Two-hander Discussion

Antonius

That's absolutely dire. I'm getting more raw damage with level three scimitar doubleslash (618) with about half the balance time.

Addama

Yeah two hander damage is lowwwwwwww.

One Slash/Bash does (or did yesterday) as much damage as a rapier DSL combo used to do, but with more than double the balance cost.

Addama

Are skull fractures supposed to affect health apply balance?  Because they don't right now.

Aelios

Can confirm Arador's findings. 

Looks like Dragon is going to have to wait!

Aodfionn

Warhammer not viable for PK, then, or is that more of "it's just going to be harder" thing?

Aelios

Daslin said:

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

Quad-DSB.

Prep arms to 8, (presuming decay / cure, one more hew doesn't hurt) - Legs to 7 or 8. Devastate arms. On 2nd resto apply, devastate legs.

battlefury upset
impale
disembowel


impale
disembowel


impale
disembowel


impale
disembowel

Arador

You lose the venom, which is kind of a big deal. On the other hand you can break a limb every 4-5 hits with the hammer where bastard is much much slower for that. I think you could make it work, but you will have to swop back for the disembowel, which is kind of sad. 

Addama

Aodfionn said:

Warhammer not viable for PK, then, or is that more of "it's just going to be harder" thing?

It's a trade off between prepping limbs in half the time (and with slightly lower balance) and stacking Haemophilia on Lethargy to put bleed pressure and prevent tendon/wrist curing.

Arador

Also, does the nausea bypass work on 2h? Have not checked but if it does  that would be another reason to go bastard instead. 

Aelios

Arador said:

Also, does the nausea bypass work on 2h? Have not checked but if it does  that would be another reason to go bastard instead. 

No, it doesn't. 

I've tested it in order to get around a static torso parry.

No Bueno.

Antonius

Addama said:

Aodfionn said:

Warhammer not viable for PK, then, or is that more of "it's just going to be harder" thing?

It's a trade off between prepping limbs in half the time (and with slightly lower balance) and stacking Haemophilia on Lethargy to put bleed pressure and prevent tendon/wrist curing.

Knight can't give Haemophilia as Notechis isn't envenomable.

Warhammer is also faster than bastard sword (3.7 seconds vs 4 seconds, when I tested), so you'd be able to stack fractures slightly faster. That's probably not a concern currently, but may be once people actually figure out what they're doing defensively.

Aelios

The biggest dangers and problems I see is the simple fact, as @‌Antonius stated before, your balance loss is a massive game changer for surviving any kill prep.

This is an example of what I'm talking about. Notice he's dual cutting, but only one limb break.

Also, a separate but equally crippling factor is classes with evade.

With Knight now not able to chase at all unless you have Dual Cutting, it makes killing anyone with the skill damn near impossible. 

Take this as a rather lengthy (but multiple instance) example of exactly this problem. 

If your target evades, or hell - simply walks away - you can't chase. They're free to heal up fractures and return to slowly chop you down. 

What'd be nice is if 2+ tendons slowed movement and prohibited evade, identical to Hamstring attacks.

Just saying. @Makarios‌  @Tecton‌

Antonius

Could look at tendons preventing engage, possibly. Not sure Hamstring + Piety/Gravehands needs to be a thing that exists from a single person.

Kuy

You can chase.

You just can't lunge.

Aelios

Kuy said:

You can chase.

You just can't lunge.

How? Moving rooms and hewing for another 4 second balance?

That stops people from walking how? 

With a 4 second balance per attack, the only thing you're chasing is your own balance. It's a bit of a goofy mechanic that doesn't seem thought through entirely.

Considering it's not the same as a limb prep class, all of your attacks are momentum based. That's fine, cool in fact - but the problem is that this momentum requires sustained and constant combat. If your opponent leaves, you're stuck off balance often enough with no real effective hinder aside from devastating legs, but without 6+ tendons, you can't really disembowel (that I've discovered so far).

If you're fighting a Two-Hander, just enter, hit 3-4 times, leave and cure up all tendons. 

It's like chopping a tree. Eventually it will fall.

Kuy

Just saying. You can chase.  It may not be as effective as lunge, but you still can.

Aelios

Not to mention the second an Infernal figures out you can Vivisect someone off of a single limb break if you chase Hew balance... or a Monk hits you and breaks both your arms and all you can do is just watch them sweepkick + break your legs in the next combo, and there isn't a thing you can do about it.  

The possibilities of getting facerolled by every limbprep class are massive, and I'm really regretting buying this L3 Bastard Sword.

Antonius put it best :
               "Stylistically it's very cool, but that huge balance is a major downside against a lot of classes."

