Two-hander Discussion

Kenway

@Addama seemed to have a theme going with the new threads so I thought I'd snag the credit for my favorite spec.

Thoughts anyone? I've seen very few people who cure/defend even semi-optimally against this (can't blame 'em it's the... I dunno? "Freshest" spec?) but a lot of the reaction I've gotten is that it's OP.
On the other hand, people who cure well against it take -forever- to gain momentum on and those with high DPS can get burst me down before I can hinder them even a little. (granted I'm not exactly 'pro' at this yet)

Arador

Ok, so I have had a bit more time to play around with it, especially with questions that were nagging me since the test server. Here is what I have found so far.

1. First Glance: It certainly looks OP since it is so new and people do not really understand it yet. It is kind of like old Alchemist in that nothing seems to happen for a while and then all hell breaks lose. The affliction tick speeds if you have fractures on all limbs is quite nasty indeed.

2. Can you stack: If your opponent is even slightly tanky, you can forget about any chance to build fractures on them without FOCUS PRECISION. You hit so slow they get to apply just about every time you do with potash being perfectly capable of holding them alive with the odd sip. If you do not use precision, even a still standing opponent will take ages to really build fracs on. There are some other ways to boost your stacking but I'll get to that in the next point.

3. How to stack: FOCUS PRECISION is a must. Might as well leave it on loop while you try and stack. Other things will boost this for you, like a few fracs on torso to get sensitivity going and reduce healing sip amount and also a few on head to slow elixir balance. Small little boosts but they do add up and are worth it. Envenom your bastardsword with curare to help stick that sensitivity for longer.

4. Curing fracs: People are currently HORRIBLE at doing this, which is understandable. Basically you can either sip health to heal or apply health to your head/arms/legs/torso like a salve to cure a single frac on that limb (legs count as one limb in this regard, same with arms). So you have to balance between not dying from damage and trying to keep those fracs off you. Other things can cure them too. Tree tattoo cures a random one (but can also cure another affliction you have instead, so not reliable), if you restore you can cure them as well. Dry restore balance is considerably shorter than restoring with shriveled limbs so this is a viable catchup method. I do not know if other class healing abilities like shrugging, alleviate etc cure them as well, but I do know that passives like Balzadeen Syphon can cure them. I am going to guess anything that works kinf od like a tree tattoo will do it. A good strategy for catching up is to lean on class healing abilities to keep you from dying and freeing up healing elixirs for limb applications. Hands, Vigour, Kai Heal etc, all are great for this and moss helps as well of course. Heal with them and apply your elixir to stay ahead of the Knight.

5. Tracking fracs: It is simple enough for the most part. One hit is one frac on that limb (unless you have focus precision on in which case the next hit will give 2 fracs), one application of elixir removes one frac from that limb. Keeping track of passives and randoms though will be a severe pain in your backside as it is not possible at all. If someone uses restore, you have no way to see what frac was cured. Same with tree. Passives like Demon syphon is even worse since you do not see it happening like with tree or restore. And of course if the person leaves the room, you might miss an application. To make sure you know what is currently going on with your oponent, you have to PERCEIVE them to get a nice list of the fracs on each limb. This does not sound too bad but it uses your battlefury for that round, meaning no focus precision, no continuation, no upset etc which really dents your momentum.

6. And he's up!: RECOVER FOOTING is a great skill that allows you to stand without balance at any time if you are not hindered. It is really needed because of the nearly 4 second attack balance time or every Monk/Knight/BM would make your life hell each time you swing your blade.

7. Battlefury rawr: Battlefury is a seperate balance that contains all of your support options. You do not gain it like momentum in dual blunt or ferocity in sword & board, it is just a plain, seperate balance. Most things seem to take around 3-6 seconds of battlefury balance, but this is one aspect where I have not tested a lot since I usually just leave it to do FOCUS PRECISION over and over. In here you have other abilities like PERCEIVE to see fracs on your enemy, CONTINUATION that lets you cure paralysis and UPSET which allows you to trip someone with at least a shriveled leg.

8. Battlefury meow: Timing and availability of Battlefury bothers me. Most abilities take a long time on it. Perceive is around 3 seconds, Focus is around 6 seconds, Continuation is around 15 seconds. What this all means is that if you have Focus Precision on when you are trying to stack fractures on someone, you will never have it when you need it. You will at any moment be from 0 to 6 seconds from being able to do something with it like Upset or Continuation, skills that are very time critical. For example if you have a nice few fracs on someone's legs and you want to put em down for the disembowel, you will need to stop using focus precision and get your battlefury back so you can use UPSET to trip them after the DEVESTATE (Devastate burns the entire stack of fractures on arms or legs to break them. 2 frac devastate will shrivel both limbs, 4 frac devastate will break both limbs, 6 frac devastate will mangle both limbs) The problem here is you are stopping precision so you are going to go backwards on stacks, then devastate and upset to trip them so they do not just shield or fly. I am sure it is possible to time your hits and fury in such a manner that you get balance and battlefury back almost at the same time for the devastate/upset, but when you get to where you want to be, waiting an additional 2-6 seconds could mean a frac is cured and your devastate is going to be less powerful than you need it. The simple answer to this is to add a few buffer fracs so even if they cure something while you wait for battlefury or while you devastate, you will still have enough.

