Newbie Serpent Combat - Without Venom Trans'd

Kronimyr

Hello!

My city and house Serpents have been great in walking me through combat basics, but unfortunately my availability hasn't aligned with anyone lately...so I hope to pick your collective brains to help a beginner out (shout out to @Remilia, @Isaiah, @Kitiara). 

My current issue is I'm still several hundred lessons away from transing Venom, and I'm too poor to keep buying venoms to dstab. I'm level 76 (I like bashing), and I've already purchased the two No Brainer Lesson packs...so I'm not going to be acquiring lessons any time soon (Serpent bashing is rough). Every time I duel, I have no real idea what to do as all the Serpent strategies seem to involve using an endless supply of venom to spam afflicts for the coveted "lock". Group combat is fine, as I just throw down light walls, run away, and snipe.

Without venom, what should I be doing? I currently summon my adder, create an alias with "adder kill @tar" to hopefully prone followed by garrote, create an illusion alias hoping to trick their curing (something like "You must stand up") followed by a bite...then I run around and try to nickel and dime their health.

I usually die.

Any advice would be wonderful. I've searched the forums and all Serpent strategies are very high level and venom focused, and I'd hate to think that I'm not able to enjoy combat until I grind out enough credits to hit my class "shtick".

Dunn

Illusions in an offense are really not a thing anymore since serverside curing is not tricked by illusions. They were also nerfed speedwise recently as well so defensive illusions aren't coupled to attacks. 

Unfortunately, I don't think your strategy will net you many kills. The straight reality of serpent is that it is a lock class; they're lock specialists. The good thing about serpent is that you can participate in group combat with just a bow. For one vs one combat, however, venoms are the focus of essentially every strategy. I honestly would not mind bankrolling a set of venoms for you, though, and we can go over the basics. 

Caelan

How many lessons are we talking?  I mean, could one of the $10 packages fix the entire issue?

Aerek

It only takes a handful of venoms to explore basic darkshade strategies; as few as just curare, kalmia, darkshade can start netting you some success against basic curing, add in the slike, gecko, and perhaps a few other kelp/ginseng venoms to punish better curing. Most venoms go for 100-300g for 150 uses, so I think the idea of maintaining venoms is more daunting in your head than actually maintaining them is expensive in practice. Most of your training is done in the arena, where you don't actually use up venoms or cures, so until you start fighting regularly in the real world, learning combat is pretty cheap.

Atalkez

Caelan said:

How many lessons are we talking?  I mean, could one of the $10 packages fix the entire issue?

He already bought them.

What I would say I'd be smart about how you spend the venoms (while you're poor). Arena shouldn't use them, so a single application can last an entire day of testing in the arena.

That said, if you like bashing enough, grind your way to dragon. You'll make plenty of gold along the way, and once you are a dragon, you basically never have an issue with gold.

As for the lessons, depending on how many you need, I'm sure some people would be willing to load the credits. 50/100 credits is 300/600 lessons, cheap price to pay to have another person sticking around.

Kronimyr

You guys are awesome. I'd hate to take someone's credits, as that's real money! I really appreciate the gesture, and am a bit overwhelmed by the offer.

@Dunn You are a gentleman and scholar. I'll ping you in-game if we're ever around at the same time.

@Caelan I'm currently at Notechis in Venom, and I've purchased the two No Brainer Packages. Unfortunately, I'm a moron and dumped 1000 lessons into Avoidance hoping to survive longer in bashing.

@Aerek I didn't know venoms weren't used in the arena! Good to know, as I'm only sparring at this point since I don't know what I'm doing. When jumped, I run away. If venoms aren't used in the arena, I can get a few and just use them while I learn.

@Atalkez I'll look into dragon. I've hard good things, but it looked very far off and unattainable for me. I've also heard dragon helps mitigate many of the bashing problems Serpent has (namely, squishiness). 

Kronimyr

Holy crap, someone just gave me credits! I'm speechless...seriously overwhelmed, and I was not expecting that and I hope my question didn't seem like a plea for credits.

Thank you so much. You guys are amazing.

Shayde

Kronimyr said:

Holy crap, someone just gave me credits! I'm speechless...seriously overwhelmed, and I was not expecting that and I hope my question didn't seem like a plea for credits.

Thank you so much. You guys are amazing.

It's not much, but you'll need it as a serpent. Good luck.

Farrah

Even outside the arena, I think you're expecting far more expense from venoms than there actually is. Make sure you aren't wasting. Use "dstab target curare kalmia" and such to only use venoms when you actually attack, rather than spamming. You don't really need a vial of every venom, and can get them fairly cheaply.

