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Atalkez

I mean the reality is, you have to slow prep as some limb classes versus momentum classes. They’ve been tuned to be able to kill quickly to combat the more egregious cases of slow prep, to the point it’s a necessity to do in some form. You’ve got some classes pushing kill conditions sub 20 seconds.

”Run away” was a lesson that I learned the hard way

Proficy

Cooper said: 

There is a bit of a disconnect between players here. Some people consider "slow prep" to be an OK thing to do, and will fight people that choose to do that. For those unaware, slow prep is when you frequently leave the room while prepping the limbs of your opponent (or a doll/puppet).

The old guard considers this a pretty unsporting tactic, while the newer players consider this a fine thing to do because it wins them fights.

Some of the old players have adjusted their mindset, but to me, leaving the room every 5 seconds so you don't lose a fight is not fun and ruins the experience of fighting. But classes and player ability have been buffed to the point where this is pretty much necessary to fight 1v1.

So just leave the room after every attack Proficy, that's what everyone else is doing. At least you won't ever lose then.

Something is wrong... terribly wrong if that's how I HAVE to fight... wish I kept the logs, by time I got too my third hit I was gambling with death in the brink of being locked..

 He actually DID lock me 2 times before he got the kill.. had to Dform and heal out.

@cooper i understand that's how it's got to go mostly, but it yeah shouldn't be based around that... but I guess that's just how the OP life is

[Deleted User]

eta: my formatting was fucky.
Are you saying you, as a zero affliction class (I'm assuming you were DWB at the time)... Should be able to fight against one of the heaviest afflicting classes in the game, and never have to leave the room? That's uh... That's not right.

Bard has always been about quick locks, by virtue of not having anything else to threaten with, and also why they don't have room hinder. Their way of utilising limb breaks, is even used to contribute to locks (generally).

Atalkez

Proficy said:

Cooper said: 

There is a bit of a disconnect between players here. Some people consider "slow prep" to be an OK thing to do, and will fight people that choose to do that. For those unaware, slow prep is when you frequently leave the room while prepping the limbs of your opponent (or a doll/puppet).

The old guard considers this a pretty unsporting tactic, while the newer players consider this a fine thing to do because it wins them fights.

Some of the old players have adjusted their mindset, but to me, leaving the room every 5 seconds so you don't lose a fight is not fun and ruins the experience of fighting. But classes and player ability have been buffed to the point where this is pretty much necessary to fight 1v1.

So just leave the room after every attack Proficy, that's what everyone else is doing. At least you won't ever lose then.

Something is wrong... terribly wrong if that's how I HAVE to fight... wish I kept the logs, by time I got too my third hit I was gambling with death in the brink of being locked..

 He actually DID lock me 2 times before he got the kill.. had to Dform and heal out.

@cooper i understand that's how it's got to go mostly, but it yeah shouldn't be based around that... but I guess that's just how the OP life is

Nothing is wrong. You’re a no hinder class fighting a massive hinder class. What do you expect? Unrealistic expectations.

Rangor

Health pressure should force the bard to have to choose hindering affs over locking affs to continue building affs without dying, but that's just not the way it is anymore.

[Deleted User]

Can't pressure a Bard's health if you can't attack them.

Leffe

Cooper said:

The old guard considers this a pretty unsporting tactic, while the newer players consider this a fine thing to do because it wins them fights.

Some of the old players have adjusted their mindset, 

This cracked me up. The posts following Cooper's post ratified those statements perfectly. There was the 'old guard' saying 'that's stupid', and the new generation saying 'what do you mean you think hit and run isn't normal' and also a couple of older players resigned to the new way of thinking.

Shirszae

Hit and running is still stupid, specially if you literally run after every attack.

Kiet

Hit and run is encouraged by the way our combat system is designed, though. That's always been one of its biggest flaws. If you're a prep class and you don't slow prep at all, then you're playing suboptimally.

Voli

From what I hear, BM almost demands hit and run. Especially with the sheer number of defensive tools at your disposal, if you get caught.

Vika

My aff pressure can usually stand so that I never have to hit and run, but at times fighting people like Shirszae, Proficy, any other decent person at affliction classes and priority swaps then I have to run. I dont enjoy it, because I am infamously bad for not utilizing wunjo/nairat and believe my offense is my defense. But I understand the need to run against most classes. I dont think true slow prep (hit once, leave, hit again, leave) is healthy at all, but I can understand the need to slow prep. (Hit a few times, leave to reset afflictions, return and hit a few times) the reason it wont work for me is because I need nausea buried to parry. If I'm against anyone smart and I somehow stick nausea and prep one leg and leave, then they'll just parry the undamaged leg.

So I definitely think certain classes (shaman/jester) are way better at slow prep or true slow prep more than others, but overall I recognize the need to slow prep. 