9.Continuation at a later date: Continuation uses battlefury to cure paralysis. It has a 15 second battlefury balance time. It sucks, badly. As I understand the point of it is as support to fitness since your normal limb balance is so long. If you just swung, you are around 4 seconds away from being able to fitness. So you can use Continuation instead to cure paralysis if you have it, and then touch tree to escape the lock. This has a few flaws. a) As I said, you will probably be using your battlefury all the time to stack so you could be as much as 6 seconds away from being able to use Continuation. b) This assumes you have tree balance, which since you are so easy to hinder is very unlikely and it also assumes that tree cures something meaningful where you KNOW fitness will. c) If you have paralysis you probably did not just swing you sword so being off balance is more unlikely than being off battlefury balance. Look, I can see that it could help you escape but truthfully the chance is so damn low it is not even worth it. As something to help you maintain your momentum mid fight if you are off herb balance and paralysed......completely useless since you will have no battlefury for the next 15 seconds.

10. Hindering enemies: This is where it it probably the master of the new Knight specs. It has amazing hinder potential. Between lethargy, torn tendons (leg fracs), clumsiness and other support like gravehands it can hold you in ways you do not want to be held. Warhammer breaks limbs quite quickly which will also cause some pain on people that need both arms to attack.

11. Being hindered: The slow speed is a pain of note. Thank Tecton for recover footing. Apart from that easy to hinder since you need BOTH arms working to swing that massive weapon. Ept/Ept will probably make you cry, missing because of dodging, clumsiness etc will make you slit your wrists since you lose so much momentum. They can go through rebounding and shield in one blow which is nice though. Smart parrying will probably the best way to make a Two hander cry in the fetal position. Since it does not help to static parry (maybe torso/head  static parry could be worth it), move it around smartly. Hitting parry is the setback from hell for the Knight's momentum, hitting it twice in a row means 8 seconds of attack time lost and realistically 20 seconds of fight momentum lost.

12. Warhammer: Not worth it in my opinion. Breaks are nice but no venom, lower damage, only the teensiest bit faster attack and no native disembowel option makes it seem like a waste. Why be a hammer wielding warrior if you are going to switch to another weapon each time to kill. Ruins the image for me a bit.

I'll write a post about some suggestions for improvements once I play more with it and can find more people who can actually cure against it. For now it looks to me that once the novelty has worn off it might not look very scary at all. It does have strong points, certainly, so let's see.

Exelethril

Are 2H Runewardens at a disadvantage compared to the other two Knight classes because they can't empower Warhammers and don't have as much room hinderance?

Arador

Also the bashing sucks at the moment. Around 200dps.

Exelethril

Gross, just realized 2H Runewardens can't stop fly spam either without investing 5-ish seconds in pre-sketching.

Krux

So, I tested hunting with Two-hander and its not THAT terrible. Bastard Sword is flipping terrible regardless of focus, like 80 seconds to kill a mhun bodyguard w/ 12 strength. Switched to Warhammer/Focus Speed and its only 8 seconds.

The problem comes when you gotta tank a lot of damage, there's no more hit/hit/hit/hit/run like we could do with rapier... Basically its hit and SPAM SOUTH like a boss. cause that slow ass balance is gonna get you killed. I was basically able to pull of 2 Hits (with 4.3k HP) w/ Speed focus on the first hit on 2 Mhun Knights, Then Have to duck out. Went for three hits next time around and died before regained balance.

Addama

Whatever happens,
We have got
The Raido rune
And they have not.

Cynlael

rekt. SnB is a monster for hunting. Dual Blunt rekt shit when I was screwing around with it on Anarchaea, before @Makarios sniped me and removed the ability to hunt with it

Arador

Dual Blunt is still strong as hell. SnB seems more in line with other classes.

Also another note, Fractures decay as well. I have not had time to test the exact timings but it looks to be somewhere between 5 and 10 seconds and it looks random as to which stack it decays from. As a final bit of information, devastating a limb that has already been broken does not make it go up a level in break. So for example if I break your leg and you apply restoration and I then devastate your legs with 4 fractures on before the 4 seconds pass, when the restoration salve takes effect, one leg will be at shrivel level and the other one broken. Makes using limb breaks to hinder before devastate a bit bad.

Arador

Addama said:

Whatever happens,
We have got
The Raido rune
And they have not.

Doesn't that require balance now? 

Antonius

Arador said:

Also another note, Fractures decay as well. I have not had time to test the exact timings but it looks to be somewhere between 5 and 10 seconds and it looks random as to which stack it decays from.

Is this a very recent change/fix? Fractures weren't decaying last night/earlier today. I spent probably five minutes sat in a rite of healing, and it 1. wasn't curing anything (after a few initial ticks) and 2. the number of stacks stayed exactly the same.

