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Comments
I haven't read whatever this compasslash classlead is, and I agree that Compass is fine the way it is, (though Drawslash can be used for the same thing) but I disagree with any statement that remotely implies Blademaster counting is "easy", "reasonable", or that you "just have to know the 'secret'". That's false. I've spent the last 6 months perfecting a BM counter, and I still can't account for certain stances or variances, and miss setups by .1 or .3 hits on a regular basis. (For clarity, that's .1 "weak-side slashes in Sanya")
Sure, a quick break can give you an easy estimate of their breakpoint, and then you can alternate slashes via Airfist, and your mid-tier, knows-little opponent will die. But someone who knows how and when to switch parry, someone who breaks their own leg and fouls your 1.5:1 ratio, someone who can hinder/kill you fast enough that you can't afford to dick around with alternating slashes, or someone who has any means to change their breakpoint throughout the fight (Bards' Aria, Alchemists' Enhancement), means that you need to know -exactly- when they break, within tenths of weak-side hits. Not only does that take an impressive counting suite, right now it means that you really can't switch stances without risking your end-game, which locks out a lot of BM's intended flexibility.
Frankly, BM is OP in the endgame, there's a few setups that you really can't avoid, yet no one plays it. There's a reason for that. I watch a lot of new players pick this class out of the intro, because it's anime samurai and it's awesome. But to this day, -zero- of the players who have come through the Shield as BMs have actually stuck with it, because the amount of knowledge, effort, and precision it takes to achieve basic competency is just way out of line when they can go nearly any other class and start logging kills in a day or two. (On top of the awful hunting)
But it is absolutely not true that basic competency is really hard to achieve or, as the classlead suggests, it's impossible to know how to prep without using someone's counter script. BM can use a test break to know the exact count (not an approximation) with barely more effort than any other limb class:
Alternate slashes until something breaks. If it double breaks, congrats, you know the count. If it single-breaks, compass the unbroken limb to reset it, and the count is 1 compass to each side and 1 less alternating slash than it took to break. And since you know how many slashes you need on each side now, you don't even have to do them alternating - you only have to alternate for your test break.
Sure, that's going to be too slow against some opponents and good parrying will make it frustrating and you might have to use airfist and enhancement will be a problem and it means you can't change stances, but it's absolutely workable as a strategy that provides basic competency. Like you said - it's a strategy that can allow you to compete with mid-tier people. That's exactly what basic competency means, no?
It's not so much more complicated or much less doable than doing a test break as any other limb class. It's not so complicated that no lowbie could be expected to understand it and it's a far cry from impossibility which is what the classleads I was talking about suggested.
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Against anyone else you're gonna need to break torso to stand a chance, which means a quad prep.
Impaleslassh isn't a salve affliction, it's timed (30s).
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
But like @Antonius said, making inundate more predictable to afford people greater defense over alchie seems like a good idea, like limiting if humours > 6 it will reset in a time period, forcing an inundate to happen.
The stances are uninspiring as just stat boosts just like monk stances were (and switching stances alone make the limb counting problem way harder), the infusions aren't really that interesting, pommelstrike looping is really aesthetically awkward (a samurai/ninja that's all about their special blade fighting by...not using the blade? Whacking someone with the pommel over and over?), the kill routes are pretty unidimensional (it feels like reworking infusions to offer different goals might be a possible direction for that?), and even the basic kill route is really thematically strange - brokenstar is awesome, but the fact that the normal way to get into it is to knock someone over, impale them, and twist the blade a bunch of times while they're lying there has always struck me as really weird. It sounds absolutely nothing like what Blademasters do in the game's fiction and I don't think it accords with the fantasy of being an agile samurai/ninja person at all.
You don't have to shield spam 40s. Let them inundate, shield off the inundate. Inundate goes thru shield, but the combo which does the killing, ie truewrack that seals the lock or educe iron that damages etc won't go through shield. That means they wasted their progress and have to restart humour prep. Problem is, it's hard to predict when an alchie is going to inundate, though it's generally obvious which path they are taking, hence giving clue to what prerequisite they need to complete the kill. If you don't give them the pre-req, even if they inundate they are just gonna waste it.
I have wasted so many lock attempts (with humour prepped) just because of a single tree, passive proc, fool etc in between 2.7s truewrack that won't race herb balance without the help of mercury homun.
I have wasted so many sanguine kills, even by holding up bleeding in corruption, people have ways to heal up, crystal, manual clot down in corruption, leaving the room to manage all these.
Not to mention tempering good enough to have them leave the room, fly about, and totally reset the progress. I already chase pretty well, bonus fluid cure in the absense of alchie is very significant. These are still very strong defense against alchie.
And against any classes that can hinder alchie better (ie Fang serps, apostates, bard, shaman), or race it's speed (sylvan, occie), or totally play at their own terms (monk, SNB), or has hangedman, transfix, aerial on demand... Alchie does need to work for the kill, it's not as easy or as potent (think autowin) as people think it is.
I am not saying that because I have an alchie. I just see alchie as it's defendable, it's resettable, it's stoppable, and certain classes are weaker against alchie, and other classes are stronger against alchie, not any different from other aff classes.
I still take issue with your characterization of BM testing, ("possible" ~= "reasonable", and "accurate within 1 hit" really isn't accurate by BM standards) and we differ on what's reasonable for base competency, but I suppose that's neither here nor there if you're focused on just that one classlead.
