Alchemist combat 2/2016

Peregrino

There's some old threads on this, I thought I'd float some questions about it in the current context. The impression I get from reading the help files is you open with the balance or EQ punishing state, then you educe for damage and temper 4 humors as a combo, maybe do that again if they cure some of it, then you move onto wracking two afflictions at a time. Maybe throw in more educe/temper stuff as you go on. The goal is to either get their health and mana down or truelock them. Assuming my impression is correct, it sounds a lot like playing an apostate except you replace the setup with installing a nightmare and daegger hunt, then you throw two afflictions at a time. So the main difference is in utility skills (apostate has more) and having more health damage (and more artifact requirements) as an alchemist. Also, alchemist bashing sounds like it might be better than apostate bashing. Am I on the right track here?

Kiet

I don't know how much of that is at all current, but the basic modern alchemist is just doing aff/temper combos to try and inundate as a mainstream path.

Alchemist has no real need for artefacts any more than apostate does. I've never seen an alchemist try to damage someone out.

Aegoth

@Proficy @Xinna

Antonius

Alchemist bashing is really good, the only downside is educe iron is equilibrium based (so you'd need quick-witted for maximum efficiency) but the majority of your PvP is balance based (so you'd need nimble for maximum efficiency). If you're not planning to fight (1v1) at all, you'd probably not care too much about not having nimble, but if you're planning to do serious combat you'll need to take the hit in bashing efficiency.

PvP is, as Kiet said, mostly focused around afflicting with wrack (single affliction) or truewrack (dual affliction, but obviously slower) and building up fluid levels of the four humours (phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine and a fourth I can't recall the name of) using temper.

Manipulating humour fluid levels has its own balance, so you can combine temper with wrack/truewrack. The four humours have passive effects that kick in when you have enough fluid levels (I think it's four), though you can also inundate a humour (instead of tempering) for various effects; this will remove all fluid levels of that humour from the target, and the strength of the effect is dependent on the fluid level for that humour when you inundate.

As an example, inundate phlegmatic gives afflictions (in a set order), most of which form part of a truelock. The number of afflictions it gives is dependent on the fluid level - the higher it is, the more afflictions they'll get.

Each of the four humours has a pool of afflictions (generally three or four per humour), which you can specify when wracking/truewracking. There are balance bonuses for (true)wracking with afflictions which correspond to humours that have been tempered at least once on the target (they have a fluid level >= 1 for those humours). Paralysis requires level 2 sanguine to be truewracked, but the others you can use at any time (though, again, you'll recover balance more slowly if you don't have the necessary humours tempered).

As a result, the start of a fight (from the alchemist side) is generally tempering sanguine and wracking paralysis (they'll usually eat bloodroot/magnesium to cure paralysis, meaning they can't eat ginger/mineral equivalent to drop fluid levels). Once you have sufficient sanguine fluid level, you can switch to truewrack combinations including paralysis, making sure that you temper the necessary humour for the other affliction (if not already tempered).

At that point it's just a case of continuing to stack afflictions with truewrack and tempering towards whatever route you want to kill with. If you can get to 8 levels of phlegmatic, you can inundate phlegmatic and truewrack at the same time - meaning you only need to stick one of paralysis, asthma or impatience when you have balance to truelock. You can inundate sanguine to stack massive bleeding, which will either result in them running out of mana and bleeding to death, or will result in them being low enough in both health and mana for aurify. You can stick sensitivity, then inundate choleric/educe iron for a big damage spike. You could probably do something else with the fourth humour too, though I kind of feel like there's a reason I don't remember much about it.

If they switch to eating ginger/mineral equivalent to avoid high fluid level inundates you can just lock with truewracks if they aren't paying attention and change back to curing lock afflictions. Ultimately, alchemist is powerful with a lot of different options for killing and reacting to the way your opponent cures, but (in my opinion) needs some serious changes to temper and truewrack mechanics so that it doesn't force such boring fights (your opponent will either loop shield constantly while dropping fluids or will attempt to run away all the time).

Dochitha

Aegoth said:

@Proficy @Xinna

You missed @Dochitha

Alchie has a few paths for kills, generally:
- Lock: It's very quick if you can optimize for the best. Bear in mind you don't need phleg8 to lock.
- Bleeding: This can kill a lot of people. There are some strategies in it too, not just simply wracking and inundating, and it's a lot to talk about here.
- Health and mana into aurify insta.
- Sensitive choleric inundate with educe iron instakill

Alchie is VERY strong. There are only a few classes that Alchie will struggle against, against the mass population and stock curing, you will be surprised how strong it is.

Kiet

Alchie is made stronger even by the fact most people don't really know how to optimally cure against it, so it's one of those classes that will just destroy the less experienced opposition without too much effort! That's always a plus.

Xinna

There's a way to cure alchie? Since when?


(I don't consider icewalls or "pwn them really fast" curing strategies)

Atalkez

Kiet said:

Alchie is made stronger even by the fact most people don't really know how to optimally cure against it, so it's one of those classes that will just destroy the less experienced opposition without too much effort! That's always a plus.

There is no curing method against alchie. You can't out-cure their setups without leaving the room.

Kiet

That totally counts

Peregrino

Something I'm confused on is it sounds sort of dsl-like; temper, educe iron, wrack or double wrack.  But it also sounded like you could temper four humors at once with one of the skills which sounds pretty good and I don't think anyone has mentioned it yet.

Sena

That means you can have four of a person's humours tempered at the same time, not that you can temper all of them at once. Without those passive skills, you can't temper sanguine if phlegmatic is already tempered, for example.

Peregrino

Ah thank you, that was confusing me.

Dochitha

Peregrino said:

Ah thank you, that was confusing me.

And since you come from another game, don't trust the AB files in Achaea, they are badly updated.