Fleeing as a central combat mechanic

Armali

2h is the worse. If they track with their falcons, you don't even have time to punch a restore before they're on you, hitting you and engaging you. So it's 5s per fracture, then however much you need to restore health, then however much you need to recover mana if that's a problem (which it is for me). I've been out flying for nearly a minute before, taking into account accidentally running into my opponent and eating another engage or what not.

Anedhel

Yeah, those super-delayed curing times are horrible. Having to eat a gajillion ginger on top of herbs for Alchemist is similarly yucky

Antonius

For humours you get the increased curing for subsequent eats when out of the room. No such effect for two-handed (and the balance is much longer, especially if you have/are curing skull fractures), though might add that to my list for classleads so that if you do get away (which is hard enough) you don't also have to spend forever curing off fractures.

Anedhel

I thought restore cured two fracs instead of one when alone?

ETA: I have a much, much easier time getting away from 2h and healing up than Alchemist. Mostly because of homunculus block.

Kenway

Anedhel said:

I thought restore cured two fracs instead of one when alone?

ETA: I have a much, much easier time getting away from 2h and healing up than Alchemist. Mostly because of homunculus block.

Also probably has something to do with humors being based around herb balance while fractures are based in health and sip balance. You may recall face-tanking a 93% torso dsb with two thurisaz earlier. Which was impressive for sure, but just saying they could be related.

Cynlael

Doesn't ginger/antimony have a lower-than-normal herb balance? Honestly been far too long since I've fought one... Mostly due to the exact problems that have been brought up!

Kasa

Cynlael said:

Doesn't ginger/antimony have a lower-than-normal herb balance? Honestly been far too long since I've fought one... Mostly due to the exact problems that have been brought up!

Not since the alchemist rework that put it where it is now. Like forever ago. Foreverever ago.

Anedhel

Kenway said:

Anedhel said:

I thought restore cured two fracs instead of one when alone?

ETA: I have a much, much easier time getting away from 2h and healing up than Alchemist. Mostly because of homunculus block.

Also probably has something to do with humors being based around herb balance while fractures are based in health and sip balance. You may recall face-tanking a 93% torso dsb with two thurisaz earlier. Which was impressive for sure, but just saying they could be related.

You're not perma-paralysed from 2h. 

Jinsun

Just my two cents: 

Occie is designed to where you pretty much have to run.

Fly/prep is one of the worst and most boring mechanics to fight.

Exelethril

Occie is weird. If you can't hinder/pulverize them hard enough within 20-30 secs, the auto-following ones are 100% gonna kill you.

What's pretty lame is - if you can outhinder them, they'll just resort to énervante spam which is annoying as fuck to fight against. Which is specifically why it was made in the first place, to give another kill option if they can't gain enough momentum.

Farrah

Yeah. Occie doesn't seem very possible to even run from. Out momentum or die.

Jovolo

I mean, it has pretty significant differences to piety so I don't know if that's a fair comparison. It's just mobile, targeted hinder like Alchemist. Funnily enough both of these classes are 2 of the major problems right now. Been saying for 2 years that Occultist has the highest aff output in the game which an offence based around affliction quantity. It's a weird combination. 

Anedhel

Jovolo said:

I mean, it has pretty significant differences to piety so I don't know if that's a fair comparison. It's just mobile, targeted hinder like Alchemist. Funnily enough both of these classes are 2 of the major problems right now. Been saying for 2 years that Occultist has the highest aff output in the game which an offence based around affliction quantity. It's a weird combination. 

This is not a coincidence.

Wildgrowth/tentacles/homunculus block are all pretty ridiculous, and they have been for ages. I can't tell you how nuts it'd be if they switched piety to a one-target ability that travels with a Paladin (DWC'd be the king of chasing classes) or Priest (or gravehands in the case of Apostate, holy shit), you'd always be getting your ass kicked

Farrah

Piety has defensive and group combat advantages, but tentacles is better for securing kills.

