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Aralaya

I mean, you also need to watch out for your allies breathraining you

Kyrra

Thurisaz isn't really LoS it's just got a three room range now. As long as you're within range of the target you can use it from anywhere, including around corners etc

Anedhel

I was always in favor of arrows doing scaling damage if you're hit with many in a row. That discourages evading/solo sniping during melees, which is a dumb way to die, and a volley will still kill you. Let's face it: anytime people coordinate things well and hit you with something well timed, it really ought to hurt. 

Jonathin

@Aegoth

They did worldwide cata once. The lols were real.

Jonathin

Ahmet said:

Walls stop LoS?

I mean, you'd think that would make sense but I'm pretty sure I've LoS'd past a wall before. Maybe it was a bug, or just one type of LoS. I dunno.

Wall don't stop bows, by they hinder accuracy p bad. Even with my lupine, aiming, and snipe I miss once in a while.

Aegoth

Jonathin said:

@Aegoth

They did worldwide cata once. The lols were real.

my first character was a cyrenian cata magi in 2002

Dalran

The continuous wall fights are more boring than the LoS itself imo, the scaling thing is interesting. Or just lower LoS damage as a whole by some percent

Kenway

Is DW the only class that can extinguish firewalls?

Calira

Kenway said:

Is DW the only class that can extinguish firewalls?

Survival has Dousing, which lets anyone do it

Taryius

Necromancers have Chill, which can be used on a firewall to douse it

Shirszae

Calira said:

Kenway said:

Is DW the only class that can extinguish firewalls?

Survival has Dousing, which lets anyone do it

The mental picture of people hauling buckets of water trough raids and such is somewhat amusing. 

Anedhel

Pff, plebs. Fluvian jars are where it's at!

Asmodron

Daeir said:

I don't even consider projectile LoS as a danger anymore. If you have a magi or a depthswalker, it's flat out countered. Things like breathstream, grove lightning, anthius, mind crush/choke are what you worry about these days. Must feel bad to have a Lupine these days.

I basically said the same thing some time ago. Timewell basically shuts down arrows. A number of times i bring my lupine out only to see the shot countered. It is pretty common defense these days to just pop a timewell up, especially with the amount of DW.

Only times I use lupine these days is for small skirmishes or assassination attempts. Seems to always come about being a failure in raids

Atalkez

Daeir said:

I don't even consider projectile LoS as a danger anymore. If you have a magi or a depthswalker, it's flat out countered. Things like breathstream, grove lightning, anthius, mind crush/choke are what you worry about these days. Must feel bad to have a Lupine these days.

I don't know about that. Timewell might be a good counter, but once it's gone, you're back in the same boat. Not to mention if you ever have a situation where you don't have a DW. Retardation isn't exactly a good counter, since that hamstrings your own offense and defensive capabilities in the room too.

Aegoth

Atalkez said:

Daeir said:

I don't even consider projectile LoS as a danger anymore. If you have a magi or a depthswalker, it's flat out countered. Things like breathstream, grove lightning, anthius, mind crush/choke are what you worry about these days. Must feel bad to have a Lupine these days.

I don't know about that. Timewell might be a good counter, but once it's gone, you're back in the same boat. Not to mention if you ever have a situation where you don't have a DW. Retardation isn't exactly a good counter, since that hamstrings your own offense and defensive capabilities in the room too.

You can put Ret in an adjacent room, and it'll stop all projectiles

Caelan

Farrah said:

Caelan said:

Farrah said:

That's one change I wouldn't mind, though - if ice/stonewalls indiscriminately stopped all LoS rather than stopping some, making some less accurate, and not affecting some. I think it's fair to have to kill the wall if you want to attack from afar.

Pretty sure the point there is that, in most cases, that would completely shut down LoS and force entrenchment, which kind of destroys the dynamic of some fighting.

Not exactly. It just means you need a designated wall breaker if you want to LoS and the other side is smart enough to douse your firewalls and wall. I think that's fair, rather than LoS just reigning supreme.

This is already the case, if you want to use bow or other LoS stopped by wall.

Caelan

Jonathin said:

@Aegoth

They did worldwide cata once. The lols were real.

That is how cata originally worked.  I remember being in Shallam when Magi came out and wondering how the hell I was being hit by people in Ashtan.  Insane!

