

Addama

Aegoth said:

Addama said:

I tested with Tesha a bit.  Protip: Freezing somebody who is burning reduces their burn levels, but you can burn somebody who is frozen without thawing them!

I actually found that not to be true. It looked to be detrimental to be applying burning while using freezing at the same time. The two canceled each other out. ie. I was using inferno, then tried to freeze them, to no avail

You did it in the wrong order: Freezing attacks reduce burn level, but burning attacks don't cure their freeze.

Aegoth

Hmm, I'll try it out and see what happens. Thanks!

Jukilian

Changing priorities can reduce chances of dying to Magi.

And yeah, need to be quick and precise leading up to either kill as if they catch up in curing it's going to likely mean a restart.

My testing has primarily been against people not fighting back and have found both kill methods took the same amount of time. Just been trying to figure out some strategies to use.

I'd be happy to discuss strategy with other Magi if they're interested.

Cooper

Aegoth said:

New Magi seems to have an -extremely- high skill barrier. The timing and intricacy on salve pressure, thus far, seems to leave very little room for error and you need to be very creative in order to foil decent priorities. Timeflux does help (and it's not that hard to land with the damage we have), but even the tiniest mistake will have you starting over from scratch with not much to show for your effort. As well, I would't want to fight an affliction heavy class like Serpent or Occultist as Magi right now. Ever. These are just my initial findings, and this may change as I grow more comfortable with it and try smoother tactics. What do the rest of you magi think? @Saeva @Tesha @Hasar @Tharvis etc

Achaea has slowly been moving towards more intricate offenses. You're required to pay attention to more things, respond differently, and be capable of doing a lot more offensively and defensively. To be 100% effective at (most) current classes you have to be very, very good - or at least know how to mimic what other people do very well.

Priest offense used to be smite @target, smite @target, smite @target, sap, sap sap. Now look at it.

Shaman used to be fashion @target x 50 pwn.

Knight used to be dsl @target x10 and they are dead from the damage.

Monk used to be torso combo 3 times and they are dead.

Magi used to be staffcast @target until dead, etc.

Serpent used to be dstab curare/kalmia until you have hypno set up, then snap and switch to slike/gecko and they get locked.

Some of these are the result of buffs/nerfs/changes/reworks to classes, some are curing, but you have to do a lot more in todays combat scene than you did 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago.

Tesha

Deathsight for new artificing destroy in case anyone was wondering: Ryze has been slain by the might of Judicator Tesha al Ashtad. 

Can we get a cool deathsight for that please? Maybe something like, Utterly annihilated by a sliver of the Primal Flame, Victim has been destroyed by Killer.

@Aegoth The strength of the new Magi style is threatening multiple different types of kills all simultaneously, putting people in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. It will definitely take practice to be able to follow up on all the different options. Very small margin of error because while most classes have attacks with 2-3 effects, Magi's primarily have 1.

I actually don't find timeflux helpful at all, maybe because I'm unartied, so it's harder for me to pressure health significantly enough to get timeflux naturally without holocaust or some other huge warning sign.

Ernam

I can't imagine that getting someone below 70% health as a magi, even unartied, should be any kind of a challenge.

Tesha

If you're going for straight damage against unartied people, it's not. That's why I said, for me, (as a Magi that fights with afflictions and staffstrike) it's difficult to pressure health hard enough to get it naturally without holocaust or some other huge warning sign (like using staffcast 3 times in a row). 

Saeva

To be honest I haven't practiced any of it at all. I'm pretty unmotivated as of now. Maybe I'll put some effort into it later on, but there are a lot of problems with using it on svo as it stands and I'm not a smart enough coder to fix some of what I need on my own. My healing is jacked up, my limb counter is now wrong and I can't remember my aliases yet. It'll just take time. I haven't been extremely interested in the change with the amount of other things keeping me occupied in game as of late. So, while I'm not going to say it's a bad change, it's just a change that I really haven't wrapped my head around.

Makarios

Pulp and destroy will show their deathsights properly now.

Jukilian

I've so far found that Timeflux isn't too necessary for kills. If you can keep up the momentum in going for either Destroy or Pummel kills, you don't need it (from my experience so far). The problem is keeping up the momentum and finding ways to keep it without losing it due to movement, tumbling, or shield.

I'd rather use one less crystal and use more vibes. Or use different crystals.

Tesha said:

Very small margin of error because while most classes have attacks with 2-3 effects, Magi's primarily have 1.

I also don't understand that statement at all.

You call upon Sllshya and unleash a forceful blow towards Hhaos's left leg with your trusty staff.
You direct a crystalline golem to smash the arms of Hhaos.
The crackle of snapping bone can be heard as a crystalline golem viciously twists the left arm of 
Hhaos.

2-3 effects.

Ernam

She said "primarily" and she's right.  Magi don't have a lot of active affliction / status effect power on command, which is something golems are meant to help with, within reason (considering they don't really need much).

