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Comments
Fully artefact'd, Serpent is top 2 best bashing class. The issue arises in how much the investment is to achieve the "high-level" bashing capabilities of the class.
In comparison, Bard has a much less significant investment-requirement to reach it's fullest potential without sacrificing to do so.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Unartefacted, serpent is pretty weak in terms of single combat due to the fact that those who don't have artifacts to play around with are affected the most by the do you want to kill or do you want to survive ultimatum forced on the stat pack selections.
In groups I think that most classes can be really powerful and have a role to play regardless of what the person has to bring to the table. We could say serpent has ranged superiority, but in honesty it's just a bit of a better version of something every class can just buy as an artifact. Even affliction speed isn't too outstanding compared to other classes and still has to deal with rebounding.
edit: Serpent with artifacts is an amazingly powerful class in both group and solo combat. It's just a shame you can't choke people to death with that 1600 credit Thoth's Fang instead of a lash or whip, so the class requires sooo much to shine on all fronts.
I had: level 2 bracelets, level 2 belt, and level 2 sip ring.
15 base dexterity from specialization (rajamala)
Trait (+1 constitution)
Level 3 lash
Level 2 Pendant
Laytronite (+2 dexterity)
Pixie sip (+1 dexterity)
Pixie boots (+1 dexterity)
Jera, Berkana, Algiz runes from Kyrra
Which gave me a grand total of: 15 constitution, 19 dexterity, with a level 3 lash and level 2 pendant.
I think I ended up just shy of 6000 health after runes. Wasn't enough to tank everything, but I probably couldn't find a better set up for that last level.
Bard gets an increase to hunting and PK with an SP, Alchie gets a boost to both with a Talisman.
Serpent has no direct correlation to everything that isn't also tied to a negative (taking more Dex, sacrificing Con).
I don't think it's a stretch to say that Serpent requires more arties to be successful than Bard/Alchie, since Serpent inherently requires you to put yourself behind health-wise to succeed offensively, and that issue is only expanded when you can't use arties to augment.
Alchemist is top-tier PK class out-of-the-box, no arties even needed. Bard not quite as much, but definitely possible.
Serpent is probably in the bottom third of classes, in terms of effectiveness, unartied in PK especially and if you spec for PK then your hunting suffers, too.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Serpent definitely wants arties to be top tier, I just feel the post is underselling serp and overstating how much it needs arties. It's not the #1 dps class without arties, sure, but it's decent enough bashing. And you need only light arties for PK.
I'll take unartied pretty much anything over Serpent, having played the majority of classes unartied, in terms of being effective and actually securing kills. 2.5s dstab is impossible to lock anything that knows to eat more than bloodroot. This isn't 2005 anymore, boss.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Things have so much health now relative to the average player's crit rate and damage that the value of faster attacks went way down.
You're right that kills per minute is the better metric, but the point is that health pools have gotten so much larger relative to the average player's bashing output that for most players the result of your kills per minute metric will align almost exactly with DPS.
And when you're not frequently one-shotting things, whether faster attacks or slower attacks (with or without crits) are better depends on the relative speed and the distribution of enemy health values. Faster attacks aren't just uniformly better. Consider for instance two situations: in one, the faster attack could have gotten the kill, so the slower attack costs you the difference in balance time between the slow attack and the fast attack; in the other, the slower attack will get you the kill, but but the faster attack will take two, so the faster attack costs the difference in balance time of two fast attacks and the slow attack.
It's only as simple as "faster is better" if you're frequently one-shotting things with the faster attack (in fact, only if you one-shot things more often with the faster attack than you would with the slower attack). Most people don't reliably one-shot things anymore at all.
So when a newbie is asking which classes are good for bashing, worrying about how the speed of their attack will impact their bashing at ridiculously high levels seems sort of silly to me.
Conversely, the misconception that crits mean that faster attacks actually have significantly higher DPS (that "two chances" at crits means twice the crit damage) is one that it's very useful to correct at even low levels. That's the only thing I was really trying to speak to.
Also, yes, unartied serp is pretty bad, I agreed with that. It's a problem of the trait/spec system and how ridiculous HP spread gets. You can't balance damage around some people having 10 con and some people having 16 con before arties, unless you make everything 100% scaling (which it's not). Would rather play another game than unartied serp
I've never seen Mizik under ~4700 health in the past 2 years. We're basically artied the same configuration, with some small differences.
You can't say Alchemist isn't a good comparison to Serpent, then use an Alchemist to prove that 5k health can kill people. Kythra can kill as an Alchemist, sure, but she never proved that she could kill unartied as any class that isn't already maximized offensively before arties are added. I'm not saying she can't, just that she hasn't yet.
Anyway, we're saying the same thing essentially. Unartied Serpent isn't worth even attempting if you don't plan on purchasing arties to augment. Nearly every class is better equipped for hunting and PK at a base level from Serpent.
Edit: The 10,000 comment was anecdotal evidence as that is about where I am as far as arties and I still get damaged out, and I'm still missing stuff, and I can't hunt in lesser that isn't Paladin (out of the four classes I have/had access to atm).
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
You'll almost never be one-shotting anything these days, but that's not really the primary concern for crits. It's how often the big crits will outright kill for you and let you move on to the next mob. In that regard, the situation you mentioned actually happens very rarely, and that's because of crits. Once you drop something down low enough in health to be in killing range, the effect of crit rates comes into play. You're right that occasionally, if you don't kill something with a crit, the slower attack CAN be faster overall than the faster attack. However, more often than not, the opposite happens. Let's say you're two attacks away from killing with the slow attack, and your first attack does not crit, but your second attack does. You'll need two attacks to kill and move on. Now let's say you're four attacks away from killing a mob with a faster attack, and your second attack crits. If that crit is anything stronger than a normal crit, you get a kill on your second attack, which is a faster kill than with the slow attack in the same scenario. My stance is that these scenarios where crits are your last hit happen more often (even with a low crit chance) than scenarios where you don't kill with a crit. Because of that, faster attacks will generally trend toward getting you more kills per minute.
To better outline how that sort of plays out, I wrote a little crit simulation script. I loaded it with some default numbers that I think are close to how bashing currently is for most people, and I used mob health values that assume you take about 20 hits to kill something with a standard-speed attack. I ensured every attack had the same DPS to fully illustrate the effect of only crits, and I ensure the RNG is always seeded the same. That can all be changed in the script, and playing around with those numbers might help you see what I mean when I say that the trend is that faster attacks will yield higher kills per minute. I really hope you use Mudlet so you can run it! Haha.
Here's the script: http://pastebin.com/KyY2n8SF
Just drop it in and run critSim.SimAll() to get the basic data I'm talking about, or take a look at the numbers I used and try them out with different ones. If you feel like anything I'm using is not reasonably representative, let me know!
And for those interested, here's a paste of the output based on the default values I picked (which I accept might not be 100% representative, please correct me if not):
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/1a4c8058
BARDS 4 LYFE!!!
!
Lv 104 11 Con Rajamala.
I'd say your experience far outweighs the 1000 health, but I'm sure you struggled plenty versus damage too!
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
- Lvl 3 lash, lvl 3 dex.
Bard bashing arties for speed:
- Lvl 3 rapier, lvl 3 str, lvl 3 int, lvl 3 collar.
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