Edit: I actually like the stances. The balance of tradeoffs make each one suitable for different situations, and it's a little known fact that each stance prolongs its corresponding Fist abilities. You just rarely see them used because of how much they complicate your counting situation. Fix that, and I'd swap stances all the time. But hey, if you wanted to let me switch stance for free after an attack, I'd take that in a heartbeat.
And the test-breaking isn't "accurate within 1 hit" - it's completely, 100% accurate assuming you don't change stances, they don't damage their own limbs, and they don't change their health. It means you have to do a test break and smart opponents will do those things that make it innaccurate, which means it isn't going to work for top-tier fighting, but it doesn't seem that unreasonable to me as a way to achieve basic competency. I don't think it's too much to ask a newbie to learn "alternate slashes until something breaks, if it only breaks one thing, next time do a compass slash to each limb first". That's not exactly rocket science. And it's abundantly easier than getting started with most affliction classes.
I'm not in any way against giving BM Predict. I think that's a great idea. But it's just not true that BM is somehow uniquely horrible for achieving the basic ability to get a double break - there just don't seem to be enough people in the game who know how to explain the pretty simple mechanics of a test break to aspiring BM lowbies. The advice always just goes straight to "you'll need a limb counter to even get started", whereas people generally explain how to fight with test breaks first when helping people start with other limb classes.
Re the stances, I don't think they're awful, I just don't think they're terribly inspiring, especially compared to the new monk stances - which is probably unsurprising since they were clearly based off of the old monk stances. I'm also not sure how the limb damage could be normalised across them without changing them. If they all did the same limb damage, they'd have to be redesigned at least a little bit - thyr would just be faster prep (who cares if it also does less health damage?), mir defense, and why use any others? Without at least some adjustments, normalising the limb damage would just make the useful stances even narrower. Didn't know about the fist stuff though - that's really interesting!
@everyone asking if we can wield shields to bash as blademasters.
Just to comment on this some:
I definitely think there is a place in the game for damage classes. That was actually the intent with two handed/sylvan/dual blunt (to an extent, that one is still a more traditional limb prep class on the surface). I also agree that people do have a bias against damage classes, which is understandable given some of the historical damage nukes we've had. Noone likes being bashing comboed to death, etc.
I do disagree that affliction classes are more inherently complicated, but a lot of this depends on where you draw the line in the sand. I personally would not call two handed an affliction class for instance, though a lot of its damage does come from the fractures. They're more a measure of how well you're doing though than actual afflictions, which tend to change far more rapidly over the course of a fight and require a specific configuration for your win condition. Sylvan could go either way, but the intent was always that it would be played as a damage class when being optimal. You can certainly do locking strategies with it (in fact, there is some good synergy with propagation and weatherweaving if you go down that route), but those are results of the design rather than the primary intent.
I would say that the bar for damage classes is lower, but the ceiling doesn't necessarily need to be higher. The chief concern (from a design consideration) is balancing them with artefacts in play, since there are definitely more artefacts that modify damage alternatives. I would say we've got much better at this, but I'm obviously biased in that regard.
On the other side, electrify has insane artied unprepped burst no matter how you look at it.
My pet pete is how easy it is for new apostates to stack and lock with fast, shield and rebounding penetrating, on demand aff. I swear medi locks me before I can even electrify unless I where aerial. Poor sods those who can't get out of graveyards! This momentum, with easy room hinder. Oooooooopppppppp.
Where exactly did you get 2.7 seconds from? Base truewrack balance is 2.8 seconds, Nimble alone takes that down to 2.52. Having the correct humours tempered for the afflictions you're using in truewrack reduces that further to about 2.2-2.3 seconds.
If you don't have Nimble or you're not taking advantage of the speed increase by tempering correctly that's sort of your own fault.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
That's harsh, and that discourages people would would otherwise like to get into it, so I would be mindful about statements that start with "All you need is..." and think about how expensive that "all you need" really is. If you're going to tell me that Galvanism and a Ring of Flying is required to fight your class, I'm gonna say that class needs to be reigned in a little.
Very easy class to play too, since you don't track limb damage/3rd balances, just DSL like affs while using the same locking sequence on everyone + passive affs.
[ SnB PvP Guide | Link ]
It's either affected or the base speed listed for truewrack in the AB file is slower than it actually is, because I just tested truewrack with the humours for both afflictions I was using tempered, and it was considerably faster than 2.52 seconds. Unfortunately I didn't think to test with only one of the corresponding humours tested and I've just logged out to go get some stuff done.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
That's not a sylvan problem, that's the design of the game.
Eh. You don't need arties to survive sylvan. Shield and tumble work fine. I do think it's a problem how little effort is needed to force shield though. It doesn't require the sylvan to have any actual momentum, just AP. To me, that's the issue.
I'd really prefer keeping the classes OP, but give counter play to other classes against the class. That's more skill-based and fun. Like Alchie's educe tin at the right time completely counters and backfire electrify. Things like this makes combat fun, skill oriented, and you don't have to run-to-survive, which like @Aerek and others pointed out, isn't fun.
Could we stop nerfing classes, but think of adding abilities that provides counter play? (It could be some counter play that's specific towards certain strategies.)
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.