Cooper

Worldwide cata was pretty much the bane of my existence for a while. Could not walk outside ungraced without a 94% chance of getting cata teamed. It was terrible.

Jonathin

Was hilarious. Sitting up in the Warlock observatory just super young me being happy that I was included.

Alaskar

See: announce post 702

Devran

Farrah said:

I'd be wary of that approach. I like the overall complexity things like entrenchment, totems/ret, LoS, icewall/firewall/douse, timewell, bombs, etc. provide. When I tried Aetolia, and everyone just immediately melees, every single fight, it seemed really boring to me.

Exactly the same thing in Imperian. Things are so homogenized and 'balanced' that nothing is unique or has any flavor anymore. It's GOOD to have things that are powerful and perhaps a bit OP. Without them the world is utterly stale.

Imperian used to have an amazing 1v1 scene. People were bad guys and good guys and reputations were important and stuff. The game is utterly dead now (like 20 people playing tops?) because in my opinion the game developers listened to a small crowd of people like Khizan and Co who advocated for group combat. Now that's all there is, and no argument about things like "Oh but Septus is around!" and stuff will change that.  Nothing happens except groups run at each other and mash their bashing alias. Combat in Imperian is a joke. The entire game is a joke. I do NOT want to see Achaea go that route.

Asmodron

Pretty similar to lusternia but in the opposite direction. It verged on always pushing out insanely overpowered capabilities which would boost one side over the other for some time. It just became irksome and tiresome to ever go into skirmishes because X will use ability that will instant perma incurable aeon you specifically without any way to counter except leave the room...which is impossible with Y hindering you. Like in imperian, the admin there choose to listen to a very select few...assuming they had the golden ticket of salvation to the imbalances...which only made it worse.

It is why I prefer Achaea's far more professional and logical approach for combat balance and changes

Makarios

There is a fine line between balanced and fun, but it is better to have imbalanced but fun mechanics than balanced boring ones. Ideally you get both, but people play for fun when it comes down to it. Personally, the big flashy abilities are my favourites and are generally the first thing I write when doing new skills.

Asmodron

I definitely do not mind fun abilities, but it just needs to be careful not to tip over into toxic for balance. It is like adding too much sugar to a cup of tea, no one would want to sip from it afterwards.

Nazihk

Devran said:

Farrah said:

I'd be wary of that approach. I like the overall complexity things like entrenchment, totems/ret, LoS, icewall/firewall/douse, timewell, bombs, etc. provide. When I tried Aetolia, and everyone just immediately melees, every single fight, it seemed really boring to me.

Exactly the same thing in Imperian. Things are so homogenized and 'balanced' that nothing is unique or has any flavor anymore. It's GOOD to have things that are powerful and perhaps a bit OP. Without them the world is utterly stale.

Imperian used to have an amazing 1v1 scene. People were bad guys and good guys and reputations were important and stuff. The game is utterly dead now (like 20 people playing tops?) because in my opinion the game developers listened to a small crowd of people like Khizan and Co who advocated for group combat. Now that's all there is, and no argument about things like "Oh but Septus is around!" and stuff will change that.  Nothing happens except groups run at each other and mash their bashing alias. Combat in Imperian is a joke. The entire game is a joke. I do NOT want to see Achaea go that route.

Imperian's 1v1 scene didn't die because of balancing around groups. Imperian's 1v1 scene died for several reasons, but there are two main ones.

First, it has a lot of affliction classes. I mean a lot. And most of these require some pretty high end affliction tracking to be viable. This means that the vast majority of the players were never ever going to learn their class to any decent extent. Renegade, Assassin, Shaman, Diabolist, Hunter, Bard, Mage, Deathknight, Runeguard, Paladin. Summoner even, if you're not massively artifacted. If you can't aff track at the high end, you will never be more than garbage tier at 1v1 in these classes, end of story. Maybe you'll be able to overwhelm an unartifacted person with damage, but you will never kill anybody who has a modicum of defensive investment. There is very little room for the casual fighter there because of the amount of affliction tracking that is required. 

There's only 2 real limb classes in that game. Nothing like 2h knight fractures.  There are very few classes in the game that are 1v1 viable without more work than most people are willing to put into it. And it doesn't help at all that there are multiple afflictions on bloodroot, a delay on paralysis, and an extra globally available curing method. Combat there is much less approachable.

