Classlead Discussion Q2 2016

Farrah

Nobody's saying it's currently stronger, to be clear!

I'd be on board with Intimidate stripping mastery (assuming mastery has eq cost to raise and can't be raised off balance), and Mastery doing as suggested, so DWC at least has the options of prebreak torso + Intimidate vs tumble or no Intimidate but break torso with impale, to counter different defensive mistakes like S&B can.

Dunn

Hard to maintain exquisite mastery when you're yelling like a barbarian. 

Makarios

Just to chip in here, can confirm that 10 seconds per aff on an active cure is the standard model I use when making active cures. Based on additional factors, that can vary in particular cases (shrugging, as noted already).

Aerek

Farrah said:

Nobody's saying it's currently stronger, to be clear!

I'd be on board with Intimidate stripping mastery (assuming mastery has eq cost to raise and can't be raised off balance), and Mastery doing as suggested, so DWC at least has the options of prebreak torso + Intimidate vs tumble or no Intimidate but break torso with impale, to counter different defensive mistakes like S&B can.

I can run with this, though it doesn't do jack against the Infernal quandry. I thank @Antonius for trying with the no-auto-damage-if-Restored idea, but that seems clunky and unintuitive to me. I got nothing, myself.

Could just always tie it to Lagua. I don't know how badly Paladin really needs it.

Farrah

S&B is better at Damnation too, so I feel like it'd make sense for DWC pally to have the torso impale too, lest it still be just lackluster and worse as a spec, which seems to be the current complaint for runewarden.

Unless it was decided to address each class differently with pally getting something else. Make mastery do something different for each class, with infernal's addressing vivisect issues in some other way?

Otherwise, just let infernals have the torso impale too and see how it works. Maybe somehow reduce infernal dsb damage. Must have some necromantic defense up to vivisect, but it reduces dsb damage (still usable, but an appropriate level of damage for an unavoidable hit).

Armali

Keep in mind Infernals can taint-arc. Sure, their DSB is weaker, but like Paladins, they can follow up with a damage burst to explode you.

Atalkez

You can stand/shield to stop the arc, assuming Taint bypasses like Purity does.

Jovolo

Not sure I like the clumsiness being a hinder to things like doublestab/instill/truewrack. There is a distinction to be made between classes that are momentum and classes that are prep. If we make the former susceptible to the same hinder as the latter, we arrive at a situation where the latter is far superior (again) which is a trend we tried to move away from with all the offensive buffs in the first place. 

Kiet

Clumsiness is a bad way to hinder aff classes simply because it adds even more RNG to something that's already heavy in it. I'd prefer we had another solution to hindering aff classes, or just settled on an attack speed that was acceptable unhindered if that was too difficult.

Calira

Kiet said:

Clumsiness is a bad way to hinder aff classes simply because it adds even more RNG to something that's already heavy in it. I'd prefer we had another solution to hindering aff classes, or just settled on an attack speed that was acceptable unhindered if that was too difficult.

Imperian reworked clumsiness to be 100% effective with a 5 second CD. That solution in particular is a poor one because it means that higher aff rates are less affected than slower ones, but there's probably a better way to rework clumsiness so that it isn't RNG at all.

Armali

Really don't think momentum classes need more hindering than is. Am a little surprised Apostates got the clumsiness nerf, given they have no prep route to speak of. Serpents didn't get it last round, and the spate of, 'please help me keep my targets in room better' reports this round only serves to show that prep is still king over momentum, even super fast momentum like Serpent.

Aerek

The issue with affliction and momentum classes being unhinderable is that combat becomes less about tactics and more about a race to the finish. I understand some people -prefer- a balls-out offense and die of boredom if they don't secure a kill in 30 seconds or less, but when you buff aff/momentum classes so they can hinder prep classes into oblivion but can't be hindered back, then you force those prep classes to use slow-prep tactics because they now have no other recourse. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy and a vicious cycle.

Szanthax

Aerek said:

The issue with affliction and momentum classes being unhinderable is that combat becomes less about tactics and more about a race to the finish. I understand some people -prefer- a balls-out offense and die of boredom if they don't secure a kill in 30 seconds or less, but when you buff aff/momentum classes so they can hinder prep classes into oblivion but can't be hindered back, then you force those prep classes to use slow-prep tactics because they now have no other recourse. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy and a vicious cycle.

What is the answer. Whats the perfect situation? If A and B both play perfectly, both people die at 30 seconds?  What is the ideal situation for every class. I feel like they want every class to be able to kill the other person if you just stand there and the other person attacks using the perfect attack sequence. I feel like the ideal situation is that everyone can kill everyone within x amount of time if person a and person b uses both perfect defense and offense both people die at exactly the same time.... 