Krux

So, my "Brief" (okay, its a bit longer than I originally thought) summary on my experience with Two-hander so far.

The good.
1.) Level 3 Breaks are there if you can get enough momentum going to stack fractures. This will be easiest against Prep Classes since they have to set you up for the break chain.

2.) You can effectively hinder almost anyone provided they stand utterly still and don't make much noise.

3.) You can use rebounding to help you out because your balance is soooo long that shit will come up after almost every attack.

That's really it for the good...

The bad...

1.) YOU ARE FUCKING SLOW. Like OMG look that snail just passed me! This means that whatever one thing you're doing, your opponent is doing 2-3 things to you in the same time frame.
 
2.) You are so easy to shut down, a caveman could do it. Rebounding, Paralysis Spam any balance faster than 2.5 seconds. You're done. By the third Paralysis/XXX Venom, you'll have used tree and have no way to do anything but spam your attack button and hope your attack goes through. Continuation you say? I'll get to that in a moment!

3.) Continuation is utterly useless. So people tell me that "it's used to escape locks." It's used so you can continue attacking. No. Just no. First, if they starting hitting you with paralysis from the start, you'll already be having enough trouble stacking fractures that 15 seconds of no rage balance will make it impossible. Two, in order to use it to escape a lock off balance like I assume it was intended means that first, you'll have to Miraculously Have Rage balance when they hit you with it... which if you just attacked and are off balance, is not likely.  Second, anyone who knows about fitness will be hitting you with weariness before going to finish the lock... what stops Continuation you ask? Oh, right Weariness..

4.) Another reason why being slow sucks. OMG THIS NOOB TWO-Hander ACTUALLY STACKED SOME FRACTURES. I'll just fly away. Evade. Ride Home. Blackwind. Tumble. So leg fractures work like pinshot so they cant walk out of the room and that's all well and good but unlike serpents we can't keep afflicting every 2 seconds with paralysys. Basically you're going to need to Stack Fractures on head to get anywhere, this is around rebounding so Hit/Hit/Carve or Shatter / 7 Seconds for Hit/Hit - 1.9-1.7 for Carve/Shatter respectively. That's 9 seconds for 3 fractures if you're using precision. And they applied health to head to cure two fractures. So it's really 9 seconds for one fracture. Then you finally get to like 4 fractures on head/6 on legs maybe 40 seconds into the fight and they can just fly away/leave and then reset all their fractures?


But other than that, I like it and will probably stick with it even if it sucks.

Aelios

Krux said:

The bad...

1.) YOU ARE FUCKING SLOW. 
 
2.) You are so easy to shut down, a caveman could do it. 

3.) Continuation 

4.) Another reason why being slow sucks. OMG THIS NOOB TWO-Hander ACTUALLY STACKED SOME FRACTURES. I'll just fly away. Evade. Ride Home. Blackwind. Tumble. So leg fractures work like pinshot so they cant walk out of the room and that's all well and good but unlike serpents we can't keep afflicting every 2 seconds with paralysys. Basically you're going to need to Stack Fractures on head to get anywhere, this is around rebounding so Hit/Hit/Carve or Shatter / 7 Seconds for Hit/Hit - 1.9-1.7 for Carve/Shatter respectively. That's 9 seconds for 3 fractures if you're using precision. And they applied health to head to cure two fractures. So it's really 9 seconds for one fracture. Then you finally get to like 4 fractures on head/6 on legs maybe 40 seconds into the fight and they can just fly away/leave and then reset all their fractures?

The biggest part of this is that you don't even need to fly / evade / ride home. You just move two rooms. The knight is standing there off balance, and you're free to put up an icewall or whatever as they attempt to squint to figure out where you are. 

Sure, you'll eat engage damage- but honestly there's no reason to stand and fight a 2-Hander toe to toe. 

If your opponent refuses to leave the room, as time goes on the fight is more and more in your favor.

If they leave at all, you're hosed and have to start over from the ground up. Alchemist prepping humors at least has a homunculus, or as you've said - stabbing for curare every 1.8 seconds.

I came across this exact problem fighting @Atalkez in the log mentioned above. I'd hit and get maybe 3-4 fractures, and he'd evade and just cure out and dodge me until he was good to go. At 4 seconds a strike, I'm not exactly outstandingly threatening if I get one attack off.

Addama

I don't use Continuation just because the balance is so ridiculous.  It could break a lock, but aside from that it shouldn't be used in lieu of herb balance/focusing/tree.

Makarios

We've adjusted two handed dps up a fair bit. Might still be a bit low, but we'll see.

