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The State of Bashing
IT's been some time since the inception of battlerage bashing, and numerous balancing tweaks to classes. In spite of numerous attempts to tone down certain classes and buff others in order to form an "equilibrium" for bashing, where all classes are supposedly equal, we are a far cry from anything like that.
Knight (except snb), specifically Runewarden is still king.
Artied serpent is second to none by an immense gap.
Dragon is considered superior to all but these two classes.
SnB, BM, magi, jester, monks (oh god, those poor fucking fools), and other classes are horrendously subpar compared to Runie/artied serpent. The gap is entirely too large, EVEN WHEN ARTIED, and makes bashing a truly disparaging event where a few classes blow away everyone else.
The main culprit is damage resistance. Runies laugh at damage, and that matters when it now takes half an hour to kill an orc. As a lv 3 artied mage, an UNARTEFACTED runewarden can handle areas that I would easily get decimated in. This is not good, nor is it healthy for the game, especially when efforts have been made to "normalise" bashing.
The second culprit is speed. Serpents who have the proper artefacts can blow through an entire zone in half the time it takes anyone else, and this is immensely important as well: especially if you want to compare gold/hour against any other class.
Should there be advantages to certain classes? That's up to the dev team. The problem is that the dev team has been advertising "normalised" bashing, and so far has had extremely problems with delivering that promise. I hope that there are changes we can look forward to. I mostly just made this thread because I hate bashing, and if I ever see another mhun again, I swear to god I will burn down Moghedu. Thanks, everyone!
Edit: tags for @Nicola @Makarios @ThatOtherDude?
Knight (except snb), specifically Runewarden is still king.
Artied serpent is second to none by an immense gap.
Dragon is considered superior to all but these two classes.
SnB, BM, magi, jester, monks (oh god, those poor fucking fools), and other classes are horrendously subpar compared to Runie/artied serpent. The gap is entirely too large, EVEN WHEN ARTIED, and makes bashing a truly disparaging event where a few classes blow away everyone else.
The main culprit is damage resistance. Runies laugh at damage, and that matters when it now takes half an hour to kill an orc. As a lv 3 artied mage, an UNARTEFACTED runewarden can handle areas that I would easily get decimated in. This is not good, nor is it healthy for the game, especially when efforts have been made to "normalise" bashing.
The second culprit is speed. Serpents who have the proper artefacts can blow through an entire zone in half the time it takes anyone else, and this is immensely important as well: especially if you want to compare gold/hour against any other class.
Should there be advantages to certain classes? That's up to the dev team. The problem is that the dev team has been advertising "normalised" bashing, and so far has had extremely problems with delivering that promise. I hope that there are changes we can look forward to. I mostly just made this thread because I hate bashing, and if I ever see another mhun again, I swear to god I will burn down Moghedu. Thanks, everyone!
Edit: tags for @Nicola @Makarios @ThatOtherDude?
5
Comments
I would say that Bard is also up there though.
- With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
- (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
- Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
- Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."
However, the sole reason I picked up a second class as soon as I hit 80 (Runie btw) is because monk bashing was so god damn awful that I knew I wouldn't make it any further in the game if I didn't switch. I literally would have quit playing if I weren't willing to make the credit purchase to trans another class. I don't think that's healthy for the game, but maybe that's just a me thing.
got gud
[Edit] I will add that I originally planned to do SNB and picked it as my spec and was horrified to find I did less damage as SNB with longsword/buckler than I did unspecced with the starting short sword to the same exact mobs. I quickly spent the lessons to switch specs.
Monk DOES feel terrible. I hunt in lesser in areas where I can tank (which is a healthy chunk with 7k hp in lesser)...
Areas that I can't tank though feel horrendously slow if I have to go dragonform..
Tanking doesn't feel that bad, but that's mostly because vigour, staff flail and panacea are bae, and vitality gives you some breathing room if things get needlessly hairy.
Also I think I speak for every druid when I say please let wreathe mauling do bonus damage to denizens yes plsthx.
Honestly, I like battlerage, but beyond that, the whole bashing normalisation thing has been terrible in that it meant making the one sucky thing about the game (bashing) even more sucky and for the most part time-consuming.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
dragon defensively should be solid, it should still be a very good choice if you hunt much bigger places.
When I started Achaea with Nataliia I began as a Blademaster. That's what I was really interested in for style because I was going to RP Nataliia as more of a... well... this describes it better than I could I think? Spunk? Sass? I dunno.
The whole Knight thing really has never fit the mercenary/samurai character feel I intended to mold Nata in the image of. It was never (and still isn't) my intention to have her be this staunch, upstanding, chivalrous sort. I took Runie after getting supremely frustrated with how godawful BM hunting was (because I'm one of those freaks who actually enjoys bashing and would have gouged out my eyeballs trying to bash as a BM).
I love the utility of other classes for other reasons, but just haven't ever been able to justify picking up another because I love 2H Runewarden for fighting (because it's not so incredibly complex to the point I-- as a green fighter-- feel like I can't learn it) AND hunting. Sometimes I even opt to stay as a 2H Runewarden even though I have dragon because the crits are better, provided I'm not trying to bash somewhere I want to tank in ezmode (or the catacombs and slugs. Damn those trucks slugs. They should drop dragon pieces.) I think the only thing better at this point would be the disgusting combination of Serpagons (that would be Serpents with a L3 dirk that dragons use instead of their intended attacks).
