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Comments
As far as I'm aware, it's the 'Horse' stance of BM
I'm also not convinced that Sicken is a downside. Requiring manaleech to give slickness is definitely a disadvantage in a vacuum, but Apostate is not the only class that has to jump through hoops to get one of the lock afflictions, and that hoop is not a particularly difficult one. More importantly, Sicken actually has a really big upside. Smart-affing between paralysis and gecko gives Apostates the unique ability to maintain full aff pressure while constantly masking the paralysis cure behind a 50/50, which is ridiculously hindering. It also removes bloodroot ambiguity from the equation when it comes to sealing, allowing the Apostate to seal locks with sicken/anorexia and be sure that they have both paralysis and slickness, where other classes have to seal with gecko/slike and forego having immediate guaranteed paralysis. If Sicken didn't have its disadvantage, it would ramp up to its hinder state way too fast.
Apostate has high momentum with nightmare up. With fiend (haemo delivery is inconsistent and mediocre) or daemonite the penalty in aff momentum, taking into account the double hit by clumsiness, is significant and is poorly dealt with by the unreliability of the other offensive tools Apostate can use in conjunction with these demons besides deadeyes.
If you've access to clumsiness, they fight with fiend or daemonite, and you have some minor situational awareness and respond appropriately to their gradual health/mana/hunger hits (certain classes are just invulnerable to these options), the Apostate is one of the easiest momentum classes in the game to deal with. I dislike how the clumsiness penalty makes Apostate's alternative routes astonishingly poor. Unreliable alternative options to nightmare/deadeyes makes the class far more inflexible than it seems.
I also don't agree that Apostate is one of the easiest classes in the game to deal with. If you're playing something like a knight with fitness, strong hinder, prep options, damage mitigation and low mana costs then you might be right, but lots of classes don't have all those things going for them. The glut of chaff affs that the class outputs can easily mitigate tree and random cures, the passive health/mana pressure from things like Hunt, Deathaura, Hellfumes, Bloodworms, bleeding, leech afflictions and natural mana costs can overwhelm classes with weaker defences or higher mana costs, and Curseward is still slower than shield, especially against a class with unrestricted access to confusion, though the bad raze helps mitigate this. Apostates aren't even easy to kill, with Demon Syphon throwing wrenches into all forms of momentum, very strong natural hinder as described earlier, Gravehands still serving as one of the strongest defensive tools in the game against prep and momentum alike, strong damage mitigation options, strong active health/mana heals, and Blackwind. It suffers from the same problems killing that every momentum class does, and those problems are probably exacerbated against knights, but it's not nearly as weak as that.
The class does seem to lack much versatility and the non-nightmare demons do seem pretty lame, though.
Curseward spam along with switching curing prio to asthma generally messed me up as Apostate. There are only 4 kelp affs including asthma that an Apostate can deliver, so you can imagine how much of a pain it is against any class with fitness to bury it long enough to stick manaleech and then get to slickness. Confusion, I found, wasn't terribly helpful as it's difficult to stick when an enemy is turtling, doesn't help you proceed to a lock and since it only extends time by 25% it's not even very noticeable. Coupled that the other paths aren't very viable unless someone really messes up, it can be very frustrating to 1v1 as Apostate.
I don't disagree with this at all. I always used nightmare as apostate. However, when nightmare exists, it's hard to base any balancing decision around them not using it.
Also, regarding an earlier point, while deathaura isn't an aff, daegger hunt does give an aff (haemophilia), so Calira's list was wrong but her point about passives wasn't. Bloodworms + nightmare + daegger hunt haemo procs is a ton of affs passively. I actually locked good serpents as apostate prior to the clumsiness buff for apo (less chance of proc) and prior to serpent being affected by clumsiness (so basically, I was in a way worse situation than now). I took advantage of disfigure being usable off balance too sometimes for dealing with kelp prio swaps - can't remember if that has changed at all. Apostate has serious valerian stacking.