Farrah

I don't think it's ideal for prep classes to have to hit and run, but it's also not ideal for momentum classes to be any weaker than they presently are. I have played for a long time, too, and it was terrible when the people who did slow prep were just 100% unfightable (and plenty of people did). I wouldn't consider momentum classes "OP" in modern Achaea. I would say that a few classes that 100% have to slow prep (DWB, tekura monk, blademaster) have a design flaw, though.

Kiet

Making it so the 100% prep classes have some kind of momentum requirement, even if minimal (kind of like dwc needs nausea stuck, or dwb needs the literal momentum, but probably more significant than that), and then giving them some way of surviving staying in the room at all might go a decent way.

Ultimately, though, slow prep just highlights an integral problem of Achaean combat, which is that you're never in any threat until the actual finishers. Someone can make 500 mistakes in a fight, but as long as those mistakes aren't done in the window of the enemy's prep finishing, it's irrelevant. Why bother sticking around, then, until my finisher is ready? With momentum classes the problem's less obvious, but the ideal strategy is still 'oops I'm about to get locked/absolved/hecated, better ditch' which means that optimal combat in any situation is always going to be running away a lot. Only hinder stops that from  being the 100% goto strategy for everything.

Voli

I mean.. it might take me a minute to prep someone using slow prep, but if they aren't artied I can probably kill them 7 times out of 10 within the next 10 seconds after I finish all my prep.

[Deleted User]

Kiet said:

With momentum classes the problem's less obvious, but the ideal strategy is still 'oops I'm about to get locked/absolved/hecated, better ditch' which means that optimal combat in any situation is always going to be running away a lot.

But then there's those people who're like "oh shit I have 2 affs on me!" - doesn't matter what affs they are, they're gonna drop everything to run. It gets really boring, but then I guess it also points out pretty quickly who you shouldn't bother fighting.

Kiet

Right, but that's ultimately the game's fault for making that the best (and often required) defence. If you're a momentum class doing that, then you won't ever win either, but if you're a prep class doing that you're advancing all the time from it, which makes it optimal.

People seem to think that it's the players who are wrong for doing this, but a competitive game should encourage playing to win, and playing to win should be fun.

[Deleted User]

Kiet said:

Right, but that's ultimately the game's fault for making that the best (and often required) defence. If you're a momentum class doing that, then you won't ever win either, but if you're a prep class doing that you're advancing all the time from it, which makes it optimal.

Yeah that's what I mean. I was essentially describing an even worse situation than your post, lol. They can do it because they lose virtually nothing from doing it.

Aerek

Dropped in just to look around, this thread's been a really interesting window into the state of things. Always said DWB Infernal would be insane if someone ever ran with it, nice to know I wasn't crying wolf. Momentum vs prep is a hard thing to balance, but I did feel momentum was over-tuned at/after Depthswalker's release. I prefer the methodical approach of limb classes, but being forced into slow-prep tactics to compete is one of the larger reasons I drifted away from the game; it just wasn't a fun dynamic. I don't know how you'd buff prep without making it outright superior again, so it feels like that's a problem in momentum's court.

Is Kiet top-tier these days, or is he just man-splaining combat to some of the most technically-skilled fighters of my time? Atalkez/Farrah don't need to be educated, and any time Calira disagreed with me, I took it as a sign I should double-check my assumptions.

Shirszae

It feels to me like prep always has the advantage, so its hard to agree that momentum in general is overtuned (Maybe some classes are, tho). Like @Pyori said, sometimes its not even a matter of people really being in danger. People just slow prep because they know there's basically no reason not to, which was @Kiet's point and it is a valid one.

Micaelis

Pyori said:

Leviticus said:

Pyori said:

Leviticus said:

Pyori said:

Leviticus said:

Same thing with shaman. Well timed cursewards are good momentum stoppers.

Lol.

I throw up a curseward, you breach, I walk out of the room and cure up. Momentum stopper.

TIL you can walk out of the room while off balance.

Unless you face an automated shaman using timer's to refresh their AF logic (or smashing their one button), you tend to get a shaman who hits the curseward. That allows us to walk out. I did it to Micaelis and Eigen both.

You forgot the part where curseward's balance is close to triple the balance lost of hitting into curseward. Also the part where breach is about 1/6th of curseward's balance.

The two you cited as apparently good Shamans, is about as credible as saying you beat Tahquil 1v1 by shielding a few times.

@Pyori: Up yours fatso I can shaman just fine.

@Leviticus: You didn't leave because of curseward, you left because there was no viable hinder in a group situation aside from vertigo\para from a shaman. Obviously. You can just...leave whenever. 