To be honest, I miss when battlerage wasn't a thing. I think it unnecessarily complicated bashing in general, is only useful for a small handful of classes, and really lackluster for others. Plus, personally, I don't particularly enjoy having to add on other attacks to feel like I'm optimizing my damage, and 99% of the time I don't have enough battlerage to shatter mob shields when I need to anyway if I'm using the other offensive abilities.
P.S.
Sorry about the huge pictures! I don't know how to do the whole spoiler thing.
That said, I think a lot of classes do need improving to make bashing more 'enjoyable' - or at least tolerable. Blademaster has always been absolute garbage with large endurance drains (supposedly fixed) and only Mir in the form of defensive. I feel too many classes use too many resources to bash comfortably now, where Knight classes, especially Runewarden, can mostly sit back and just jab their bashing key over and over with a little bit of battlerage sprinkled in to spice things up.
Bashing is one of the main reasons I play. I enjoy it, and will always enjoy it to some degree. But when I played an un-artefacted character, even a Priest, it felt more like a chore than something I could zone into and enjoy.
It establishes a baseline level of strength at the high end of things and helps even things out between the artifact whales and the plankton. When you run an event you can scale things around the dragon and be confident that a large amount of your playerbase will be able to handle it. It gives unartifacted people a useful and durable chassis during group fights. It's honestly one of my favorite things about Achaea, and I really think that Achaea is the only IRE mud to get their endgame right.
Carve is so strong in PvE that I feel like you really shouldn't be wasting rage on the shield break regardless.
As it is, you won't catch me bashing in Druid over Dragon unless I'm literally just screwing around. Even if I am, I won't be using Maul to do it, that's just painful.
@Nataliia the Tfang-dragon combo has gotten repeated nerfs over time, it's no longer what it once was.
- With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
- (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
- Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
- Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."
But this is a whole can of worms in and of itself, and I'm not looking to wage a forum war against serpents who might be offended by the idea of Tfang+dragon being wrong and something that just feels like it was kinda an oversight.
-- Yes, I did bug it, and no, I don't really use it.
I'm not saying dragon should be awful, if I was +3 con and str and defensive artied 2h dragon should be better, but throw in a level 3 sword, 3 embrasure artied armour set for hunting, that's a hell of an investment, and being about 15% squishier than dragon and 25% offensively stronger would be fair.
Edit: druids need bashing buff tho.
Even with all that I don't feel like it's as good as dragon for bashing. I definitely can tank more as a dragon, especially with having the SoA as an aside. I have a L2 crit pendant which I get way more use out of as a 2H Runie than I do as a Dragon, but it's still useful to both.
I bring this up because 2H Runie keeps getting brought up, but as one I can definitely say you still have way more survivability as a dragon due to resists and overall health. With my cape maxed out I can get to 12.5k health as a dragon and only 9k or so as a Runie (with runes). So just because someone's a whale doesn't mean they're gonna be better off out of dragon. I can't tank stacks in the catacombs as an artied Runie and can in Dragon, for instance.
- With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
- (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
- Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
- Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."
Tagging @Makarios because this still seems to be a thing.
I also thought this, as did others, but apparently it is suppose to be a thing... it was very confusing
For the longest time, committed Blademasters have been trying to make Blademaster bashing more on par with other classes. After many rejections in Classleads, we -finally- got one thing we were really hoping for: Building Shin from hitting mobs. As someone who used Blademaster to get to Dragon (I avoided the high tier areas and stuck to outer islands), I am really excited about the upcoming changes (if they are still going through of course..)
The reasons for previous refusal were based on players trying to use this to get full shin to enter groups...which frankly is already easy as is (just ask Jhui). Thankfully this has finally been accepted.
What does building shin help with? It opens up a lot of doors for abilities that could be great for bashing as Blademaster, but required shin. These are:
Bind: Will return some health (very little) upon every slash, if the blademaster has 100 shin
HealthTrans: Will be able to transfer some Shin into health
Phoenix: In rare circumstances, if a Blademaster finds themselves in a near death situation, they can phoenix and hope to get out.
Admittedly being able to use Strike Sternum against a mob with a slash would be a great, but i'll take what I can.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
Edit: Also curious to see if Horkval can be allowed to wear cloth armour. They are the only lesserforms that can't utilise paragons due to not being able to wear any type of armour.
My first class was monk, and it became quickly apparent when I came back in 2015 that to bash to dragon I was gonna need to multi-class.
A few months ago, I tried monk out again and was very disappointed so I dropped it for Bard.
I still dragonform for easy mode bashing on occasion or when I know people are out to gank me (ptv ftw).
But both Runie and Bard just flat out feel quicker than dragon. If I have runes in Bard then my tanking ability pisses all over my DWC tanking ability.
Though it's still infuriating to get WSC on the song blessing instead of the jab.
To sum it all up, Arte'd dragon is obvs still best for higher level stuff, arte'd bard next, then runie.
and monk still blows.
Also, from alting: Lower level DW bashing is absolute dogshit compared to any class I've ever played.
I'd put alchemist above dragon too, it seemed pretty damn good last time I tested it (that that was a while ago). Bashing in dragon is for people who can't afford artefacts or refuse to pick up a good bashing class.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files