Arador

I'm not sure. I did not notice it before, either. I paused curing to do tests with devastate with Krux and I was losing fractures the whole time. I'm infernal so no passive curing. Also noticed it on my counter where it kept overestimating the amount of fracs and I could not understand where they were going. 

Daslin

I've noticed them decay at a slow rate, as of 2 hours ago.

Addama

Arador said:

Addama said:

Whatever happens,
We have got
The Raido rune
And they have not.

Doesn't that require balance now? 

Requires balance, can't be done on a mono, otherwise it's like "kthx bai"

I'm just trying to find some consolation for Runie Dual Blunt aside from Thurisaz/Hugalaz damage stacking on top of already hilarious Doublewhirl DPS.

Also it appears that Expending either reduces or eliminates limb damage from that blow, so it can throw off my limb counts.  A lot of things in Dual Blunt throw off my limb counts (like added damage from Momentum and Prone).  I'm starting to think that rebuilding my limb counter for Dual Blunt is going to be more trouble than it's worth.

Arador

Could someone check timing more accurately? 

Daslin

I can do when I get back on in a while. Still trying to take care of a few other things atm.

Arador

Seems they stopped decaying again. Strange. 

Krux

So, revisited hunting as Two-Hander and I think there has to be something wrong with the damage calculation.

Test Subject Mhun Archer (x6)
Stats - 12 Str/15 Con No Fury
Balance Regains are a rough estimate because using serverside queueing screws up my systems balance tracking.

Weapons:
Dawnrender - 204/165/136
Warhammer - 182/151/146

Bastard Sword -  (Lv1 Artie Bastard Sword) = 15 Hits with Speed Focus being Available Every Other Hit.
Balance Regain w/ Speed Focus 2.6-2.7 (Depending on Aeon)
Balance Regain w/out Speed Focus 3.4-3.5
Total Time Estimate: 80 Seconds

Warhammer (Forged Warhammer) = 7 Hits with Speed Focus being Available Every Other Hit
Balance Regain w/ Speed Focus 2.5-2.6 (Depending on Aeon)
Balance Regain w/out Speed Focus 3.3-3.5
Total Time Estimate: 38 Seconds

I think this is broken, unless there is some reason I'm unaware of that my Bastard Sword, with 42 more damage should take more than twice the hits... Anyone know for sure?

Addama

Blunt weapons deal 1.5x more limb damage.

Kenway

Applying health actually cures 2 fractures.
Fractures from what I've seen do not decay but tree touches from all the passive affs and venoms can heal some of them instead.

Krux

Addama said:

Blunt weapons deal 1.5x more limb damage.

How does this matter for hunting? I'm not hitting any limbs. I'm using SLAUGHTER <target> and the only thing I'm slaughtering is my desire to hunt...

Shirszae

I found it quickly enough that Slashing with a bastard word does much more damage. Then again, I am half-way to trans in Weaponry. And even then it is drudgery with the slow balance.

Addama

I managed to kill Kellonius (6700 hitpoints) with an L1 Torso, two disembowels and he died on the third impale.

I had 13 Strength.

What the shit.

Kellonius

You didn't disembowel me from full though, so there's that. I also set my sip versus applying health percentage pretty low.

Daslin

2hander has the possibility to triple dsb someone, if they don't cure fractures right. Remember that, all of you. For now, I go pass out because work. Tomorrow, I spend more time working on top sekrit progekt

Kenway

@Tecton @Makarios

So... Rib fractures are currently working -backwards-
1 fracture brings their health sips to 1.6%.
2 brings them to 11
3 to 17

Might explain why tendons stop room hindrance at 8 as well.

Addama

Two hander hunting damage is rather weird - Bastard does about half the damage of Warhammer.

But yes, getting a double disembowel is trivial, getting three is easy if you devastate legs off arm restoration.

Kenway

Fracture cap is now 7

Kenway

Sip balance goes up by one second for every head fracture. Caps at 11s sip balance

0 - 5s
1 - 6s
2 - 7s
3 - 8s
4 - 9s
5 - 10s
6 - 11s
7 - 11s

Makarios

Ribs is fixed, hunting damage has been adjusted.

Arador

It would seem hunting damage has been adjusted strangely for two hander. @Aelios got the following before:

Two Hander
---------------------------------------------------------
Level 3 Bastard Sword

SLAUGHTER - 3.6 seconds - Total damage : 440 - Total DPS : ~122

SLASH - 3.8 seconds - Total damage : 748 - Total DPS : ~196


I am getting:

Two Hander
---------------------------------------------------------
Level 3 Bastard Sword

SLAUGHTER - 3.6 seconds - Total damage : 547 - Total DPS : ~152

SLASH - 3.6 seconds - Total damage : 608 - Total DPS : ~169

My slash seems faster but could be weird latency, so 30 up on slaughter and 30 down on slash. If I use his slash time to calculate it is 160 dps.

I am not sure what his strength is, I am testing with 18 strength.