Classlead reports september 2016

Keorin

I agree that the direction of the blademaster change was rather disappointing, myself. While there were clearly problems, the ability to actually use twoarts+striking for more then just pommelstrike shenanigans made the class far more interesting in my book, and I'd rather have seen the problematic strategies (para+hypo and 1s para, for instance) addressed rather then have the whole thing nerfed.

Dunn

Yeah doesn't. Venom only hits if 1 barrier is up. 

Jinsun

You close your eyes and focus upon a book titled "Moonie's Riddle" by Neville 

"Moonie" Carnivalis, reaching out with your aura to seek out the karmic vestiges 

sequestered within its depths.

As you absorb the karmic energies from a book titled "Moonie's Riddle" by 

Neville "Moonie" Carnivalis, its multi-coloured light dims slightly. Sudden 

understanding of the nature of the universe comes to you, the ramifications of 

which raise the hairs on the back of your neck and send a shiver through your 

body.

Your soul's karma stands at 86%.

As you absorb the karmic energies from a book titled "Moonie's Riddle" by 

Neville "Moonie" Carnivalis, its multi-coloured light dims slightly. Sudden 

understanding of the nature of the universe comes to you, the ramifications of 

which raise the hairs on the back of your neck and send a shiver through your 

body.

Your soul's karma stands at 88%.

As you absorb the karmic energies from a book titled "Moonie's Riddle" by 

Neville "Moonie" Carnivalis, its multi-coloured light dims slightly. Sudden 

understanding of the nature of the universe comes to you, the ramifications of 

which raise the hairs on the back of your neck and send a shiver through your 

body.

Your soul's karma stands at 90%.

Having been completely divested of its karmic energies, a book titled "Moonie's 

Riddle" by Neville "Moonie" Carnivalis crumbles to dust in your hands.

Your soul's karma stands at 92%.

This is an item that normally gives 10% before the trait. The amount of time it takes to -get- karma and the rng crumbling has been the biggest issue by far considering the costs for actual combat skills using karma (not pacts).

This is the -second- item I've studied since the changes, and I got 3/10 before crumbling. We've had this classlead approved for 3 changes now. 

The third item went for the normal amount.
Fourth denizen didn't drop.
Fifth:

You close your eyes and focus upon a book titled "Seven Rays" by Madam Bagaska, 

reaching out with your aura to seek out the karmic vestiges sequestered within 

its depths.

As you absorb the karmic energies from a book titled "Seven Rays" by Madam 

Bagaska, its multi-coloured light dims slightly. Sudden understanding of the 

nature of the universe comes to you, the ramifications of which raise the hairs 

on the back of your neck and send a shiver through your body.

Your soul's karma stands at 80%.

Having been completely divested of its karmic energies, a book titled "Seven 

Rays" by Madam Bagaska crumbles to dust in your hands.

Your soul's karma stands at 82%.

that's 2/5 ticks

for number 6

You close your eyes and focus upon the Jaguar Book of Shadows, reaching out with 

your aura to seek out the karmic vestiges sequestered within its depths.

As you absorb the karmic energies from the Jaguar Book of Shadows, its multi-

coloured light dims slightly. Sudden understanding of the nature of the universe 

comes to you, the ramifications of which raise the hairs on the back of your 

neck and send a shiver through your body.

Your soul's karma stands at 84%.

As you absorb the karmic energies from the Jaguar Book of Shadows, its multi-

coloured light dims slightly. Sudden understanding of the nature of the universe 

comes to you, the ramifications of which raise the hairs on the back of your 

neck and send a shiver through your body.

Your soul's karma stands at 86%.

As you absorb the karmic energies from the Jaguar Book of Shadows, its multi-

coloured light dims slightly. Sudden understanding of the nature of the universe 

comes to you, the ramifications of which raise the hairs on the back of your 

neck and send a shiver through your body.

Your soul's karma stands at 88%.

Having been completely divested of its karmic energies, the Jaguar Book of 

Shadows crumbles to dust in your hands.

Your soul's karma stands at 90%.

4/10 ticks.

Not really happy with this at all.

Aerek

I will miss the brutal affliction/hindrance machine Blademaster became there for a moment, but I think the changes are OK. BM is so strong in a prep sense that I really didn't feel it needed strong hindrance except against a select few classes that could overwhelm it given its total lack of it, but those classes are mostly classes affected by clumsiness, so the clum/para combo will still help cover that gap. (If we could only get Alchemist hindered by clumsiness; I forgot to ask)

Honestly, the extent to which I could just shut people down with para/hypo/clum, while prepping limbs at lightning speed, with one of the most assured finishers, (unless you run on every ImpSlash, which essentially means you don't fight me) ...I felt pretty bad about it. (Not to mention the Infuse/delayed Neck shenanigans) I didn't even scratch the surface of lock strats, either. As it was, BM was probably a better locker than some of the lock-based classes. I am okay with BM not being awesome at everything. It's already pretty good at what it needs to do.

