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Comments
Are you guys just hating on DW because Targossas has a lot of them?
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Make DW reap/cull speed scale on dexterity and my complaints about DW are 95% gone.
I try to be fairly unbiased when discussing class mechanics, and I just don't agree with a lot of the complaints about DW. Does it have a ton of utility? Absolutely, that is by design. Does it output afflictions pretty quickly? Sure, it IS a momentum class, after all. Does it do a lot of damage? No more than other classes, which is where a lot of people fail to put it into perspective. If there is anything that I would look at tweaking, it would be whether or not a DW benefits from another instill/loop if they didn't give it. Which I think was already classleaded?
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
People be upset about DW because Targ uses DW over Paladin/Priest because those classes don't really sync that well with group combat.. and DW does?
Or is it because DW is an all-around decent entry level class that doesn't require much in the way of Arties outside of a few defensive arties, comes with tons of utility, whilst also having group combat offense that isn't rekt by the fact that someone else afflicted what you did ( A la most classes. I think Mhaldor has one of them, if I recall. )
I'd have played a DW over bard... But I also was super-damn lazy and didn't want to learn an entire new class.
Sure, that runewarden can dsl me with two runewarden budies for a lot of damage and affs. But they can't also beckon me, drop room hinder, block snipes, soul rezz themselves when they die, and aeon. Infernals/paladins get room hinder, but sacrifice either damage or utility in some way for it.
Magi can do a lot of damage, sure. But they do no real affliction pressure during it, have no room hinder (ice ground lol), their beckon is slightly worse, no soul rezz, and half the offensive strategies a DW has.
This is basically it for every class. Other classes do more damage. If you want pure damage, you just bring like 3 int monks or something. But the monks don't have access to all the other things DW has.
You can talk about 3 shamans, but the 3 shamans need to fully automate or coordinate to not waste 80% their affs. DWs have smart affing that requires almost no planning.
I'd rather run into three of almost every other class (barring occultist, lol) than three depthswalkers.
DW attempted to provide a newbie friendly class as far as time investment and arties. The problem is you can't have a newbie friendly class that does everything, is hard to defend against (in groups), and is extremely effective whether you're a complete newbie or super good. If you want it to be newbie friendly, fine, but 2h is newbie friendly without being oppressive in groups, for instance. Sure, dwc can just spam curare/prefarar and be effective, too. Again, though, they don't have every single tool in the game at the same time.
Designing things to be super effective with minimum time investment leads to a game that isn't competitive. If everyone's fine with Achaea not being competitive, well, then can't argue with the majority. But I'm pretty sure most people appreciate the competitive factor.
I really don't care at all if Targ uses DWs, it's naive to think this is about Targ. It's the fact that in every city you see their newbies just all grab DW and be super effective, because why wouldn't you just shove all your newbies into a class that lets them be so effective with no burden of skill, knowledge, or effort? If a newbie asks me what class to be and they want to participate in group pvp, I'm pretty much always going to say DW, too. I fail to see how this is a desirable scenario.
If your argument is 'we need this oppressive and obnoxious class because otherwise occy is too strong' then the fix is to nerf or delete occultist not to create another class that means every single faction is annoying. I'd happily just delete DW and delete occultist both if that was the option given, but as is occultist just needs group nerfs and DW... how do you even fix DW? You can't really without reworking the entire class.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Re: timeflux: yes, we've abused timeflux plenty, and it's strong. But depending on group comp it can be a lot less effective. You're also not going to be abusing timeflux when you're syncing staffcasts/stormhammers for damage. That's the point--other classes need the right comp, the right setup, or to sacrifice something. DW fits into every single composition, takes no effort, and is always super effective.
Smart affing alone isn't going to lock people, but that's irrelevant when affs have more purpose than locking, too. Curare/kelp stack from a knight isn't gonna lock anyone either but they're still extremely useful, and make DSL better than just flat damage even if that flat damage was a bit higher.
Whether Achaea is competitive or not, the existence of DW pushes against that.
You're arguing from like an entirely different dimension than I am, not sure what to tell you. There's a reason games try to avoid classes like DW, and the idea that Achaea is somehow a genius game and every other major game got it wrong is absurd. Low skill and low effort deserve low reward. High rewards should be either difficult or risky to pull off. That's what makes for satisfying gameplay.
