Quick Combat Questions

Agravain

The nimble trait will increase your balance recovery. It's 10%. Sorry!

Also, get the +1 constitution trait, and then go for the receptive body trait when you hit Logosian (Level 80).

Achilles

Nimble is 10%.

Race doesn't matter as much as the specialisation you pick

Eld

Zael said:

Alright I am not a sentinel and I was wondering what can I get that speeds up balance recovery faster if I don't have the Jaguar morph yet? I also want to know should I get the +1 to constitution trait? (I'm a raja)

You are or are not a sentinel?

The nimble trait and reflexes are the only things I can think of that will improve balance recovery in general. There are artefacts to speed up certain attacks or abilities (such as bands for blademasters), but anything like that should be a much lower priority than working on your class skills.

Agravain said:

The nimble trait will increase your balance recovery. I think it's 15%? 

Also, get the +1 constitution trait, and then go for the receptive body trait when you hit Logosian (Level 80).

Robust and receptive body conflict. And as @Achilles said, nimble is 10%.

Agravain

Ugh new trait changes. Nevermind then. You can go robust until you get to a reasonable level (80) will do, then trait reset if you want to trade out the extra health for strength or something. 

I agree with the peple below me

Eld

Or just stick with robust, since it gives you about the same sip bonus as receptive body, plus extra health.

Nemutaur

Eld said:

Or just stick with robust, since it gives you about the same sip bonus as receptive body, plus extra health.

And more health gained from moss too.

Mizik

Nimble, Robust, whatever.

I took increased dodge, since it stacked neatly with my Rajamala dodge.

Zael

Um.. why did I say im not? *facepalm* need to turn on the light in the study room before I type anything lol. I mean I am a sentinel.

Zael

thanks guys for the helpful info.

Zael

Soo I'm a Blademaster again (finally made my mind up), will robust still work for a BM?

Sena

Robust is useful for anyone.

Zael

Alright, thanks for the info.

Dynos

Two questions pertaining to monks and arti's,

Do knuckles also increase PvE damage or just PvP? 

Also would it be a greater damage increase to get knuckles or strength stat increase? I ask this because though knuckles may have a greater increase, strength would also increase kick damage too and I'm not sure which has better returns for cost.

Thanks 

Rispok

I'm not a monk, but:

Yes

Knuckles

Kazu

Rispok said:

I'm not a monk, but:

Yes

Knuckles

This is correct.

Sidonia

http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/comment/58594/#Comment_58594
http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/comment/58378/#Comment_58378

Do you mean these?

Eld

Daeir said:

Would anyone happen to have the Blademaster stance breaking/hunting table I saw floating around here a few months ago? It practically detailed the average statistic changes for each stance in combat and hunting, and is something I would love to review, especially as I am trying to ascertain which stance is the most viable after Mir.

For hunting, @Sidonia gave the links. Best dps is Arash, followed by Sanya, and Thyr/Doya. If you're fighting things you can't tank in Arash (likely), try Sanya, with Mir as a fallback if you need better defense. For combat, there are other considerations (shin, accuracy, etc); for limb damage numbers, dissecting @Dorn's mudlet limb counter is probably the best source of public numbers.

Eld

It's useful when you're being heavily hindered and not getting many hits in, so want to get the most prep you can out of each hit, without dying from a gnat's sneeze like you do in Arash. I think it might have boosted accuracy (comparable to Thyr) but haven't actually tested that at all.

Dorn

As I recall, Doya was close to Arash in limb damage numbers (~2.85 'points' of limb damage in Doya versus ~3 in Arash for an on-side limbslash), about as slow as Mir, with accuracy somewhere comparable to Thyr (I didn't notice many misses even on relatively 'dodgy' targets, as opposed to Sanya, but that's anecdotal and may be inaccurate)

It's decent if you're worried about damage but not so worried that you need Mir, and want to prep in the minimum possible number of hits, such as if hindered. But, well. Sanya will give you superior Shin gain, which may well save your hide in a pinch (though not so much as it could've when Phoenix was more powerful - I used to fight exclusively in Sanya specifically to get Phoenix faster), Thyr will give you the accuracy at nearly twice the hits over time, Mir will give you much more solid defense, Arash will give you better spike DPS. It's kind of a narrow band of scenarios where Doya might actually be useful.

