Why is this still a thing?

Tael

Wouldn't that mean you'd have to re-prep the leg after the impaleslash to actually go for the kill?

Aerek

Not if the whole ImpSlash/Twist bleeding scale was adjusted. They could re-scale everything so instead of Impale>ImpSlash>leg breaks>Impale>Twist x3-4>Bstar, it was more like leg breaks>Impale>ImpSlash>Twist x2>Bstar. Essentially the same setup but no longer necessary to land the ImpSlash prior. I don't necessarily think that's warranted, but it's possible if the Admin wanted to go that route.

I actually don't like Knees needing a broken leg, though. I don't think it's fair to remove BM's on-demand prone since that's good for other things, (groups, stopping channeled kills, knocking folks down from flight) and so many other classes have it. The only problem with Knees is when it's used on a 1.2 or faster balance, so I'd rather just see Knees just have a minimum balance of 2 seconds or so (1.8 w/ Nimble) that all Two Arts slashes respect. (So Legslash/Knees in Thyr would be 1.8, and Pommel/Neck in Thyr would be 1.2, but Pommel/Knees in Thyr would still be 1.8)

Tael

Would it work to make impaleslash require broken torso? Torso is already associated with bleeding, so it would make some sense, and it would mean that you have to spend some prep to get the impaleslash out.

Atalkez

What if they apply to torso and shield when rebounding comes up, hamstring drops and they re-mount?
Then you have to re-prep head/torso, which can lead to losing the prep of the legs.

Aerek

Heh. Welcome to Knight combat, where we deal with shit like that all day.

Atalkez

>.> fair point

Atalkez

Although you can dismount/prone in the same balance, whereas Blademaster can't. Not to mention if they cure torso versus a knight, that gives you time to disembowel twice. Without Impaleslash, I can twist 6 times and still not get bleeding above 400. 

Different classes, different balance, different problems I guess.

Antonius

When are they applying to torso that allows you to disembowel twice? What spec is that knight?

DWC definitely can't disembowel twice unless for some reason they didn't apply to legs and waited for a really long time to apply to torso.

Atalkez

Antonius said:

When are they applying to torso that allows you to disembowel twice? What spec is that knight?

DWC definitely can't disembowel twice unless for some reason they didn't apply to legs and waited for a really long time to apply to torso.

As far as I know, SnB can. DWC, DWB and 2H can't (though none of them necessarily rely on disembowl anymore, do they? Dwc can lock as was mentioned in the Runewarden instalkill discussion. DwB has it's own instant, and 2h doesn't need torso to kill with their dsb).

Antonius

Sword and shield would have to break each leg separately (after each disembowel) to "chain" disembowels, and that has nothing to do with you applying to torso or not.

Dochitha

I fight knights often, haven't seen any impaling, DSB and impale again for another DSB.
     (EDIT: No I actually got it from @Mizik off a bad tumble. So...it's not about the legs not getting cured.)

S&B- I think the first impale needs at least a leg broken and club to increase the writhe time so DSB can land. If the DSB fails to kill target is usually standing. If target applies to Torso on leg break and then cure the leg, don't think it is enough time for another impale/DSB either, you should be able to writhe off the 2nd impale before DSB lands, or hmmm, just tank it as there is no torso break. S&B does not have double-break too, so if they are gonna break 1 leg, then another and torso and try to chain 2 impale/DSBs, don't think it gives enough time to succeed. Maybe a knight can chime in here.

2H- I think with leg breaks multimated they have time for 2 impales and DSBs? But to prep till there may need them to stack a bit of crib or head fracs to get over health sip threshold, which realistically just kill people out of damage accidentally before they can even impale/DSB. 

DWB- Let them prep your head, torso and both legs, you are dead. The sequence is so far unavoidable, I'd think more deadly than BMs, just that DWB cannot tolerate the slightest error in the sequence (8s window before rebounding hits).

Atalkez

Haven't played with SnB since test, so I could very well be wrong.

Antonius

Being a bit more awake and not on my phone, I decided to actually run the timings for sword and shield. Impale (with nimble) is 3.6 seconds, Disembowel should still be 3 seconds unaffected by balance modifiers.

