Classlead reports september 2016

Anedhel

Kenway said:

Anedhel said:

You'd be cool with your $472 weapon doing the same amount of damage a forged one does? I gotta be honest, I wouldn't. 

ETA: 2h damage can be looked at, I guess, but I still think a lot of people underutilize defensive measures against 2h and would fare better if they took advantage of them. 

 Its faster. Damage per second. Math. It'd still do more damage. Outside of spamming reflections and well timed evades there's not much that can actually really hurt 2h when played well. Precision focus outpaces curing by default, the added speed is more than enough of a power boost both in stacking speed and damage per second.

Weariness + clumsiness, lethargy, forced writhes (hangedman, sentinel nooses, web tattoos, transfixation (both magi and runewarden, cheap impales from SnB and BM, and there are probably a few I forgot), paralysis spam, of course (mostly alchemist), reflections, lyres (except for Paladin, who can break with force), active healing + restore (hands, vigour, kai heal, etc.), astralform/blackwind, evade, kai cripple, etc.

There's a pretty long list of things you can do to help yourself, and nearly every class has access to them (Jester doesn't really with the hangedman nerf, but they have their super annoying movement thingy plus bananapeels and rubble, so fuck 'em!). It won't completely shut down 2h's offence, but it helps, if you're clever and careful.

I also meant damage in a single hit. Honestly, a .4s-.5s difference in hew speed isn't worth spending $472 on, for me. It's nice, yes, but I bought the L3 for the damage as much as for the speed and accuracy boosts.

Like I said, I'm not opposed to looking at 2h's damage, particularly against low-resistance targets (anyone wearing crappy armour with no con boosts or damage mitigation besides armour/avoidance, really), but I don't think 'nerf the weapons' is a good solution, at all.

Arador

I would certainly agree to a more percentage based approach to 2H damage. No fun steamrolling smaller targets with a few blows before you can even really start bringing fracs and strategy into it while at the same time being useless against someone with high health, high resists and/or a SoA.

The damage needs to be high since health pressure is what the entire class is about, but I do think better scaling would help.

What I think a lot of people find frustrating is the time it takes for fractures to be cured. With normal affliction combat you get to danger territory in 10-15 seconds, run out for 5-10 seconds, get back to being cured and then the opponent tries again. In 10-15 seconds a 2h Knight is only starting to really stick some fractures properly and is still a while off from having enough to use properly.

I could be mistaken but I think it all originates from the fact that health sips are so much slower than other cures. The healing rate is determined by health sip, the affliction rate is balanced around that healing rate and it slows everything down, meaning strong anti-escape measures are needed. Other affliction classes give you mere moments to react between "I am fine" to "Oh god, I'm about to be locked". 2h gives you ample time and flashing signs when you are even just approaching a dangerous position. Hence the need for their hinder to be more effective.

Maybe change the balance scaling and see how it goes, other than that, the inherent slowness of the class is always going to make it a bit frustrating for both the Knight and the target. Changing that would require a rethink or complete adjustment of how fast fractures can be applied and cured.

Makarios

Its slow by design. I'm sure some people will find that frustrating, but I suspect a significantly larger (though silent population when it comes to the forums) finds it far more accessible for that reason. No plans to change that.

Better percentile scaling is definitely something we can look at.

Anedhel

Maybe have a look at hews/underhand/overhand do less health damage but get faster or do more fractures the higher a target's fracs are? That way, the knight has a chance to build fracs for end-game, and it also doesn't feel like you're just gonna get A-button-mashed to death?

Zulah

I get why lightning infuse had its proc lowered but clumsiness? Meh, there goes our affliction lock. Back to only brokenstar over and over and over and over... At least lightning infuse paralysis gave the class some more flavour options with the double RNG affliction lock. (Hypochondria RNG impatience - infuse RNG paralysis)

Aegoth

BM could get a lock before infuse lightning. Just took more work

Jinsun

How no one complains about DWB damage and prep speed is beyond me. I never have a problem with 2H

Farrah

Zulah said:

I get why lightning infuse had its proc lowered but clumsiness? Meh, there goes our affliction lock. Back to only brokenstar over and over and over and over... At least lightning infuse paralysis gave the class some more flavour options with the double RNG affliction lock. (Hypochondria RNG impatience - infuse RNG paralysis)

Nothing about hypochondria is RNG.

Dunn

Para hypo at 1.85s without a band is a little much. People were locking without the infuse para tho. It's just suboptimal. May be some logs of Mizik or Atalkez doing pommel/strike locks somewhere. 

Farrah

Re: 2-handed. Running is not really the counter to 2-handed imo (unless your class is designed to run, like evade, hermit, etc). Sometimes people get frustrated because they try to counter different classes in the same way. On one hand, 2-hander does prevent running better than probably any other class.

