Venom logic questions. (asthma prio)

Aesi

Okay. so, we know for a lock we need to start with at least kalmia, impatience, gecko, slike, vernalius (damn you fitness/shrug)

against a paralysis priority I can do this all day.

How does one successfully secure a lock vs kalmia prios? I can build up the affs all day with a kelp stack, but it seems the people I fight prio asthma at #1 (some over darkshade, so yay lightwall kills)

but how does one actually lock an asthma prio?

Antonius

Avoid giving asthma until right before you lock. Use curare to stack clumsiness and sensitivity, nausea and addiction, then hit with kalmia/gecko, snap for impatience (and hypochondria later), hit with vernalius/slike to secure the lock. They should only get one kelp eat between the kalmia/gecko and the vernalius/slike, so you're relying on the 2/3 chance that it won't cure asthma.

Aesi

Thanks!

Atalkez

That will work if they prio kalmia > impatience.

If not you need to do snap, vern/aconite, kalmia/slike.

Antonius

That combination doesn't give slickness at any point.

Jovolo

sorry my post was sent like an hour later than it should've been

Antonius

Atalkez said:

That will work if they prio kalmia > impatience.

If not you need to do snap, vern/aconite, kalmia/slike.

This also depends on when the impatience gets delivered in relation to their herb balance; if they eat kelp to (attempt to) cure asthma before impatience hits, priorities don't matter at that point.

Jovolo

I'm bored so I'll just spit ball generic strategies for locking different priorities. 

So assuming you flay with curare when their rebound/shield comes up, you can execute these pretty easily. 

Paralysis prio: 
Curare/Xentio (bloodroot),
Curare/Xentio (bloodroot) [clumsiness],
Kalmia/Gecko (kelp) [asthma/slickness] : EXPERT DIAGNOSER CHECK - Snap impatience,
Curare/Slike [asthma/slickness/paralysis/anorexia/impatience]

The above strategy has a 50% chance to work on the kalmia/gecko when they eat kelp due to clumsiness/asthma kelp stack. If you manage to blow their tree before this, you can swap curare/slike for vernalius/slike too. You can use expert diagnoser to see if they cure asthma on the kelp eat, or just see if they smoke after eating kelp trying to cure slickness. 

Asthma prio: 
Curare/Xentio (bloodroot),
Curare/Xentio (bloodroot) [clumsiness],
Kalmia/Curare (kelp) [asthma/paralysis] - Snap impatience,
Gecko/Slike [asthma/paralysis/anorexia/slickness/impatience]

Against impatience priorities it doesn't matter too much if you make sure impatience hits after the kelp eat on both. If it's impatience>asthma>para, then just go with the asthma prio locks because of asthma>para and vice versa. 

If you're against fitness users, you can try and blow fitness first by hypnotising with impatience and hypochondria and doing a ginseng stack, which is the way I used to do it. If they don't cure the ginseng stack, you can camus relapse them with scytherus. If they try and cure the relapsing/darkshade stack, then go for a lock. They will use tree on trying to cure the stack, and you can just adopt one of the above strategies but swap curare for vernalius. 

Atalkez

Antonius said:

That combination doesn't give slickness at any point.

@Jovolo hit it on the head. I always assume someone is dstabbing curare/gecko to give a 50/50 chance to cure slickness.

You're right about the herb timing, though if you're ahead of herb balance and getting 1 stuck for every herb balance, they're going to get 1 eat between your last dstab and your snap/dstab. Obviously against non-fitness, non-active classes it's trivial. Anyone who has an active, you will have to go RNG heavy (curare/gecko, clumsiness/kalmia, impatience/stupidity).

Kiet

Now every serpent that reads forums is going to do the exact same thing with no deviation for the next few years as is the usual serpent pattern.

Antonius

That's true of most classes, though. The more worrying thing is that it will continue to work on most people for that long.

Kiet

Antonius said:

That's true of most classes, though. The more worrying thing is that it will continue to work on most people for that long.

Yeah but serpent and the other straight aff classes are more susceptible to it because how much of aff combat is so ordered in execution.

It's also why it's annoying when people just post 'how to lock' so openly and detailed, because it means that people get a boost to their combat power through no effort while at the same time making things harder for the people who figured out these things on their own or at least figured it out in game by making connections (because more people will be exposed -> more people will adapt).  I much prefer to tell people how to think about combat rather than give them a roadmap but I know there's nothing I can do about it and most people don't agree.

Atalkez

I don't agree with the concept of "hiding" knowledge. I have no issues helping someone figure out how to do something. They're never going to succeed without putting in the work to actually see the herb balances and make it work.

Knowing how to do something is not the same as doing it in practice.

Kiet

I had more fun when knowledge was hidden and you had to work it out yourself or make an effort to find it, tbh. Took me ages to figure out what occies even did despite being close to a lot of them.

I also disagree there's much of a barrier between theory and practice, especially these days with automated offenses so easy to acquire. There's no real execution barrier, it's almost entirely knowledge based. This goes double for affliction classes, where the burden of knowledge is much higher usually.

Jovolo

The strategies I posted won't work on anyone that knows how to cure properly. They're very generic. I'm all for people developing their more advanced strategies from a basic foundation like the one I posted. I didn't cite anything about sleep locks and didn't go into detail on fighing against dragon heal and sticking voyria for passive curing. I didn't post any real detail about how to properly take advantage of relapsing or how to take advantage of different tree patterns. There's much more compexity to serpent than whether someone eats bloodroot or kelp first ofc which I'm sure you know. If others don't take that on board, it's their fault.

Kiet

Right, but this is going to work versus a large amount of people as is. But that large amount will now shrink, which creates the annoying tendency of making it harder to keep up with even the random people. Of course that's probably moot since the mark system seems messed up and other than bounties there's not much reason to fight randoms 1v1 anymore.