*drunk*

Kiet

The ideal situation in a game, imo, is where eventually someone dies no matter how well both players play.  Obviously the better player would win most often, but it shouldn't be possible to live forever with perfect play (or perfect play should be impossible to achieve beyond theory). The issue is that that's not how achaea currently works, really, and I don't know how you'd move it over to that when there's disparities in how long it takes someone to get to a dangerous zone. 99% of our fights neither player is in danger, danger windows are a few seconds long at most.

I realize a lot of Achaeans don't really like the idea of that, though.

Keorin

Kiet said:

The ideal situation in a game, imo, is where eventually someone dies no matter how well both players play.  Obviously the better player would win most often, but it shouldn't be possible to live forever with perfect play (or perfect play should be impossible to achieve beyond theory). The issue is that that's not how achaea currently works, really, and I don't know how you'd move it over to that when there's disparities in how long it takes someone to get to a dangerous zone. 99% of our fights neither player is in danger, danger windows are a few seconds long at most.

I realize a lot of Achaeans don't really like the idea of that, though.

I disagree, maybe just in that I think that perfect play is essentially impossible beyond theory within the current system. I don't think that there's anyone in the game who will be able to defend against every kill strategy every time, or let alone understands the ins and outs of each of them. Players very clearly don't have a hard time killing or dying under the current system, and heck, you'll run out of willpower/endurance eventually

And a system that doesn't prioritize good defense seems very difficult to balance. The game would come down to how fast one reached an unstoppable kill, and even were it balanced that seems like a much less mechanically interesting system. 

Kiet

Perfect play (or as perfect as you need, really) is realistically achievable in Achaea. It's a lot harder now, thankfully (5 years ago it wasn't even difficult to reach the level of play where you'd be invulnerable to everything), but the main reason you don't see perfect play is most people would get bored doing it and because it's not really necessary to kill most people, so it's more effort than it's worth for most people.

Compared to something like street fighter, though, where perfect play is humanly impossible and where a winner is guaranteed every round after 99 in-game seconds (barring rare draws), it's definitely achievable.

Finkle

I love a good coding challenge since I've slowly been learning and taking on little projects, but you can only keep working on your Optimus Prime for so long before he's playing and you're not.  And then what's the point after that.

Maybe some people get more of a thrill out of the coding challenges but if all I am gonna do is hit a button and play I may as well go to the Casino and pretend I can win big on hitting a button.

Tahquil

I'm not a combatant but wouldn't perfect plays by both people mean that noone would win? A lot of combat is taking advantage of an opponent's mistakes and if there is no mistake how can the advantage be won?

Farrah

I think the design should allow "perfect" play to survive forever generally, but that perfect play should be difficult enough to achieve that it basically never happens. I also think Achaea is already going in this direction though and some class matchups are basically already there.

I prefer if RNG plays a role in breaking what would be the neverending battles too. Fighting for over an hour is no fun and usually results in those two people just never fighting, which I think is bad for the game, since we have a limited number of 1v1ers to begin with. Obviously the RNG can't be such that it makes it impossible for one side to win over the other, but if your setup has a 10% chance of working despite perfect play (and so does your opponent's), that can be fun by making the fight end eventually. The chance would have to roughly scale with how long it takes to prep/execute too though, ideally, or we go back to whoever executes faster wins.

Ahmet

Snakes read the classleads.

https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/6f6f91b2

Cynlael

Reading that log shows me why you don't fight that much. If you did, and showed affs, your prompt would be Exelethril-level terrible. Aint no one wanna go there.

Ahmet

Cynlael said:

Reading that log shows me why you don't fight that much. If you did, and showed affs, your prompt would be Exelethril-level terrible. Aint no one wanna go there.

Nah, that's my general-purpose prompt, hunting, chatting, exploring and the like. I use a less cluttered one for fighting (though it's been awhile since that thing's seen the light of day).

Bleak

Is the snake only OP for artied serpents? Or also for non-artied? 

Exelethril

It's strong all around because the passive 10 sec Loki affs act as "absorbants" by raising the probability of tree/passive heals curing those affs instead of a locking/darkshade venom. 

I don't remember what affs Loki gives though, is it everything possible or within a certain pool?

Armali

It's everything, and it's quite a bit faster than 10s. Have seen it bite at 4s.

Kiet

Unartied serpent can't really be called OP in any aspect, tho, tbh. It's probably one of the worst unartied classes in the game.

That said, no one cares about unartied for balance, for better or for worse.

Bleak

It used to be that unartied was the basis for class balance. Is that gone now?

Armali

That's not really true, the bard forged rapier speed report passed.

Dunn

Bard forged rapier is silly slow outside of old Canticle, which now no longer boosts the layer. A nerf was made due to how OP it was with a soulpiercer and it was approved to smooth that out.

Dairon

Armali said:

It's everything, and it's quite a bit faster than 10s. Have seen it bite at 4s.

Damnnit. Quote bug.

Afaik its random between a certain time range (something like 4 -15 secs?). Don't quote me on that though