On the other hand, it's a slower build class that's hindered by both clumsiness and weariness. It can't chase as quickly if you do run due to slow balance times. And you have a constant active cure you can use against that has no cooldown (restore). I think it's just a matter of finding the right defense approach for the class you're fighting. Running is a boring counter anyway.

Aerek

* (Dual Blunt) The default weapon proficiency has been changed from FLAIL to MORNINGSTAR. If this affects you in some way due to artefact purchases or such, contact me and we'll work something out.

Ouch. I didn't see the classlead for this, or I would have had some words for it. Yeah, you need morningstars for Pulp, but until you actually -have- Pulp, morningstars do dick for damage. Flails at least can do basic mangle strats no matter your might, pre-trans DWB essentially can't fight at all now.

You can say that's true for a lot of classes, and I wouldn't disagree, but I don't see a "benefit" to this change, just a drawback. If you're already Trans and can Pulp, 100 lessons for stars doesn't seem that much.

Ahmet

@Makarios @Cellorran Could we add a message for the person who submitted a classlead whenever the classlead is approved, rejected, finalised, etc?

Jinsun

Aerek because I'm knight stupid how does this affect transed  artied DWB

Ahmet

Jinsun said:

Aerek because I'm knight stupid how does this affect transed  artied DWB

@Jinsun It saves new trans artie dwb 100 lessons for the morningstar proficiency, while screwing over non-trans non-artied dwb over when it comes to damage (from what I can tell).

Jinsun

Soooo it doesn't do anything to limit the crazy fast prep and heavy damage :dissapointed:

Makarios

I actually agree with the flail concerns, @Aerek. The big decider for me was morningstars do work out as a better low end bashing weapon, and I think anything to ease that initial grind is probably worth it. I would like to do something where knights can just pick the one they want though, will just require some major backend updates that will have to wait for a certain project to go live first (as there is some intersection between the code that would need to change, and I don't want to maintain two separate versions with one of the releases being so large). Think of this as a temporary measure.

Atalkez

Also think infuse being clumsiness does nothing to help BM. Already had clumsiness, and now we're back to not hindering classes that don't worry about clumsiness.

Antonius

Aerek said:

Antonius said:

Except you can't expend on two limbs in one doublewhirl (unless that's been changed and I missed the Announce post), so you'd have to do torso expend/left leg for every hit. That's generally better than doing right leg expend/left leg, though, since you don't have to factor in the increased limb damage from prone (though sounds like we might be losing that soon, anyway) and it requires less momentum.

You definitely can. I've been doing that to bypass trueparry for a very long time now. It's also handy to expend torso/leg when you're going for a mangle lock strategy, to prone and reset rebounding at the same time so it doesn't foul you.

You could also Expend leg/left arm to nix Trueparry without actually breaking that leg, but that costs 4 momentum instead of torso/arm's 2.

Now that I'm home and can actually check, I don't know when this became possible. It definitely wasn't possible when Weaponmastery went live, it's never been announced as a change, and the AB file still doesn't indicate that it's possible (the syntax says you can EXPEND on the first limb or the second, not both).

@Makarios This seems like a pretty major thing to go unannounced.

Aegoth

It was announced. You just werent there for it, and so your mind has fashioned a reality where the change doesn't exist so as to conform to your expectations, and not shock you into a state of schizophrenia

Jinsun

Now offering Jinsun's therapy sessions.

Puxi

Jinsun said:

Now offering Jinsun's therapy sessions.

Ship griefer.

Jinsun

Puxi said:

Jinsun said:

Now offering Jinsun's therapy sessions.

Ship griefer.

If you knew my assassin or thieving days, it's just griefer.

Farrah

Atalkez said:

Also think infuse being clumsiness does nothing to help BM. Already had clumsiness, and now we're back to not hindering classes that don't worry about clumsiness.

So... Like every other class? You have clumsy/para combo. You're hindering with both the paralysis and the clumsiness. It's fairly standard in terms of hindering.

I don't think BM afflicting was intended to be better than knights, etc.

Atalkez

Clumsy/para combo comes at a sacrifice of hamstring/dismount/stacking. BM can't use paralysis like that to hide any afflictions, so how will the clumsiness every really get stuck to do any good? It's a very front-loaded hinder that won't be able to be built upon.

Can do clumsy/para, then what? Clumsy/asthma for a RNG kelp eat since they're 100% eating a kelp, no paralysis so they get to hinder you in return anyway? Between tree/shield/rebounding/needing to bypass parry - I just don't see this being very beneficial to the BM. The other infuse changes seem more interesting to me.

The revert puts BM in exactly the same place it was before (which isn't necessarily bad, but the idea was to give BM hinder, this doesn't do that from what I can tell). 

We'll see how it goes in practice though.

Keorin

Farrah said:

Re: 2-handed. Running is not really the counter to 2-handed imo (unless your class is designed to run, like evade, hermit, etc). Sometimes people get frustrated because they try to counter different classes in the same way. On one hand, 2-hander does prevent running better than probably any other class.