I'm still not really opposed to just standardizing the clumsy effect to only affect one side of deadeyes, but admittedly it isn't something I've tested in combat obviously.
Apostate's alternate routes are sub-par imo. Locking is king.
I didn't say that Gravehands was better than Piety. Piety is just as good. It's also 100% less relevant than Gravehands when discussing the advantages of Apostate in a 1v1 situation, which is what I'm talking about.
You're right that if you manage to out-momentum an Apostate really hard early on that they're in trouble. This is true for 100% of momentum matchups regardless of class. It's up to the Apostate to recognize this and reset the fight before losing. Once an Apostate gets going, though, they ramp up very fast, and due to their own unrivaled hinder output and the un-hinderable nature of passives, they're really good at snowballing small momentum advantages into big ones.
Lastly, I don't think any of this is too strong or deserving of any changes, as I may have accidently conveyed. Apostate has many powerful strengths and many meaningful weaknesses, clumsiness and reliance on room prep being the biggest two. I'm just here to point out that removing a key weakness of a competent and successful class is not a good idea.
I don't think Apostate with nightmare is the easiest class to deal with: my issue is Apostate with fiend or daemonite, which I do think are very easy to deal with. In conjunction with those two ents, bloodworms can be made irrelevant with a double clumsiness proc, and a single timed curseward generally cleans up the rest of the Apostate's momentum. Passive health/mana damage ticks are strong over time, but note that it is an over time effect, and consequently is heavily telegraphed - how well an opponent can disengage will change how strong this is, but its very obvious that an Apostate is pushing health/mana when they use hunt/aura/fumes/worms/fiend, and it takes a fairly significant amount of time for this to build to a level that even requires any defensive play. It is reminiscent to the old Druid playstyle (still possible really) of just throwing several meteors and then mauling into incinerate with bees. It's viable, but it's not a strategy I would like to rely on.
Perhaps more importantly, Apostate is the worst momentum class/locking class currently against simple prio switches - other equivalents (Alchemist, Bard, DW, Occultist, Priest, Sentinel, Serpent, Shaman, to a lesser extent Sylvan) can ignore prio swaps or punish them through alternative aff routes easily. Apostate can too with nightmare, but with the other two ents their capability to do so is far weaker, relatively speaking.
The non-nightmare demons being weak and Apostate lacking powerful non-lock options is a complaint that has merit. I don't think that that makes for a compelling reason to buff Evileye, though, since Evileye is not the source of the weakness.
It might be worth buffing apostate not by upping aff delivery or locking, but by making its other routes actually threatening. Compare it to priest, where you're going to get absolved eventually no matter what you do if you don't turtle in its current state, and catharsis is a joke. Obviously, apostate has much higher dangerous aff delivery and you can't have its cath route as strong as priest's, but having some kind of actual synergy there would be pretty welcome.
As it is, you prio asthma and you make yourself both very hard to lock and counter one of the strongest tools for cath (manaleech). While this is better now that smoke has a balance of its own, I don't really believe it's particularly strong anyway. Apostate damage is always 'there' as an option with aura/fiend/hunt/sicken damage, but, again, asthma prio counters sicken damage, and the others are either easy to stop, telegraphed, or not that big a deal on their own.
Not gating like half their tools around the victim having asthma would go a long way to making the class more versatile, imo. Having a single route as an aff class is only really acceptable if you're a class that relies on just numbers (occultist for ex), and apostate has nothing like that.
The typical fiend route is fiend + hunt + deathaura, etc. + demon sap spam. It's not actually that bad, but doesn't work with corrupt or anything. Obviously kind of boring too.
Priest isn't a very good comparison for alternate routes since priest only has a weak alternate route as well. It just happens that priest's "main" route is absolve, while apostate's is locking.