DW is great for low investment options. It's not great if you don't want to put time into figuring out what the class does - which is what you seem to be saying. "Anyone can pick it up and dominate group fights!" - which is simply not true.
I don't see DW as decreases competitiveness whatsoever. I see it as balancing the playing field somewhat, and allowing people the ability to fight better than they had previously.
Also, I never said anything about other games or Achaea being some genius. I'm simply commenting on the objections that have been presented. At the same time, what other games do have never had an impact on what Achaea does, so that point is irrelevant.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
1. DW's damage path is simultaneously a full-hinder stack - The degen instill order is clumsi -> weari -> para -> massive damage, and this means that DW makes no tradeoff between going for a finisher and giving some of their best hinder. Clumsiness is one of the most important hinder affs in the game, and for most classes it doesn't directly progress to a kill, instead serving as hinder and as a chaff kelp aff. For DW, it's one of the two afflictions they need to stick for their kill, meaning there's zero downside to keeping it stuck and making it all the harder to keep them from their kill.
2. DWs are nearly immune to cure ambiguity - Most classes risk losing a bit of momentum whenever someone gets two eats in or trees, because they have to guess at which affliction in their stack you cured. But because of how instills work, a depthswalker will rarely lose anything from this, as the instill just smart affs whatever you cured. Expert diagnoser gave other classes this capability, but its removal did nothing to DW
The second part of this is timeloop. Against most aff classes, priority swaps are a common way to relieve pressure, by forcing an opponent to contend with more ambiguity. Timeloop/instill completely removes this counterplay, as you either cure the instill aff and give them timeloop (which lets them re-afflict whatever you cured plus the next instill affliction plus a venom), or you cure timeloop and leave their instill progress in place. This also contributes to it feeling frustrating to fight them, because there's that much less counterplay on the defense.
3. Cull does a large amount of flat damage - This is probably something that hits me with my 5k health harder then a top-artied fighter with their 7k, but cull -hurts-. In my case, a single cull/capstone/tooros hit tends to take 55%+ of my health even with no sensi, putting it on the same level as mutilate but without costing them shadow.
4. Health pressure is harder to recover from then other forms of momentum - With afflictions, buying just a few seconds can substantially ease the pressure on you, and if you're lucky you can reset it completely. Health damage tends to be comparatively harder to make up, as reaps alone tends to mean your health is never going up. This means that if you get hit for a 55% cull hit, you need to be able to pull out hard hinder or run, or you're fucked. (Yes, I know I personally have kai heal, but that's not something most classes can do)
5. Running is -very- hard against DW - People have already gone into the tools that DW has to chase people, but one thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is the ease with which they can stick fear afflictions behind madness. Fear affs now serve as reliable tumble cancels, which removes the option of tumbling over a wall when you need to get out. This means if a DW gets momentum on you, you might not even get the chance to attempt to deal with preempt, you'll just be stuck in room hinder roulette until dead.
As for Depthswalker's utility being head and shoulders above most classes, I think this is more of a design flaw with other classes then with DW. Utility powers give you ways to feel like your class matters outside combat, which is especially important given how few players will ever seriously try fighting, and for novices to feel like they're getting anything from spending lessons. These last few years, however, have seen most classes' utility only go down, with tradeskills getting replaced with solely combat skillsets, and the dev team seems super reluctant to give existing classes any new utility. Then, for whatever reason, DW comes along and just gets handed a huge array of combat and out of combat utility. The answer here isn't to reduce what DW can do, it's to provide a comparative boost to what other classes can do, if you ask me.
There is no margin for error. What are you going to do, accidentally beckon in the middle of spamming your damage route alias?
Literally anyone can do well as DW in groups, and that's easily evidenced by people in clans, Achaean discord etc literally saying they picked DW because they're clueless and now they're doing well, lol.
Sure, you're not going to carry like Proficy in int monk, but you're contributing (and often greatly) with minimal skill investment. It takes literally 0 skill to walk in and aeon, or walk in and get shadow while everyone else is affing too. That's fine, other classes also have simple routes (snipe, etc). But they usually don't have every single option available to them at the same time in case that option gets shut off. If a newbie serpent gets hit with timewell, well, rip their only strategy other than trying to bite camus if they don't know how to aff. It decreases competitiveness because I just give three newbies under my command the push to go DW, and now they're very effective with nothing required.