Aesi

Kiet said:

Right, but this is going to work versus a large amount of people as is. But that large amount will now shrink, which creates the annoying tendency of making it harder to keep up with even the random people. Of course that's probably moot since the mark system seems messed up and other than bounties there's not much reason to fight randoms 1v1 anymore.

The sentiment that there will be less players in the game (that this may or may not work on) because someone is generally interested in how serpents work is frankly ridiculous, at best.

this game is interesting because it is fluid and changing.

I agree, there are some things that should be left for people to find out. And so there are.

as it were, I was reasonably frustrated after putting a ton of work into it on my own, and this has helped me.

so it's okay that it didn't float your boat. It did mine

Kiet

That's not really what I said at all! I said that everytime something is publicly shared, it works against less people.

Aesi

Kiet said:

That's not really what I said at all! I said that everytime something is publicly shared, it works against less people.

That's fine. I'm not looking for a win button. I seek knowledge

Antonius

Kiet said:

Right, but this is going to work versus a large amount of people as is. But that large amount will now shrink, which creates the annoying tendency of making it harder to keep up with even the random people. Of course that's probably moot since the mark system seems messed up and other than bounties there's not much reason to fight randoms 1v1 anymore.

I think you're probably (vastly) overestimating the number of "random" people who have the ability to analyse a strategy and work out how to counter it, have the ability to actually implement that, and - most importantly - will actually bother to do so.

It's not quite like illusions were, where somebody would find an illusion that broke a popular system, everybody would start using it, and then it would be fixed. Svof and Wundersys provide the ability to create your own priority switches, the people in charge of maintaining them have never shown any interest in actually implementing anything but the most basic ones for you.

Kiet

Antonius said:

Kiet said:

Right, but this is going to work versus a large amount of people as is. But that large amount will now shrink, which creates the annoying tendency of making it harder to keep up with even the random people. Of course that's probably moot since the mark system seems messed up and other than bounties there's not much reason to fight randoms 1v1 anymore.

I think you're probably (vastly) overestimating the number of "random" people who have the ability to analyse a strategy and work out how to counter it, have the ability to actually implement that, and - most importantly - will actually bother to do so.

It's not quite like illusions were, where somebody would find an illusion that broke a popular system, everybody would start using it, and then it would be fixed. Svof and Wundersys provide the ability to create your own priority switches, the people in charge of maintaining them have never shown any interest in actually implementing anything but the most basic ones for you.

You're probably right that I'm just conflating it with the old illusion -> patch cycle, yeah.

Cooper

What Jovolo just outlined there is pretty much basic information every serpent needs to know to begin fighting. 5 years ago it would have been considered 'insider' info that only the top serpents did/knew, but now it is standard. None of those locks will work on top tier people, or anyone with any sort of passive curing or a shield/tree tattoo, or a lot of other things.

Kiet

Cooper said:

What Jovolo just outlined there is pretty much basic information every serpent needs to know to begin fighting. 5 years ago it would have been considered 'insider' info that only the top serpents did/knew, but now it is standard. None of those locks will work on top tier people, or anyone with any sort of passive curing or a shield/tree tattoo, or a lot of other things.

That's fair, though at one point top tier serpents were the only ones that even knew how to do anything with the class. The higher 'basic' moves, the higher being top tier moves too, but that's inevitable. You're right that I'm stuck in the past, too. I still remember when even the basic impatience lock was 'whoa' material.

Cooper

Yep!

Achaea has gotten to the point where I can barely give out combat advice anymore. If it has anything to do with DWC/2-Hand/Sylvan/Alchemist/Occultist/Magi/Priest/Sentinel I'm basically clueless, and the things I was doing 10 years ago that made people go 'Wow, that guy is crazy good' are things low tier people know how to do now. Achaean combat has come a long way over the years, and not many of the oldbies have kept up with current trends/changes/classes/etc.

Szanthax

Cooper said:

Yep!

Achaea has gotten to the point where I can barely give out combat advice anymore. If it has anything to do with DWC/2-Hand/Sylvan/Alchemist/Occultist/Magi/Priest/Sentinel I'm basically clueless, and the things I was doing 10 years ago that made people go 'Wow, that guy is crazy good' are things low tier people know how to do now. Achaean combat has come a long way over the years, and not many of the oldbies have kept up with current trends/changes/classes/etc.

Totes

Amranu

You know you can just jump into spars and ask questions when people do things you don't understand right.

Eld

Amranu said:

You know you can just jump into spars and ask questions when people do things you don't understand right.

The question isn't "can I?", it's "is it worth my time to?". Saying that not many oldbies have kept up with current trends is not the same as saying that not many could have if they were willing and able to put in the time to do so.

Jarrel

Expert diagnose check or whatever is pretty useless if you look carefully at the timing. You have to see what you want to kill someone with, going for a lock everytime is a bad idea. I used to set off hypochondria, lock, darkshade and camus relapse all at once and very few people would get out and its fun to see what they ultimately die to. You can have preset combinations etc but it doesn't really work out that way in real life. 

Stack kelp afflicts, time your snap so the impatience comes with your next stab. So someone has sensitivity, clumsiness, hit curare/kalmia, snap, gecko/slike. Odds are you get a lock. 

Jarrel

Keeping up with combat doesn't matter if you understand the concept of what you want to do and how it works. Do concept learning and not rote learning and you'll be fine.

Kiet

Jarrel said:

Keeping up with combat doesn't matter if you understand the concept of what you want to do and how it works. Do concept learning and not rote learning and you'll be fine.

My prob is more learning the 100 new abilities when I'm lazy

Jarrel

hey I just logged in and got 2 kills after like a year of not playing….