I guess it might have utility against Serpents who're throwing a lot of hindrance? Too dodgy to really want to use Mir on, but too hindery for Thyr's speed to be useful. I'd still generally go with Thyr just because Thyr pommelspam is great counter-hindrance, though.

...I just spent three paragraphs to tell you exactly what @Eld told you, basically. Aheh.

Naisar

Earth is the red-headed stepchild of Blademaster elements.  The theme is used in stances, fists, infuses, and bombs.  Of those, Earth is only present in the stances, and it's by far the crappiest one.  Never understood why it would be introduced in one place and never used again.  Makes the skillsets feel incomplete.

Edit: The shin bombs in general were a huge waste of design space.  In their current state blizzard & thunderstorm are just bad versions of annihilate.  Should have left Annihilate as-is, dropped damage on blizzard and made the freeze better, dropped damage on thunderstorm and given it better afflicting, and implemented the earth bomb for a low-burst DPS booster.  Right now in between Bind, Phoenix, and Healthtrans there's every incentive to hoard Shin and none to expend large amounts.  Making bombs viable increases diversity, plugs a small design hole, and forces a choice between stockpiling Shin for defensive gain or using it to bolster offence.

But I digress.  Poor design bugs me.

Synbios

Naisar said:

Earth is the red-headed stepchild of Blademaster elements.  The theme is used in stances, fists, infuses, and bombs.  Of those, Earth is only present in the stances, and it's by far the crappiest one.  Never understood why it would be introduced in one place and never used again.  Makes the skillsets feel incomplete.

Earthstrike replaces sternum in functionality.

Infuse Earth changes damage type to blunt, with a chance of added bleed as rocky shards pierce the body.

Shin Liquefaction is the Earthbomb, stomping the ground, liquefying it and slowing everyone in the room by means of aeon-like sludge or loss of balance(whichever is better).

Bam, I just fixed Earth element. You may send your Nobel Peace Prize to my usual address. Thank you and good night.

Whether I am joking or not is an exercise left to the reader.

Naisar

It's late, maybe I'm confused, maybe you're using a secondary definition I haven't heard of, but I'm having a real hard time understanding what's going on right now.

strid·u·late  (strj-lt)

v. strid·u·lat·ed, strid·u·lat·ing, strid·u·lates

v.intr.

To produce a shrill grating, chirping, or hissing sound by rubbing body parts together, as certain insects do.

Sena

Synbios said:

Shin Liquefaction is the Earthbomb, stomping the ground, liquefying it and slowing everyone in the room by means of aeon-like sludge or loss of balance(whichever is better).

I'd rather have shin earthquake, a ranged room attack (target a specific person in the area, the quake hits everyone in the room with that person). Maybe have it strip levitation and prone anyone without levitation, or just prone everyone, or have a chance to throw them off balance for a moment.

Naisar said:

It's late, maybe I'm confused, maybe you're using a secondary definition I haven't heard of, but I'm having a real hard time understanding what's going on right now.

strid·u·late  (strj-lt)

v. strid·u·lat·ed, strid·u·lat·ing, strid·u·lates

v.intr.

To produce a shrill grating, chirping, or hissing sound by rubbing body parts together, as certain insects do.

Stridulation is a crystalism vibe that disrupts the equilibrium of undeaf enemies.

Synbios

Daeir said:

Shin blizzard is like a cheap version of deepfreeze with RNG invovled. Not useless at all. Same deal for thunderstorm. They both have their uses, just annihilation is better.

Giving blademasters any form of stridulation with a spammable balance/stun disrupt would make them ridiculously strong. I think giving Doya a significant bonus to strike balance time should be enough to make it more useful.

The problem with that is that any strikes preceded with a slash will follow the balance of the slash, so that change would only be useful for blademasters looking to dry-strike someone.

Naisar

All becomes clear, thanks @Sena.

Protip: Using what Synbios mentioned, you can delay the strike to the last possible instant and do things like double chin for a ghetto double delph, or do asthma/slickness for instant riftlock.  Stupid way to have to do it, though.

I would love to see the shin bombs either used for 1v1 diversity (possibilities in edit above) or group combat.  I sincerely doubt we'd get anything ranged just because BM is so strong in duels already.  If I were going to add a ranged ability, I'd do something with Burst-give it a shin cost, make it area-wide and stopped by shields.  It does like 400 damage; but it'd give us something to do at least.  It'd be hot to have something real, though.  Monks are the closest analogue BM has, and they trade a slightly less effective finisher for the best ranged in the game.