Assuming a 1.9 second attack speed, sword and shield might be able to squeeze it in, depending on how the opponent cures and how delayed the torso apply is. If they have something like SLC, and get the torso apply in within about 0.3 seconds of the attack that breaks it, and don't apply mending before the second restoration to legs, they'd only take one impale/club. If they apply torso later than about 0.3 seconds OR apply mending to the first leg before the second restoration, they might take two impale/clubs (and therefore two disembowels).

Even if you don't avoid the second disembowel, you'll only be taking unbuffed disembowel damage (which really isn't that great, even with strength artefacts) so it's probably not going to kill you unless you were already low on health at the start of the sequence.

Mizik

2H is the double DSB spec. Not feasibly with torso. 

SNB can easily prep 2 legs for a double DSB.

Caladbolg

Didn't read the whole thread, but I saw plenty of ways to get out of that. the problem isn't pommel/impale it was your lack of doing anything after it.. 

But yes I agree it does suck to have to run/turtle from a bm everytime you get impaleslashed on the other hand that's all a bm really has to kill you.

Should have manual clotted to 0 mana and laughed in his face since unless you had a broken torso it works out to


Under impaleslash clot = 1/30th max mana + orginal clot cost 60 normal 40 with robes.

with clot being 20 bleeding per that means if your max mana is 5400ish (guesstimating) then 240 mana per clot.

He placed a total of about 1k bleeding from the bladetwists and guessing at about 200ish from the impale/slash.

at 240 mana per clot you get 22 clots which equals out to 440 bleeding being clotted. leaving you with 760 bleeding 

Now add in mana sips,moss, and moon tattoo that should give you about 8 more clots for 160 more bleeding to be reduced and moss tattoo should have ticked at least once in that which would have given you 50 less bleeding also leaving you at 550.

Also if you had switched to mana sips before hand you'd gained about 900 extra mana or 4ish clots to also reduce your bleeding level down. even more.


Edit: I saw plenty of ways to get out of that but, this was one of the more sensible ones. the others would cripple the class so not going to mention them.

Exelethril

Dat evade nerf. Evade on a prep class was kinda bullshit anyway. 

Aerek

Yeah, but I'm still crushed it happened before multiclass. I was really looking forward to it.

Exelethril

Aerek said:

Yeah, but I'm still crushed it happened before multiclass. I was really looking forward to it.

I think you would have been even more crushed if it was nerfed after you second-classed blademaster. There's still Lv3 serpent or occie, if you're Ashtani.

Tael

I really, really like this change to evade. You can still bypass totems and even evade out during combat every once in a while.

2 minute cooldown seems maybe a bit long though.

Mizik

Not when compared to limb damage reset. It's a decent solution to slow prep.

Tesha

2 minute cooldown is fine with 20 second uptime, that's only 1 minute 40 seconds without evade. It's enough of a window for most classes, adds a windup to BM evade, and doesn't completely remove BM's ability to escape.

Dortheron

Only thing I really see it hurting is BM scouting during raids and such. They don't have any range attacks or out of room hindering, so now only useful when rushing/being rushed

Tael

Dortheron said:

Only thing I really see it hurting is BM scouting during raids and such. They don't have any range attacks or out of room hindering, so now only useful when rushing/being rushed

Yes, this was my main concern. Allowing passage through totems without evade and allowing some evading is exactly what was needed. I'd honestly be fine with not being able to use evade in combat at all.

2 minutes for 20 seconds of moving through totems seems a little low though. It would be nice if shin meditate were just a thing that lasted until you attacked or got hit, then triggered the cooldown. So you could put it up and use it to scout around, but it would be at the risk of triggering the cooldown. And you could still use it for a single evade every two minutes during combat.

@Tesha: There's no windup on it - you can do shin meditate and evade at the same time. And it's not like BM doesn't have a number of escape abilities other than evade.

Gamden

Tael said:

I really, really like this change to evade. You can still bypass totems and even evade out during combat every once in a while.

2 minute cooldown seems maybe a bit long though.

At the end none of us will be able to do anything, a battle will be decided by a game of chess..

Atalkez

Tesha said:

2 minute cooldown is fine with 20 second uptime, that's only 1 minute 40 seconds without evade. It's enough of a window for most classes, adds a windup to BM evade, and doesn't completely remove BM's ability to escape.

It's only 12 seconds of uptime.

Essentially you can evade 5-7 times with the Meditate up, depending on how hindered you are. 2 minutes of cooldown is fine. Either way, slowprep will be more difficult to do versus room hinder than before, but it's not hampering the class in any significant way in my opinion. 