On the other hand, it's a slower build class that's hindered by both clumsiness and weariness. It can't chase as quickly if you do run due to slow balance times. And you have a constant active cure you can use against that has no cooldown (restore). I think it's just a matter of finding the right defense approach for the class you're fighting. Running is a boring counter anyway.

I disagree that running isn't the right counter. Unless you fall into a narrow range of tankiness where you're not just shutting down the knight, but the knight isn't killing you so fast that these measures to slow them are irrelevant, then the only way to even out a fight is to run. It's the same with restore: If you can't tank precision hits indefinitely, they're still going to make rather fast progress towards their kill. 

While people talk about 2h being slow, and while it is compared to serpents and similar classes, this trades off with there being no practical options when they really get going. A knight that's pushed you past the point where you can safely ignore the health damage can be dealing a healthy chunk of damage each swing, as well as afflicting you at twice the rate of curing with precision. Even going full defense with active healing isn't enough to stop that progress, they'll still be making something on the order of a fracture a swing, when they only need four. And this all ignores leg breaks into skull fractures and things like that, which basically mandate running. 

The problem as I see it is that without using running, or some other equally frustrating strategy (shield/fly spam, what have you), then 2h gets to a very precarious point, balance-wise. Clumsiness, weariness, disrupt, and other similar hinder slow the knight down, but without running, things have to be balanced so that the knight and their opponent both get the chance to reach their kills. Given the wide range of prep times, health ranges, and amounts of damage different knights deal, I don't think there's really a viable happy medium that would let, say a sword and board knight get their twenty plus hits or something in without leaving.

And as just a note from personal experience as a low level/poorly artifacted character, I think running is necessary to at all have a chance fighting people with larger damage/artifact pools. Obviously artifacts should provide an advantage, but I don't think that the moment someone has a more expensive sword that the fight should be over. Even unartied two-handed does more damage then can be easily tanked if you're not the right class, and if I can't stay in the room long enough to reach my own kill, then my only options are to run or die.

Krypton

Report #35<br>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>Submitted by: Anonymous&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Status&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; : Approved&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Priority : 2<br>Skill&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; :&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ability&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; : Elementalism<br>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>Problem:<br>Reflections currently are in a place similar to before. They are used to stall<br>tempo and many classes are okay versus them due to having multiple hits to break<br>and maintain momentum. For a class like serpent, that has a single hit that<br>delivers two venoms. One reflection completely nullifies an entire dstab every<br>other balance.<br>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>Solution #1:<br>Slow down reflection even further.<br>Solution #2:<br>Add a FLAY REFLECTION that delivers a venom similar to the other flay barriers<br>Solution #3:<br>Give dispel a percent chance to destroy a reflection<br>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>Decision:<br>Solution 2.<br>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>

As long as venom delivery fails when dealing with more than one reflection (i.e., artefact wand)!

Dunn

I'm sure it will break one reflection at a time only. That's my lead tho :)

Krypton

Ya, I just mean the second attack in flay shouldn't land if >1 reflection. I'm guessing it doesn't land if someone has both shield+rebounding up?

Armali

My ideal fix would've been reduce balanceslash to 2.3s or 2.35s (from 2.1s) and replace lethargy with haemophilia in the hypochondria stack.

Balanceslash in Thyr hits at like 1.65 unbanded, around 1.3-1.4 with an level 3, so when you can para/strike off of that, that's clearly too fast.

At 2.35, it'd hit at 1.85ish and 1.6ish respectively, which I think is fair considering balanceslash has no limb damage component and all the other stuff blademasters have to deal with (if you miss a slash you lose the whole combo, hamstring, dismounting, naturally poor accuracy). The xslashes and compass all hit at around 2 and 1.8 respectively in Thyr.

Swapping out lethargy fixes a lot of things. There's no double hinder from infuse lightning / strike chest anymore, because you don't have constant relapsing lethargy screwing you over. Serpents can seamlessly get haemophilia to lock magi, instead of having to test RNG on BB. Blademasters will get a momentum means of cracking really tanky targets - you can't outc while impaled (afaik), so you could psuedo rift lock someone on your execution (since hypochondria will also tick addiction). You could also stick haemo and go for a straight slashes into brokenstar -- bleed varies from 30-100 across slashes depending on stance, infusion, and resists, and you need a good six or seven seconds before haemophilia even ticks, on top of the 7+ slashes you'll need to build the bleed, so it doesn't seem too overpowered.

---

But we'll see where it goes from here! It's not quite back to square one, though the aff route did regress from 'pretty swanky' back to 'gimmick'.

Aegoth

Dunn said:

I'm sure it will break one reflection at a time only. That's my lead tho :)

i knew i endorsed it for a reason