Though I also think it's pretty misleading to say prio swaps destroy apostate because of its lack of alternate routes. Paralysis obviates any need for alternate routes usually, in terms of just viability (not accounting for wanting to use daemonite/fiend because they're there) because not curing paralysis is always harmful. Also, because corrupt exists, there's somewhat of an alternate route of burying impatience and mentals while they're perma-paralysed eating kelp repeatedly. But I also found between kelp stacks and valerian stacks I could always overcome kelp prio swaps eventually.
As for corrupt, it's really good in small groups, but the long eq time and removing all affs means nobody is going to die from it without just making the huge mistake of attacking despite it. You can shield to stop catharsis. That said, corrupt doesn't become threatening health-wise until you've already stacked several mental afflictions, which if someone is willing to allow you to do that, they'll likely also just be locked sooner than you can corrupt.
As for fiend route, it's technically possible to use fiend + worms + deathaura + hunt, stack some affs, stare some sicken/bleed and then corrupt to see them clot away their mana. Can work, but again, a shield or fleeing will stop that, if you can even stack on enough.
1. People constantly speak about classes without ever playing them at a HIGH level. This results in changes going into effect that are either overbalanced or nerf classes unintentionally. Apostates don't have healthleech so your point is moot. Manaleech is used to lock. Apostate is considerably slowed by curseward (yes, well timed cursewards kill momentum, especially when that person is ATTACKING you back!), priority swaps and leaving the room (redeffing a room takes time). People theory craft too much without adding in the opponent sticking para/clumsy on you.
DwB Infernal is strong but not impossible to defeat. The only DwB Infernal playing at a high level is Proficy. Stick clumsiness and it's good game. He continuously loses to clumsiness. I know because I have seen his rage when he dies because of it and him fight Krizel 14 times and lose them all (due to clumsiness). Also understand how the class can vivisect or pulp. Once you see the momentum requirements and what they have to break you can see it coming from a mile away. You will also gain a greater understanding how what it actually takes to go either route, especially how long it takes.
2. Through promotions and more people moving over to Achaea from other dead MUDs people have become numb to how much artefacts really cost. They also have no clue the cost to the player or have certain feelings about people who do have massive amounts of artefacts without giving consideration to how much REAL MONEY they spent on those artefacts. I have an escrow around 60K and that doesn't include some of the talismans and other things. Yes, I am supposed to have an advantage in PvE and PvP over someone who doesn't have artefacts or the same as me. If that comes in the form of higher damage, so be it. In order to achieve that damage, you have to have at least spent 1,119.99 dollars just for L3 stars and flails. That price tag isn't something to laugh at. That is a house payment for most people.
Does DwB INFERNAL need a tweak, maybe let smarter people than me actually test the class and see. When you tweak DwB, you are tweaking three classes (Infernal, Paladin and Runie). If these tweaks do happen it will usually result in being over tweaked to the point where that class no longer performs at the top tier level. AND the person just lost out on 1,119.99 dollars.
Artefacts are designed to give you an advantage. Should Proficy be able to outdamage you when he double breaks your legs and continuously pounds on them with L3 flails? Yes. He has all the artefacts that boost his damage and paid a heavy price in RL for them. Should Proficy be able to either Pulp or Vivisect you based on what you cure and all the stars align that make this possible to actually pull off? Yes because he went Infernal.
I am all for tweaking classes that have strategies that are unavoidable (DwB Infernal Vivisect and Pulp are avoidable by the way) with CONTINUOUS testing to ensure the people who spent the money on the class aren't boned out of thousands of dollars. Once the classleads are implemented we don't get another until the Team decides to do another round. That is a lot of playing time with a nerfed class.
We have to choose. Are we going to balance this game FOR new players or are we going to balance this game around how many artefacts a person has (that they paid for)? Because right now people are crying about artefacts and not new players.
My biggest pet peeve is not getting my monies worth, because I have spent a lot of money and headache (from my wife) on this game to constantly see classes I have went be unplayable at the high level.