Then of course Occultist gets arctar which afaik means you can survive pretty easily prone without something like piety. It might actually be better than piety, since no reliance on RNG. Plus a host of group combat strengths that make it the best group combat class in the game...

So fk tentacles.

Jovolo

Anedhel said:

Jovolo said:

I mean, it has pretty significant differences to piety so I don't know if that's a fair comparison. It's just mobile, targeted hinder like Alchemist. Funnily enough both of these classes are 2 of the major problems right now. Been saying for 2 years that Occultist has the highest aff output in the game which an offence based around affliction quantity. It's a weird combination. 

This is not a coincidence.

Wildgrowth/tentacles/homunculus block are all pretty ridiculous, and they have been for ages. I can't tell you how nuts it'd be if they switched piety to a one-target ability that travels with a Paladin (DWC'd be the king of chasing classes) or Priest (or gravehands in the case of Apostate, holy shit), you'd always be getting your ass kicked

It's a correlation but not causation, in my opinion. The issue is the speed in which they deliver afflictions combined with the difficulty in running away from them. It's not their movement hinder in isolation that's the problem. I'd rather address the affliction portion of their offence rather than their movement hinder which is important as a momentum class. Piety is just as strong as Tentacles/Homunculus block, just in different ways.

If you made Tentacles and Homunc Block static, similar to Piety and Gravehands, you're just further reinforcing the defensive strategy of constantly running away. I don't think that's a status quo we want to push further towards. 

Armali

Ring of flight is love, ring of flight is life. At least against alchemist, if you can prep and have an rof, you literally cannot lose. So I don't know what you mean by problem, unless you mean, 'horribly gimped against every class with a prep route'.

Amranu

Homunculus torso blocks FLY too.

Now you know!

Armali

It did not. That could be a bug -- Mak sent a message to someone a week or two ago regarding it. Whether or not it's been fixed, I haven't noticed.

Atalkez

Rof bypasses all room hinder right now.

I think it's intended at this point. It's been known for a bit.

Farrah

Piety, gravehands, and homunculus block all used to stop fly, but some time months ago that changed without an announce. I don't know if it was bugged before and is now working as intended (not stopping fly), or if it's bugged now and is supposed to stop fly.

Definitely screws over priests, apostates, and alchemists if outdoors. Just make people fight you indoors.

Exelethril

Which is weird, why should whether you're indoors or outdoors be a factor in a fight 

Aerek

Armali said:

Ring of flight is love, ring of flight is life. At least against alchemist, if you can prep and have an rof, you literally cannot lose. So I don't know what you mean by problem, unless you mean, 'horribly gimped against every class with a prep route'.

That's really only true for classes with parry bypasses that require zero momentum to use. (I.e. Monk, Blademaster) The rest stumble on parry when they can't stay in the room long enough to build their own momentum to stick afflictions or the like, and prep classes are the same classes that get shut down by Alchemists para/clumsy spam. Even when you're right, Alchemist forces slow preppers to slow prep in the slowest possible meaning of the word, running every 10 second to keep humors down. Neither side enjoys it, I assure you.

Fly shutting down Alchemist is a bad mechanic, but it's necessary because Alchemist offense is so strong and assured with good tracking. We'd have to knock Homunculus block rate down to 33% like similar abilities (It keeps testing at 60% when I look into it) and remove paralysis from wrackable affs before we could even think about changing that. I think a major facet of the issue is that Alchemist has access to all 5 lock affs on-demand, while every other class has to do something special to give one of them. This is what makes it suicide to try to cure tempers in the room, because it's too easily punishable by just locking outright. A possible fix for this is to make impatience and paralysis Phlegm Inundate only, while putting lethargy and a few more mental affs into Wrack/Truewrack. (or adding a different wrack-like ability to burst mental affs) Alchemist already has Shriek as a pseudo-impatience, so if an opponent swapped to curing humors, the Alchemist could hit them with the same type of focus lock that S&B uses, rather than an actual, permanent lock.