Second, the small population makes the game extremely susceptible to artifact bloat. Quite simply, it just hit a point where everybody who fought seriously at all was so artifacted that it was hard to get a foot in the door. Imperian had a lot of promising people start and then fade out because everybody was so heavily artifacted.

A distant third cause is that all classes in Imperian were factional. Things like Retardation(and vibes in general) were exceptionally problematic there because they were restricted to one faction. Similar with telepathy and totems and all that stuff. It's much much harder to balance around factional abilities. Similarly, it also hinders player retention, because a player who gets bored with one faction has to drop their current class, losing lessons that were invested in it as well as the time invested in learning it.

Most of those problems just won't show up in Achaea, no matter how you fuck with the balance.

Kenway

Now presenting: The Longest Single Attack Message I've Ever Seen

Dochitha whips a Barbarian's morningstar toward your left arm.

Your left arm goes abruptly numb as a Barbarian's morningstar crunches home.

Dochitha whips a Barbarian's morningstar toward your torso.

A bolt of lightning explodes from the weapon as it makes contact, accompanied by a clap of thunder.

With a series of hisses, small acidic hailstones pour down from above, battering your body.

The right side of your body loses all feeling as the weapon of Dochitha discharges energy into you.

You feel the beginnings of the aura of rebounding surrounding you shatter under the blow.

A prickly stinging overcomes your body, fading away into numbness.

Bann

Kenway said:

Now presenting: The Longest Single Attack Message I've Ever Seen

Dochitha whips a Barbarian's morningstar toward your left arm.

Your left arm goes abruptly numb as a Barbarian's morningstar crunches home.

Dochitha whips a Barbarian's morningstar toward your torso.

A bolt of lightning explodes from the weapon as it makes contact, accompanied by a clap of thunder.

With a series of hisses, small acidic hailstones pour down from above, battering your body.

The right side of your body loses all feeling as the weapon of Dochitha discharges into you.

You feel the beginnings of the aura of rebounding surrounding you shatter under the blow.

A prickly stinging overcomes your body, fading away into numbness.

This seems more accurate.

Kenway

That last thing was supposed to go in combat logs, but oh well.

Report #16

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Submitted by: Anonymous  Status      : Unsubmitted

Skill       : Weaponmastery  Ability     : Two-handed

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Problem:

Two-handed knights have a very interesting combat style with slow balances and long cure times. 

While the spec seems simple it is deceptively complex when played well and it can be a powerhouse in 

the right hands (or just the artied ones but hey) The two major issues I repeatedly see with the 

spec are, one: that it does too much damage against targets at the low-mid end where any decent 

level of strength or artefact weapon essentially makes any 1v1 a no-contest matchup. And two: the 

only real counterplay to a good two-hander is sticking clumsiness which doesn't so much counterplay 

them as completely shut them down based on RNG alone. I'd like to see all 2h attacks become more 

percentage based with somewhat lower scalings on artefact weapons as not only are they getting a 

boost to damage, they're also getting a boost to fractures with speed increases. Additionally I'd 

like to see a better interaction with clumsiness for 2h than stare menacingly at their target for 

minimum 3.2s if they miss.

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Solution #1:

introduce a new battlefury action, BATTLEFURY FOCUS STRIKE in which the knight stuns the target with 

the butt of their weapon, guaranteeing a hit with the combined attack. Give this focus precision 

damage/limb damage but only one fracture.

Solution #2:

have clumsiness procs against 2h either still apply 1 fracture with no damage or no fractures with 

damage. 3.2+ seconds of nothing is a -big- penalty for an easily stackable rng affliction.

Solution #3:

give more "soft" counters against 2h rather than the one "hard" counter. Preapplying to legs is 

already very good (though underused) and weariness' damage reduction are both good examples of ways 

to make fighting the spec more manageable without bringing it down to whether or not you can keep 

clumsiness stuck and you're lucky.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am down. Expect some may not be, but who knows. Discuss. I still really just feel like we need a damage nerf but I -know- that's not a popular opinion so, this.

Taryius

I could see 2H getting the same lowered clumsy chance that Apostates recently got.

Or maybe an accuracy increase when focusing speed, that could apply to clumsiness as well.

Shirszae

Or maybe something -1 fracture if the hit would have failed due to clumsiness.

If in Speed, then no fractures but full damage,  if precision then only one fracture and the same lowered damage the focus currently has.