More options does not necessarily make something more difficult, to preempt your response and reply to what you said. If I have 10 abilities, and all of them kill a person instantly in a different way, that doesn't make the class harder than someone that has only one route but has to work for it, to take this to the extreme. If these options were conflicting, or you had to react in the moment to swap between them, yes. But you've decided (or had it decided for you, if you're a newbie) if you're going to spam aeon or go for pure damage before the fight even starts.
To say other games haven't impacted what Achaea does is plain wrong, too. No one designs games in a vacuum, nor should they. Ignoring the fact that most games avoid a specific situation (or get chastised by the community) is sticking your head in the sand.
Just wanted to mention it.
I am taking notes, though, cause all this DW talk is giving me ideas for how stuff is used!
If you're not already, you should generally be running after you grab a shadow, both to reset their momentum and reset your age.
I feel like I've addressed a lot of these already. Clumsiness is very much "built in" to other classes the same way it is for DW, though. A very typical serpent/knight sequence is para/clumsy, para/weary, para/asthma, para/slickness, aconite/slike, and that is literally the exact same sequence for DW except the DW can't aconite/slike easily, which draws out their lock more. Obviously, you're not talking about a lock for DW. But the lock is basically the "end" for serpent/knight, so essentially for DW to be comparable, it has to at least do para/clumsy, para/weary, para/something, para/something, before sealing with another attack. For damage route, that's usually para/clumsy, para/weary, para/prefarar, para/prefarar, para/capstone, or para/clumsy, para/weary, para/capstone, para/capstone, para/capstone. The speed at which this works depends on how tanky the person is, but even against someone squishy I think it's about the same as an ordinary lock setup that includes clumsiness. Against lock classes, I usually go for the para/asthma, para/slickness for the extra hinder even as DW because otherwise I get outhindered by them moving to that part of their sequence if I don't do it too.
If DW had to go farther out of its way for clumsiness, it would not be able to beat faster momentum classes.
DW is definitely a little better against cure ambiguity, but cure ambiguity doesn't slow down knight/serpent much either, simply because of how fast they attack (artied in particular) and how well they can punish kelp prios. I'm saying this as someone who has played both serpent and paladin at a high level. Maybe DW is easier, and that causes people to think it's "better," but it's not actually better for me. The faster attack rates of knight and serpent make them feel stronger, and this outweighs the benefit of not knowing whether a kelp eat cured weary or clumsy, from my perspective.
Granted, faster attack rates are because I'm an artiewhore and play with level 3 arties. I understand that DW is easier for someone who isn't already good at aff combat, and that it is better unartied.
Name one class ever that was designed to be weak with lots of utility?
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Para/clumy, para/weary, para/asthma, para/slickness, aconite/slike is five attacks and has two places with 50% ambiguity built in. Tree would create more ambiguity on the kelp stack, and at any point I could prio swap and start shielding to create even more ambiguity.
Depthswalker is going to be what, Para/clumsy, para/weary, para/capstone, cull para/capstone, mutilate, with zero inbuilt ambiguity, the ability to keep far more of their momentum if it fails because of health damage, substantially reduced effect from tree, and prio swaps being worthless because of timeloop. How is this not stronger? I don't think DW is substantially slower on their attacks, either, because attune hitting every 8 seconds should make up for the ~10% balance difference, no?
It might well be that I just don't understand how this stuff plays out in top tier fights, but even if it's true that at the top levels knight/serpent momentum is just as scary, DW having this all happen automatically just means that they end up overtuned in the 90% of fights that don't happen at that level. That still seems like a problem, to me.
How would you personally rank the momentum classes in Achaea right now? I would like to know what you consider 'the best'.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Para/clumsy, timeloop/weariness, para/asthma, timeloop/(whatever they cured), para/slike, timeloop/whatever they cured, etc, etc, etc. And the victim during that timeloop time is not hitting you back. So it is awesome for the DW not to mention every attune tic.
Admittedly I don't know where the priest class fits here and now, but it wasn't weak in the past, nor in other games, outside of the usual waves of nerf>buff>nerf>buff that all classes get subjected to.
In fact, it's been one of the more contentious classes for being OP at certain points in time.