This pseudo-lock would still be a valid threat against humor curing, but it wouldn't be as guaranteed death as currently, making it more feasible to risk curing tempers in-room instead of fleeing. (And thus make it feasible to allow homunculus to block fly again) Sometimes the target would get lucky, cure a few tempers, focus off the anorexia, and be back in the fight. Other times, the target would cure a few tempers, get unlucky with focus, and then the Alchemist would have an opportunity to push for tempers and actually seal the kill with inundate. Meanwhile, the victim (psuedo-locked but not paralysed) would have a few seconds to try and flee through homunculus or Tumble before their fate was sealed. Much more dynamic and exciting for both sides, I think.

I welcome critique or refinement on this, but the fact is that if Alchemists want to stop being castrated by Fly, they're going to take an offensive nerf of some kind to justify it.

Kiet

It's kind of weird balancing around having a 400 credit arty, being atavian, or having a legendary mount though.

Bard can also give all lock affs on demand, by the way! They don't have room hinder to make up for it, though.

Jovolo

Farrah said:

Piety, gravehands, and homunculus block all used to stop fly, but some time months ago that changed without an announce. I don't know if it was bugged before and is now working as intended (not stopping fly), or if it's bugged now and is supposed to stop fly.

Definitely screws over priests, apostates, and alchemists if outdoors. Just make people fight you indoors.

Really? That's weird. I thought that was one of the quirks of Aerial and RoF. They were different to typical flight in that they bypassed room hinder. That's a pretty bad change imo.

Farrah

It was never a quirk of RoF, which always worked like other fly. Aerial did always bypass them all. Regular fly always bypassed wildgrowth/tentacles, but not piety/gravehands/homunculus.

Kenway

Kiet said:

It's kind of weird balancing around having a 400 credit arty, being atavian, or having a legendary mount though.

Bard can also give all lock affs on demand, by the way! They don't have room hinder to make up for it, though.

Atavian flight is stopped by weariness. So is mount flight unless you specifically use SPUR MOUNT SKYWARDS

Stuneree

Reason I couldn't stand general Jester combat. While there were some douchey tricks that could mess people up, or go for some locks with axes, the core of Jester is just hopping in and out of the room trying to get fashions. Not fun to fight, or to fight as.

Xaden

Kenway said:

Kiet said:

It's kind of weird balancing around having a 400 credit arty, being atavian, or having a legendary mount though.

Bard can also give all lock affs on demand, by the way! They don't have room hinder to make up for it, though.

Atavian flight is stopped by weariness. So is mount flight unless you specifically use SPUR MOUNT SKYWARDS

If i'm not mistaken there's a full second difference in balance time between spur and fly. No idea why you'd use fly vs spur if you have that in riding.

Ahmet

Xaden said:

Kenway said:

Kiet said:

It's kind of weird balancing around having a 400 credit arty, being atavian, or having a legendary mount though.

Bard can also give all lock affs on demand, by the way! They don't have room hinder to make up for it, though.

Atavian flight is stopped by weariness. So is mount flight unless you specifically use SPUR MOUNT SKYWARDS

If i'm not mistaken there's a full second difference in balance time between spur and fly. No idea why you'd use fly vs spur if you have that in riding.

Around a full second, yes.

Jinsun

I've said it before. Occie is in a weird spot because we do have a high add putput but the majority of the good hinder affs that we have are late game(generally)  and punishable by high output add classes. We've gotta get three affs stuck plus Cadmus and mental to get RNG paralysis while we, like everyone else have to fight uphill
battles against alchemist, serpent, and priest. I dunno what the fix is, but lowering aff speed will make fighting priest, serp, alchie, bard, snb, and Artie monk impossible. Also, it doesn't really help treat only like 4 people really smash Occie and we know virtually every trick in the book so it's hard to get. Good baseline of where the middle ground is.