You see this happened in all MMORPGs. The community cries abount Feral Druid in the beginning of Legion. Everyone rerolls Paladin. More tears. Everyone rerolls Frost DK. Same thing with GW2 Thief and Mesimar (spelling error). Same thing with BDO ninja, striker, Wizard, etc. (Now ranger is insane). The problem with those games is that I haven't paid upwards of 80K (real life money people) for the bonuses and benefits provided in Achaea.
Leviticus does have a good point. I'm not one for making classlead posts, I leave that to people way more knowledgeable in regards to class balancing (though I will make QoL requests, because hnngh). I will say though, the amount of damage that DWB does whilst also providing a substantial amount of lead-up to their finisher is kind of silly. If given a bit of time, it becomes an unavoidable fork. This is coming off of hearsay from pretty much everyone who has talked about the class (and the few Targossians that actually know what the hell they're talking about).
Anyways, I laughed at the "give bard hamstring" classlead. I also approve of finally nerfing Room Hinder when the person who laid it isn't in room.. [b]AND[/b] for more classes to be able to directly counter piety / gravehands. It has been a major nuisance for everyone in the game, to the point that it required a few cities to have their entrance changed (Soulspear got nerfed as a direct change to this, thank fuck). With that said, I hope Alchemists get the way to counter Piety. Something about Science vs Religion makes for fun when the Alchemist can just go "God-b-Gone"
Also help credits:
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Achaea is a functioning world, and while we guarantee you will not lose any of the credits you buy, no such guarantee can be provided for what you purchase with the credits themselves. Naturally, we wouldn't be in business very long if this happened frequently, but as it is a world, your actions have consequences, and the actions of others can result in consequences for you. It's this dynamism in the nature of the world that people enjoy about Achaea. Thus, it is possible that the perceived or real value of the things you purchase with credits, or your ability to use those things, may both rise and decline during the course of play.
Ironically, I am probably (?) the only one posting here who has actually played Apostate at the top tier. So I, at least, do know the practical situation of the class.
Re: DWB, you have to bear in mind that some of us on the defending side have spent just as much and still cannot survive DWB unless we play specific classes. That seems to counter your argument about how much you spend. Infernal DWB isn't survivable regardless of tankiness either, and clumsiness is pretty trivial to handle by simply slow prepping. This does create a balance issue imo.
That's not to say I agree with you about artefact balancing either, but DWB isn't only destroying unartied people. Any light-armoured class is going to be crushed regardless of artefacts.
And regarding the highly controversial DwB class everyone knows so much about but no one "is" i will just ask, if not for the damage, what else does it have? It has access to what 3 afflictions that can be given two at a time but not even consistently and that have no real usefulness. It is purely a damage class that does acutally the same damage output as depthswalker per hit (even though that class can double and tripple afflict with the damage), with its upside to do a big damage producing finisher.
I just dont see what all the talk is about. Sylvans can produce that same kind of damage output with there momenutm while still beong able to slow prep and lock as well.
All that is being provided are problems, and not even valid ones. Try presenting solutions.
Leviticus, no you cannot survive a Pulp Vivi fork. It is a 100% kill if you do it right.
While people discussing may not have played it on live server, we’ve all tested nearly every class on the test server. No one is talking about nerfing the class into oblivion, but it shouldn’t be able to just roll through anyone he fights because he paid money. That’s not balance.
Like Farrah said, some of us have paid the exact same as Proficy to be able to survive and still can’t. Proficy is the reason I dropped BM, when I nearly died to 4 flail combos in Mir inside my own city. It’s simply not a reasonable level of damage and continuing breaks.
At the end of the day, no you don’t get to kill people because you spent money. Classes are going to continually be adjusted to be survivable and balanced, and it’s DwB’s turn for that.
I do agree with Proficy on the point of it not having anything else. I never liked that the class only does damage and has no other real options. The problem is the interaction between damage and the kill setups. No reason for it to do that much damage while prepping or when the person is prone.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
You misremember then, since I barely ever played bard again after I picked up apostate. There was certainly a period of time I played bard, but there was also a period where I only played apostate.