Edit: Typos.  Yes that last sentence isn't completely accurate, but goddamn if it doesn't feel that way sometimes.

Nemutaur

Synbios said:

Naisar said:

Earth is the red-headed stepchild of Blademaster elements.  The theme is used in stances, fists, infuses, and bombs.  Of those, Earth is only present in the stances, and it's by far the crappiest one.  Never understood why it would be introduced in one place and never used again.  Makes the skillsets feel incomplete.

Earthstrike replaces sternum in functionality.

Infuse Earth changes damage type to blunt, with a chance of added bleed as rocky shards pierce the body.

Shin Liquefaction is the Earthbomb, stomping the ground, liquefying it and slowing everyone in the room by means of aeon-like sludge or loss of balance(whichever is better).

Bam, I just fixed Earth element. You may send your Nobel Peace Prize to my usual address. Thank you and good night.

Whether I am joking or not is an exercise left to the reader.

Just no, I dont want to lose BMs to the Warlocks too because they are Earth elementalists.

Eld

Nemutaur said:

Synbios said:

Naisar said:

Earth is the red-headed stepchild of Blademaster elements.  The theme is used in stances, fists, infuses, and bombs.  Of those, Earth is only present in the stances, and it's by far the crappiest one.  Never understood why it would be introduced in one place and never used again.  Makes the skillsets feel incomplete.

Earthstrike replaces sternum in functionality.

Infuse Earth changes damage type to blunt, with a chance of added bleed as rocky shards pierce the body.

Shin Liquefaction is the Earthbomb, stomping the ground, liquefying it and slowing everyone in the room by means of aeon-like sludge or loss of balance(whichever is better).

Bam, I just fixed Earth element. You may send your Nobel Peace Prize to my usual address. Thank you and good night.

Whether I am joking or not is an exercise left to the reader.

Just no, I dont want to lose BMs to the Warlocks too because they are Earth elementalists.

This wouldn't really make them more "elementalists" than they already are.

Jonathin

Nemutaur said:

Synbios said:

Naisar said:

Earth is the red-headed stepchild of Blademaster elements.  The theme is used in stances, fists, infuses, and bombs.  Of those, Earth is only present in the stances, and it's by far the crappiest one.  Never understood why it would be introduced in one place and never used again.  Makes the skillsets feel incomplete.

Earthstrike replaces sternum in functionality.

Infuse Earth changes damage type to blunt, with a chance of added bleed as rocky shards pierce the body.

Shin Liquefaction is the Earthbomb, stomping the ground, liquefying it and slowing everyone in the room by means of aeon-like sludge or loss of balance(whichever is better).

Bam, I just fixed Earth element. You may send your Nobel Peace Prize to my usual address. Thank you and good night.

Whether I am joking or not is an exercise left to the reader.

Just no, I dont want to lose BMs to the Warlocks too because they are Earth elementalists.

Good thing for you that when the 1-class/house/city thing went in, I flipped a coin with Deladan for the fate of Blademasters.

Synbios

Jonathin said:

Nemutaur said:

Synbios said:

Naisar said:

Earth is the red-headed stepchild of Blademaster elements.  The theme is used in stances, fists, infuses, and bombs.  Of those, Earth is only present in the stances, and it's by far the crappiest one.  Never understood why it would be introduced in one place and never used again.  Makes the skillsets feel incomplete.

Earthstrike replaces sternum in functionality.

Infuse Earth changes damage type to blunt, with a chance of added bleed as rocky shards pierce the body.

Shin Liquefaction is the Earthbomb, stomping the ground, liquefying it and slowing everyone in the room by means of aeon-like sludge or loss of balance(whichever is better).

Bam, I just fixed Earth element. You may send your Nobel Peace Prize to my usual address. Thank you and good night.

Whether I am joking or not is an exercise left to the reader.

Just no, I dont want to lose BMs to the Warlocks too because they are Earth elementalists.

Good thing for you that when the 1-class/house/city thing went in, I flipped a coin with Deladan for the fate of Blademasters.

Imagine a conversation with that:

Novice: Mr. Mizik, what is the reason why the Ashura accept blademasters?

Mizik: -remembering a dark and smoky Fire and Spice, as a coin was flipped, ending up with the Ashura winning Blademasters while everyone is drinking, carousing, and snarking at ridiculously-described novices- Uh...mind, body and soul?

Jonathin

It was actually at the gates with Imyrr witnessing.