Serpent is a pretty good class for not being tritrans since Venom isn't super necessary as a skill. Some classes really can't do combat at all without tritrans or very near it.

Caelan

Kronimyr said:

Holy crap, someone just gave me credits! I'm speechless...seriously overwhelmed, and I was not expecting that and I hope my question didn't seem like a plea for credits.

Thank you so much. You guys are amazing.

That is why I was asking.  I would have just tossed some your way.  I remember when my old alt had to wait to learn venoms and it sucks. Best of luck.

Bade

Dunn said:

Illusions in an offense are really not a thing anymore since serverside curing is not tricked by illusions. They were also nerfed speedwise recently as well so defensive illusions aren't coupled to attacks. 

Unfortunately, I don't think your strategy will net you many kills. The straight reality of serpent is that it is a lock class; they're lock specialists. The good thing about serpent is that you can participate in group combat with just a bow. For one vs one combat, however, venoms are the focus of essentially every strategy. I honestly would not mind bankrolling a set of venoms for you, though, and we can go over the basics. 

Not trying to side line this convo but you can't have one illusion per dstab anymore for defense illusion's?

Armali

That would neuter your aff rate.

Accipiter

I have always been of the opinion that venom is useless as a skill. It should have been changed when the tradeskills were split off but Serpent has always been the benchmark when it comes to affliction classes so it wasn't.

I wouldn't touch it until you after trans avoidance, seafaring, tattoos, survival, vision, all of the miniskills and riding.

Taryius

Accipiter said:

I wouldn't touch it until you after trans avoidance, seafaring, tattoos, survival, vision, all of the miniskills and riding.

Then you'd never be able to lock a Magi

Dochitha

Serpent is a curing priority punish class. It can lock, darkshade, camus bomb. You do best when you know how to punish based on what they eat. 

Even using unartied lash, serpent aff rate is still the best if you utilize hypnosis better, as in not just for impatience snap. You can kelp stack with hypnosis cos clumsy and hypo are in hypnosis. You can ginseng stack with hypnosis as well cos lethargy addiction and hypo. 

Don't really need venom unless you need camus or scytherus (B4 lock, othw your snake will give it after proning), or haem. 

You will be surprised how many ppl die to darkshade, even top guys occasionally die to it cos op. 

Talk to me in game if you need some ideas. 

Accipiter

Taryius said:

Accipiter said:

I wouldn't touch it until you after trans avoidance, seafaring, tattoos, survival, vision, all of the miniskills and riding.

Then you'd never be able to lock a Magi

Well tell me what other class skill only has 3 abilities that are useful (and transcretion barely counts)? That kind of thing went out with tradeskills for every class but serpent.

Bade

Shrugging, Camus, Scytherus, Transcreation, Notechis, Nechamandra, unless I'm missing something all of these are useful, and while Venom doesn't have a lot of useful skills subterfuge has more than its share, that's why I heard they didn't change it, especially since serpents have to be able to bite or they aren't really serpents.

Dunn

Illusioning after dstab isn't efficient anymore. Venom is amazing for scytherus because, as Dochitha said, serpent is all about punishing priorities. A well timed scytherus can really throw people off. You -can- just use snake pet for scytherus, but having it in venom allows you to actually time it when you need it.

Asmodron

I do miss the days of milking venoms. It was always a fun little hobby on the side and made sense as per the serpent class. (also didn't have to spend extra to get it as per now)

Kronimyr

I definitely need to learn more, as most of these words are gibberish to me. I have no idea what a curing prio is, or even how to know what afflictions my opponent has. I assume you track afflictions given against whatever curative you see them eat? So if I apply curare and delphinium, see them consume a curative that fixes paralysis, then I know sleep is still on and can thus poison with curare and something else? 

Mathilda

For aff tracking, that's the gist of it, yes (delphinium doesn't quite work like that, but for most other affs, yes). For example, curare/kalmia would afflict with paralysis and asthma; your target eats bloodroot/magnesium, then he or she still has asthma. 

A curing prio is just what your target likes to cure first. Prioritizing paralysis is common, for example, because of how good a hindrance it is, so you can do things like curare/kalmia, curare/vernalius, curuare/xentio and have the asthma, weariness, and clumsiness stick because your target would opt to cure paralysis first. You can punish this curing prio by doing something like curare/darkshade: if your target keeps getting off the paralysis, then darkshade will tick enough to kill him or her.

Farrah

Kronimyr said:

I definitely need to learn more, as most of these words are gibberish to me. I have no idea what a curing prio is, or even how to know what afflictions my opponent has. I assume you track afflictions given against whatever curative you see them eat? So if I apply curare and delphinium, see them consume a curative that fixes paralysis, then I know sleep is still on and can thus poison with curare and something else? 