Still have plenty of ways to get away from you if I really need to get away.

Tael

Atalkez said:
2 minutes of cooldown is fine.

I think people are talking about two different things here. 2 minutes of cooldown is absolutely fine for 1v1 - I don't think anyone is saying otherwise. BM would be fine if you couldn't use evade 1v1 at all.

The issue people are bringing up is that 2 minutes of cooldown on 12 seconds of being able to move through totems/evade is problematic if this was a way to preserve the ability of BM to scout and roam in raids, where they otherwise have literally nothing to do during the pretty considerable periods of a lot of raids where there's no giant melee (and, given the totem thing, it looks like that was part of the intent).

12 seconds of movement (fewer if you have to go through walls) every 2 minutes doesn't allow for much scouting and it definitely doesn't allow for much roaming - what are you going to do, roam to a room, try to fight someone hoping they never move at all so you don't have to follow them into totems, and then stand there and wait for two minutes before you can move back without running through a dozen totems? Or perhaps you want to go into a room and use one of the roomwide attacks - and again now you need to wait two minutes to be able to escape if you somehow do manage to survive the balance time of the ability. Want to evade over an area boundary to prevent mindnet? Hope you can get to your destination very quickly, then you're going to wait two minutes to move again too. Want to evade into a room so you don't trigger alertness? Now you can't move again for two minutes.

Shin meditate really ought to be a way to divorce the raid utility of evade from the 1v1 utility. Trying to balance them both at the same time is probably not going to work.

What would be really nice is if shin meditate had no duration and no cooldown, but just had a significant interruptable windup a la phase or blackwind, so it's easy to stop people from using evade 1v1.

Atalkez

Tael said:

Atalkez said:
2 minutes of cooldown is fine.

I think people are talking about two different things here. 2 minutes of cooldown is absolutely fine for 1v1 - I don't think anyone is saying otherwise. BM would be fine if you couldn't use evade 1v1 at all.

The issue people are bringing up is that 2 minutes of cooldown on 12 seconds of being able to move through totems/evade is problematic if this was a way to preserve the ability of BM to scout and roam in raids, where they otherwise have literally nothing to do during the pretty considerable periods of a lot of raids where there's no giant melee (and, given the totem thing, it looks like that was part of the intent).

12 seconds of movement (fewer if you have to go through walls) every 2 minutes doesn't allow for much scouting and it definitely doesn't allow for much roaming - what are you going to do, roam to a room, try to fight someone hoping they never move at all so you don't have to follow them into totems, and then stand there and wait for two minutes before you can move back without running through a dozen totems? Or perhaps you want to go into a room and use one of the roomwide attacks - and again now you need to wait two minutes to be able to escape if you somehow do manage to survive the balance time of the ability. Want to evade over an area boundary to prevent mindnet? Hope you can get to your destination very quickly, then you're going to wait two minutes to move again too. Want to evade into a room so you don't trigger alertness? Now you can't move again for two minutes.

Shin meditate really ought to be a way to divorce the raid utility of evade from the 1v1 utility. Trying to balance them both at the same time is probably not going to work.

What would be really nice is if shin meditate had no duration and no cooldown, but just had a significant interruptable windup a la phase or blackwind, so it's easy to stop people from using evade 1v1.

The intent is not to "stop" evade being used in 1v1. It's intended to limit how much you can reasonably evade and combat the "slow prep" that BM had to such a higher extent than any other class.

I do agree, it's certainly hampered the scout/mobility in groups. However, it's now on par with every other class in this situation. If you want to attack someone three rooms south of you on a totem...you're going to hit their totem in their room before you attack. BM isn't singular in having to deal with this.

I've always been a proponent of BM having some sort of range ability, and have subbited classleads for it. With this change to Evade, maybe we can actually have a serious discussion of how powerful BM is in melee now and possibly had some sort of LoS added to the kit.

Arador

It does have a Line of Sight ability. You get into an enemy's Line of Sight and they go "Oh fuck, they have a Blademaster!" and go home rather that suffer hamstring or pommel/knees/impaleslash.

Atalkez

Arador said:

It does have a Line of Sight ability. You get into an enemy's Line of Sight and they go "Oh fuck, they have a Blademaster!" and go home rather that suffer hamstring or pommel/knees/impaleslash.

If only.

Klendathu

Let's not forget that BM's are not unique in having no innate ranged ability.