And sure, that one example is an exception to the rule, and isn't used in prep or defensive phases, it's basically just for kill strategies, which was what she was saying - that magi don't have abilities with more than one effect at a time that are freely spammable and result in meaningful, lasting stacks of any kind (just temporary salve bursts).  It also isn't a particularly dangerous combination, since (afaik) the golem limb break is level 1 break, which doesn't help at all in actual double leg breaks, since they're going to have to staffcast the other one anyways.  It really just buys another second or two of preventing shield after their opponent stands.

Aelios

What are the chances we can get Knight Weaponmastery specs to each associate with the Class Balance in terms of Queueing abilities? @Kendrick‌ brought up an excellent point this morning in Achaea - and it would be a welcome admission to many of us.

Simply making the balance all 4, or even a check if 2H weapon mastery is enabled, do battlefury, or the others based on need.

Antonius

I bugged the fact that two handed can't use the class balance queue, but with the changes to battlefury balance costs that feels a lot less necessary. Would still be nice though.

Tesha

Makarios said:

Pulp and destroy will show their deathsights properly now.

The mortal shell of Driden was utterly destroyed by the command of Judicator Tesha al Ashtad.

Okay that's awesome thank you.


@Jukilian you can't combo that easily in retardation, which is what I mean - that isn't one attack with multiple effects, that's a combo of a balance attack with an eq attack that doesn't require balance. Compare it to mind batter or dsl. I'm not saying Magi needs attacks with multiple effects, I'm just saying execution has to be on point.

Kendrick

@Antonius Actually, it's created a problem in that regaining battlefury balance causes you to lose your battlefury focus if you've used it - I mean, I love the idea, but I'd rather see the focus become a 'timed duration or until next swing' of like 10 seconds, because what'll happen to me now is I'll use focus balance, get paralyzed before an attack, then attack and go through without the focus active. It's also made attempting to use queueing for the devastate/upset combo difficult. If you already have balance and your alias queues both to balance, you'll run devastate, but not upset, as it waits for you to regain balance before running the command!

Jukilian

Tesha said:

@Jukilian you can't combo that easily in retardation, which is what I mean - that isn't one attack with multiple effects, that's a combo of a balance attack with an eq attack that doesn't require balance. Compare it to mind batter or dsl. I'm not saying Magi needs attacks with multiple effects, I'm just saying execution has to be on point.

Granted. And retardation is dangerous for the Magi against some classes now. I used to rely on it, but I don't think retardation is necessary much at all for 1v1 fights unless you want to hit them with Aeon.

Aegoth

Jukilian said:

Tesha said:

@Jukilian you can't combo that easily in retardation, which is what I mean - that isn't one attack with multiple effects, that's a combo of a balance attack with an eq attack that doesn't require balance. Compare it to mind batter or dsl. I'm not saying Magi needs attacks with multiple effects, I'm just saying execution has to be on point.

Granted. And retardation is dangerous for the Magi against some classes now. I used to rely on it, but I don't think retardation is necessary much at all for 1v1 fights unless you want to hit them with Aeon.

Retardation is pretty much a no-go against any momentum class now. Serpents, Bards and Apostates, for example, would be horrible to use retardation against. I'd even argue that Priests and Occultists would have a better time in ret than any Magi right now

Ernam

Pretty much anyone would have an advantage over a magi if they just dropped dry ret - yet magi are the ones who decide when and where to do so, which allows them (as intended) to use it for dramatically powerful setups.  They are also immune to arrows now.

I mean... torcs.  Need I say more?

Addama

Ernam said:

Pretty much anyone would have an advantage over a magi if they just dropped dry ret - yet magi are the ones who decide when and where to do so, which allows them (as intended) to use it for dramatically powerful setups.  They are also immune to arrows now.

I mean... torcs.  Need I say more?

There was an Ashtan Rampage the other day and Qwuan killed Seragorn just being holed up in a closet with ret dropping holobombs.

It was pretty fucking swag.

Jukilian

Ernam said:

Pretty much anyone would have an advantage over a magi if they just dropped dry ret - yet magi are the ones who decide when and where to do so, which allows them (as intended) to use it for dramatically powerful setups.  They are also immune to arrows now.

I mean... torcs.  Need I say more?

What do you mean by dry ret?

Because Retardation pauses all other vibes instead of eating them now. I would say any ret is dry ret right now.

Unless you mean dry as in no prior prep.

Edit: torcs are also unnecessary for Magi now, unless you don't want to use the crystal in your golem OR torc is faster/better at afflicting.

Aegoth

Impurity balance is the same as torc balance

Jukilian

Then I guess all torc does for Magi now is it saves them one crystal in their golem.

I don't know how much torc costs, but I don't think it's worth saving one crystal. But that's just me. I'd rather buy other things.

Tesha

Torc can be used while hindered, golem can't. Golem can give anorexia and asthma, which are both very important.

Hasar

Torc definitely faster than golem impurity.