Makarios

Going to chip in on the blademaster discussion real quick, to hopefully shed some light on the decision. I knew it'd upset a lot of people, but think this was what needed to happen, and why:

Blademaster isn't an aff class. It wasn't ever meant to be an aff class, and thematically it shouldn't be an aff class (those of you familiar with the lore can probably understand the angle I'm coming from there). The original infuse lightning change was one I shouldn't have made and one of the few reports I can safely say I've seriously regretted approving. I know some people would like blademaster to be an aff class, but that isn't a direction that I'd expect strides in. Its an exceptionally good limb class, and I think effort is better invested diversifying those limb options. That definitely might involve giving them some more hinder, but a purely aff driven route (while I understand is a big selling point for a lot of people) is something I'm not really interested in pursuing for blademaster going forward.

I do know that losing cool toys sucks, and is why I try to make a point of rejecting reports that I suspect will need to be reverted given a few weeks of live use. This is just one of those cases that slipped through the cracks and really should never have been a thing.

Jinsun

Mannnnn remember when voidfist first came out?

Makarios

Vividly.

Jinsun

Makarios said:

Vividly.

Bruh Karma.

Armali

Alas poor aff BM, you died too young.

Aegoth

good riddance

Atalkez

Fair enough, Mak!

I still think some work can be done on the fists and storms. Will think on it!

Asmodron

Omg i truly hope blademaster gets some raid flare, as the report said. I might start playing it a bit more then.

(though i still secretly wish blademaster was remade to be as sexy as bleach shingami)

Vender

now that dstab is affected by clumsiness, I can see alchemist truewrack (but not singlewrack) being affected by clumsiness as well for future classlead ideas. this would help those fighting an alchemist stay in the room.

Asmodron

everyone getting so clumsy these days

Anedhel

I classleaded that last round, it was shot down. Not sure what the plan for Alchemist is, but that doesn't seem to be in the books (or wasn't, at least, last classleads). 

Vender

also after reading about the concerns for dstab venom1 venom 2, i think it would be nice if you could jab target curare prefarar even though jab is a single attack. that way a bard could wipe//jab target curare prefarar, deliver prefarar and have curare on the rapier for riposte and heartsfury. this is a concern because the limits of the queue.

Anedhel

Any reason you can't just envenom two extra doses of curare in each alias? That way, when you jab, you wipe first, so you're getting the venoms you want, and keep curare on for the off-balance stuff. 

Though I guess, apart from having to code it in, there's no reason you couldn't set a venom to deliver on ripostes or whatever. 

Armali

I asked another bard that and they said they wanted to be EFFICIENT.

But yeah, I don't know.

Vender

well you can't wipe off-balance and if you're triggering of riposte and heartsfury ideally you would want to input it twice if you have stupidity and wiping/jab target venom/envenom rapier with curare x 2 is wasting venoms and taking up queue slots that I could be using for other things

Calira

Since venoms are FILO, you can envenom what you want to hit with Heartsfury first (curare, probably) and then just use in-line envenoming normally. That and a trigger to re-envenom curare whenever Heartsfury or Riposte activated served me just fine.

Anedhel

Shouldn't be a big deal now that you can combine actions with command separator and can use queueing, but yeah, I guess I don't know, either. 

Farrah

Vender said:

well you can't wipe off-balance and if you're triggering of riposte and heartsfury ideally you would want to input it twice if you have stupidity and wiping/jab target venom/envenom rapier with curare x 2 is wasting venoms and taking up queue slots that I could be using for other things

I'm not sure if you realize just how many things you can queue between being able to queue something like five "sets" of actions at once, and being able to command separate a bunch of commands in each set. It should be pretty easy to just envenom rapier with whatever in the queue prior to the jab target <venom>.

Antonius

You can queue aliases, and I've not yet hit a limit on how many commands you can stack in one of those. Queue limitations are not a concern for anything if you don't queue every individual action separately.

Puxi

Antonius said:

You can queue aliases, and I've not yet hit a limit on how many commands you can stack in one of those. Queue limitations are not a concern for anything if you don't queue every individual action separately.

How do you queue aliases?

Antonius

To be clear, I mean in-game aliases. You also can't use the queueing command separator and an in-game alias in the same index of the queue.

SETALIAS myalias <commands>. QUEUE ADD <queue> myalias.

Commands in aliases are (can be? Not sure if both work) separated with / regardless of your configured command separator.

Antonius

I know most people are busy playing with Depthswalker, but I figured I'd do a bit of testing on Undercut for anybody who is still Dual Cutting. The limb damage with a level 3 battleaxe isn't even equal to half a doubleslash with level 3 scimitars, so you'd want to at least prep within a single hit (using razeslash, if they break in an even number of hits). Balance time looks to be about 1.7-1.8 seconds if it breaks the leg, and around 2.8 if it doesn't. It can miss due to clumsiness, so I guess the only upside is that when that happens it does zero limb damage (though you still take the long balance loss), so you've not wasted prep without proning. Damage seems to be roughly equal to a full doubleslash.

Here's what it looks like (second line is only there when it breaks the leg):

You swing a burnished steel battleaxe with an ivory haft at the right leg of Shunsui with all your might.
As your blow cuts deeply into the leg of Shunsui, you drive savagely forward, taking him clean off his feet.

Xaden

So attempts to make battleaxes relevant again are a fail.

Cooper

Xaden said:

So attempts to make battleaxes relevant again are a fail.

No, not at all. It solves the issue of missing a hit on your proning break, and is faster than even a level 3 artied dsl. Extremely useful.

Cailan

Does it apply a venom also?

Cooper

No. You would normally be using delph so you don't lose anything there.