Yes, except the cures have to be on the same balance so they can't cure both at once. Curare/Delphinium would generally be useless because they can eat bloodroot and use insomnia (survival ability) at the same time to "cure" both simultaneously. The same goes for if you don't have the survival ability, as you'd use cohosh for insomnia instead, but cohosh doesn't consume herb balance.

Sleep is a unique aff because there are two defences against it - kola and insomnia. Using a sleep attack will first strip insomnia. If you sleep attack again before they put insomnia back up, you'll put them to sleep, but they'll be able to WAKE instantly upon entering that command. If you hit them with a sleep attack a third time before they WAKE, you'll strip kola and they'll be actually "sleep locked" until they manage to RNG wake up.

Just using Delphinium on its own will never really get you to a sleep lock, though, because of how quickly your target can WAKE and INSOMNIA.

Kronimyr

This is good info, thanks guys. 

Antonius

Sleep technically works the same way, since it's an affliction just like paralysis. However, there are a couple of extra considerations:

Sleep can be protected from using the insomnia defence (either from Insomnia in Survival or by eating cohosh); anything that would normally put them to sleep will instead strip insomnia. If they don't have insomnia, they would be put to sleep (there's a message you'll see when this happens).

Curing sleep just requires you to WAKE, which has no balance associated with it (so even if they don't have insomnia, they'd be able to WAKE/EAT BLOODROOT all at the same time). If you have the kola defence then WAKE will wake you up instantly. If you have the metawake defence it will wake you after a very short amount of time even without having to enter the WAKE command.

And extending that further (since it's particularly relevant to Serpent):

If they're asleep, and you hit them with an undamaging ability that would put them to sleep, it will strip their kola defence. This is particularly useful if they don't have insomnia, since dstab with delphinium/delphinium will put them to sleep, and then strip their kola. (A damaging ability - such as jabbing with delphinium on a scimitar - will first wake them up, then put them back to sleep immediately.)

The hypersomnia affliction available from Hypnosis will prevent them putting up insomnia.

Dunn

Mmmm serpent sleep locks

Ahmet

I put a lot of time into trying to lock as a serpent without venoms/hyp and a forged dirk.

Protip: dont put yourself through that hell.

Kronimyr

Ahmet said:

I put a lot of time into trying to lock as a serpent without venoms/hyp and a forged dirk.

Protip: dont put yourself through that hell.

Would you suggest I just wait until I trans both?

Nazihk

Antonius said:

 (A damaging ability - such as jabbing with delphinium on a scimitar - will first wake them up, then put them back to sleep immediately.)

In Imperian, I once died to a pair of terrible knights spamming delph/delph DSLs, because my shield of absorption procced at an unlucky moment when their DSLs synced up. Since the slash my SoA caught did zero damage, it was able to strip my kola. 

I don't know if this works here, and it's absolutely not a reliable thing. I just mention it because it was the second most absolutely infuriating loss I've ever had in one of these games.  

Antonius

Pretty sure that works here.

Original Bard had triplejab, and one of the tactics back then was to wait until Anthem switched to cutting damage, ally the opponent and jab with three delphinium.

Alaskar

Nazihk said:

Antonius said:

 (A damaging ability - such as jabbing with delphinium on a scimitar - will first wake them up, then put them back to sleep immediately.)

In Imperian, I once died to a pair of terrible knights spamming delph/delph DSLs, because my shield of absorption procced at an unlucky moment when their DSLs synced up. Since the slash my SoA caught did zero damage, it was able to strip my kola. 

I don't know if this works here, and it's absolutely not a reliable thing. I just mention it because it was the second most absolutely infuriating loss I've ever had in one of these games.  

Wtf was the first?

Nazihk

Bards there had a channeled instant kill that would fail if you were deaf when it finished. They also had a passive that made your own entities attack you. Not disloyalty, just changed their target. 

A Bard spammed that instantkill on me while I was fighting another person. I ignored it because neither of them were removing my deafness. I was a Hunter when this happened. Their stupid passive turned my lemming against me while I was offbalance, and then my own lemming stripped my deafness on the same prompt as their instantkill completed. I was fully deffed, too, so it picked deafness out of like 40 defenses I had up.

It went something like this:

H:100 M:100 <e- db><br>Your jerkass lemming hits you.<br>You lose deafness.<br>The stupid song finishes.<br><dead>

I had to get up and go for a walk to calm down before I could play a gain. SO mad.