Kiet

Aerek said:

Dropped in just to look around, this thread's been a really interesting window into the state of things. Always said DWB Infernal would be insane if someone ever ran with it, nice to know I wasn't crying wolf. Momentum vs prep is a hard thing to balance, but I did feel momentum was over-tuned at/after Depthswalker's release. I prefer the methodical approach of limb classes, but being forced into slow-prep tactics to compete is one of the larger reasons I drifted away from the game; it just wasn't a fun dynamic. I don't know how you'd buff prep without making it outright superior again, so it feels like that's a problem in momentum's court.

Is Kiet top-tier these days, or is he just man-splaining combat to some of the most technically-skilled fighters of my time? Atalkez/Farrah don't need to be educated, and any time Calira disagreed with me, I took it as a sign I should double-check my assumptions.

lol. welcome to duel whenever you want mate (unless you're artied dwb rip). even when I was literally dormant I'd put my bets on my knowledge vs yours, especially if you somehow think momentum is stronger than prep.

regardless, I haven't disagreed with farrah about prep at all in this convo, we both agree that prep is strong and momentum doesn't need to be weaker. I'm posting general thoughts, and considering I've had the convo with farrah before I'm not expecting any of this to be new to her, but the forums aren't a private convo between two people :?

Driden

 Does anyone have a solution they would like to present so we can all discuss? The only thing I saw that was a solution was adding some sort of momentum requirement to prep classes. 

Farrah

I don't think anything majorly needs changing. It'd be nice if a few prep classes had more hinder while prepping so they could fight straight up. It'd also be nice if more prep classes required at least a little momentum to either bypass parry or execute their finisher. It's always going to be hard to perfectly balance prep vs momentum, though. It's just the price of having variety like that.

Driden

Farrah said:

I don't think anything majorly needs changing. It'd be nice if a few prep classes had more hinder while prepping so they could fight straight up. It'd also be nice if more prep classes required at least a little momentum to either bypass parry or execute their finisher. It's always going to be hard to perfectly balance prep vs momentum, though. It's just the price of having variety like that.

What classes would you cite in particular @Farrah

Reyson

I mean, people like to say prep > momentum, but if we take a look at a list of people who kick lots of butt, I'm pretty sure it's gonna be at least half, and probably closer to three-fourths momentum classes for a fight that matters/they really wanna win.

People might dick around with a second prep class, for sure, but if you wanna murder someone reliably, it's hard to beat tfang serp or occie or shaman. Theory is all well and good, but ultimately, people tend to favour the stuff that works best, so that to me is a clearer barometer than arguments.

Kiet

If prep classes aren't dominating at any given time, it's because the people playing prep classes are either a) not that good or b) not so dedicated to winning they're willing to drag out a fight into boredom.

There is no situation where prep classes don't have an advantage over momentum if the prep player is playing 100% to win, disregarding fun entirely. Momentum classes only have the advantage in being usually better at ganking unwilling targets that won't fight back and at the subjective 'fun' that some people might prefer (see: how unwilling people are to fashion as shaman/jester, despite it being the most powerful option).

Also, shaman's strength comes from their prep options, with just curses they're not really that good since you can walk out at any time. Still enough to beat most people, sure, but most people have no defence game. Alch/bard/shaman are the only momentum classes that can somewhat mitigate prep, and it's usually because they have some sort of prep with them, with shaman obviously being the most extreme.

If you slow prep hard enough you're never in danger vs a serpent or occultist. If you're playing for fun factor you might never slow prep that hard, but when discussing the strengths of classes we have to consider people playing 100% to win (within equitable circumstances, obv, not ganking someon 10v1).

Reyson

Serpent, possibly, occultist definitely not. They're still dangerous, and the only prep class I can think of that has a reliable way to get away without risking tentacles, that the occultist can't just follow through, now that writhe time is entanglement, is Infernal, and Infernal not having a passive cure makes Occie stupid scary. Well, BM has not-evade, I suppose, but has nothing to keep the occie in the room they just left except hamstring, nominally. I wouldn't put my money on the prep class, personally, vs. a really good occie

Kiet

If you're slow prepping to the absolute maximum extent of your game abilities you get like a billion attempts at getting past tentacles, it's not really an issue except in extreme outliers where you hit every single tentacle. Even then, you can tumble past your own hinder.

You're 100% underestimating what I mean by slow prep, here. You think it's just like 'oh I'll run when I'm about to get hecated', I mean 'I'll run literally constantly because I lose nothing from it'

It's also not really 'possibly', if you play defensive enough against a serpent you're never at risk.

Reyson

Tumble vs occie if your class doesn't have passive cure will get you killed unless you flame mono'd the room you're tumbling into at some point. Trust me on dis

Kiet

Good thing several prep classes have passive cures and if you expect to tumble you should've flamed a mono beforehand, then