Arador

It really is too slow. Classes come in three flavours. Prep based, Momentum based and a Hybrid of the two.

Preppers and hybrids are just going to prep, leave, prep leave and then use your horrible balance time against you to do very bad things.

Momentum affliction classes need to stay in the room with you or they lose their momentum as well. This SOUNDS fine until you realise that affliction classes do not need 40-60 seconds straight to become dangerous and get close to locking. You need that long to build up your momentum and start worrying them. They can leave, start over and will be back and close to locking you while you are still very slowly building up towards anything meaningful.

This really is old Alchemist all over again.

Then the matter of fracture tracking....it is just not possible to have any idea what you have stuck to a person. You can not afford to perceive, you need that focus precision and every passive and active cure apart from apply health means you have no freaking idea what has been cured.

Also simply parrying head is probably the simplest strategy to avoid dying. Sure they can wail on your other limbs but your curing is not slowed down and there is nothing meaningful the Knight can do to get past your parry. Sure you can burn all your stacks to put em down and then wail on their head but with elixir curing two fracs, dry restore curing two, tree, passives....you will build fractures very VERY slowly.

Aelios

I agree 100% with that, Arador. It really is old Alchemist.

Addama

Arador said:

Then the matter of fracture tracking....it is just not possible to have any idea what you have stuck to a person. You can not afford to perceive, you need that focus precision and every passive and active cure apart from apply health means you have no freaking idea what has been cured.

Also simply parrying head is probably the simplest strategy to avoid dying. Sure they can wail on your other limbs but your curing is not slowed down and there is nothing meaningful the Knight can do to get past your parry. Sure you can burn all your stacks to put em down and then wail on their head but with elixir curing two fracs, dry restore curing two, tree, passives....you will build fractures very VERY slowly.

First off, I do with my fracture tracker the same thing I did with my Nairat tracker: If the enemy leaves, I clear my counters.  That's it, start over again.  It's not super-necessary that I know exactly how many fractures somebody has, just that they have a certain amount more than what they started with.  If I clear my counters when the enemy leaves and I start again later, my counter might say four, they might have six, oh well, that's more than I need.

Secondly, skull fractures don't slow apply balance.  They do slow sip balance, where rib fractures reduce sip amount.  If somebody's parrying head, I'll prep torso.  If they're parrying torso, I'll prep head.  The point is to reduce sip amount/speed so that I have a better chance of a double disembowel killing them.  A torso break is nice, but not mandatory.

E: Having said all that, there's nothing keeping somebody from running away and curing my leg fractures.  Paladins have Piety, Infernals have Gravehands, I have nothing.

E2: Also, applying health cures one fracture, not two.

Arador

Ok, yesterday I tested and it was one fracture per apply, today it was two. At one point they were decaying, now they are not. Is this a bug, or is it being changed the whole time? 

As for tracking, it is important. In your example it does not matter but if they have less than you think it certainly does matter. 

Also, head fractures will end up slowing their curing anyway. People have to sip and when they do it will be slower. 

Addama

Arador said:

As for tracking, it is important. In your example it does not matter but if they have less than you think it certainly does matter. 

Correct, but if you're clearing your counters when they (or you) leave the room, then your tracker will reliably tell you that they have at least some amount of fractures.

Arador

No it won't. If they use restore or tree in the room you don't know what got cured. And if they have something like demon syphon it is even worse since you don't see the tick. Everytime they do something like that you will need to perceive. 

I understand what you mean, you are going worst case. But considering how slow you build up fractures that is a very very wasteful strategy. 

Arador

Efficiency of motion is critical here. If you need 4 fracs on legs but you are whacking them up to 6, that is 8-16 seconds you waste when you could have gone for the kill. In that time that could have locked you or completed their own limb prep and started their kill chain. It is like an affliction class hitting you with an affliction you already have just in case. It is wasteful and going to get you killed.

Addama

I get the feeling that there's a lot that can be done with fractures aside from passive sip nerfing and a single ability that uses them.  Dual Blunt can expend their Momentum in a variety of ways, as can S&B with Ferocity.  Right now there's basically a single use for fractures, and it doesn't offer Two-Hander many avenues (either stack fractures toward disembowels or stack fractures toward raw damage).

What if you could smash ribs to proc paralysis/asthma/clumsiness/sensitivity, granting more of them the more rib fractures they had?  How about smashing head to proc epilepsy/stupidity/recklessness/impatience in the same way? 

Arador

You mean like devastate? Could be interesting. Not sure you have the attack speed to really capitalise on any of that but depends on the effects.