Quick Combat Questions

[Deleted User]

Namino said:

Lightbinds are typically active. Again, the shield loop is literally just buying time for you to wait for them to wear off, at which point you leave. But you ate all those overhands and when you re-engage, they hit you with lightbinds and pop your head again in two shots.

Lightbind doesn't have a permanent uptime.

You also don't need to even "loop shield" to begin with, so it's kind of a moot point and I'm really not sure why you're hyper focussed on it. Have you tried playing a class like Alchemist (for example) against it? Or are you just presuming they have it rough? Are you assuming you can never hit the Psion back?

Namino

@Taryius echoed these concerns above. He is an alchemist.

[Deleted User]

Farrah said:

I've just never seen the psion threat, personally. Particularly compared to other momentum classes like serpent, alchemist, and apostate.

I wouldn't consider Taryius to be an expert on Alchemist, yet, either. Also you can see at the bottom he said he felt Psion paths were weak, not OP.

Namino

Taryius said:

I'd agree that I actually think all of Psion's other paths are probably a bit weak. So I don't know how you'd target blast without nerfing the others further.

[Deleted User]

And before that...

Taryius said:

if you're a class with any sort of instant active hinder you can throw on them on head break, you're going to be fine.

Alchemist does Alchemist things.

Apostate has shadowstrike (on top of bruteforce affs).

Bard will outpace it without issue, and has tremolo/martellato shenanigans.

Blademaster has impale bs.

Depthswalker can just boost accelerate out of literally anything a Psion does.

Druid lol.

Infernal/Paladin/Runewarden depends on spec. DWB Is about the only one I see 'struggling' and even then prob not with artis. The latter 2 have passive heals to help, as well as spec-specific things.

Jester just hangs/puppet binds on head break.

Magi -might- be iffy?

Occultist just hangs/pathfinders on break. (or fights through it with lethargy)

Priest has a lot it can do.

Sentinel will almost certainly outpace Psion to any kill path.

Serpent was covered.

Shaman can vodun bind spam in trouble.

Sylvan can probably just turtle it out with reflections, then blow up Psion with damage.

Out of the Elemental Lords, I think Earth may be the only one that might struggle? Air would probably stalemate it.

Archaeon

DWB, Earthlord, monk are all spectacular at countering kill paths due to their quick limb breaks. I'm not sure why people can't just break a leg and prone for a sweet four seconds of downtime.

Atalkez

Until secrets proccs 3 times because you got stupidity on the head break and muddle 20 seconds ago.

I don’t feel like the class leaves you many options. Asking a limb class to break a limb (Earth/DwB) just to survive is pretty ridiculous. BM can’t impale loop without hamstring>dismount which is more momentum than you have time to build in a tight spot. Tekura is going to have to survive one loop Namino detailed before having kai to actually defend it. Apostate, granted shadow strike is good and Apostate can hinder them in return. Serpent can stalemate it entirely because of evade. There is one lock that I’ve found that works 25% of the time. Without evade serpent can’t beat psion, and this was apparently acceptable (and still is?) for reasons. 

The classes without an on demand active hinder just get shut down and getting out to a point where you can go offensive feels hopeless. I don’t think that’s a good situation to be in for any class.

I’m also not a fan of this trend of classes ignoring basic defenses. Shikudo/DW/Psion all ignore rebounding and Psion ignores parry as well. I don’t understand the reasoning behind these classes not dealing with defensive measures that BM/DwB/Serpent etc have to contend with on top of everything else. To me that’s a pretty stark difference alone.

Mizik

I think unstoppable limb breaks every 8s is problematic.

Atalkez

Every time I fight a Psion and get proned through mounting with faster breaks, I cry in BM.

[Deleted User]

Atalkez said:

Every time I fight a Psion and get proned through mounting with faster breaks, I cry in BM.

Honestly, that's one thing that always baffled me, even while I was a Psion. Why do their prone attacks all prone through dismount, when Psion came out after Shikudo's mount-prone was removed for these exact same reasons, lol.

Not to mention they have 'passive' prone whenever they give unweaves, and overhand, and their leg hits. They have no need to dismount/prone in the same hit when they already have so many ways to prone. Weird, inconsistent balancing decisions, lol.

Farrah

@Keorin Lightbind is arguably the strongest room hinder in the game. Pinshot would be much worse because you give up substantial offensive pressure putting it back up. Tentacles is comparable, but Lightbind has the advantage of potentially proccing again after they leave your room to allow you to catch up. Its short downtime is its only drawback and doesn't make it weak. It makes it not incredibly insane.

Psion attacks are average speed. I agree serpent is faster but serpent isn't "most" classes.

I don't think prone on shield is as OP as people make it out to be, but I also don't think it's necessary to exist. Currently, shielding and swapping impatience up is simply not how you fight psion. Don't do it.

What is confusing to me about this discussion is just the lack of seeming attention to how momentum classes function, though. Yes, serpent offense has a downtime while they rehypno. You also can almost never make any headway during that downtime as a momentum class, because every serpent will hypno, evade to reset the fight, then come back.

No other momentum class has a downtime like that at all. If an apostate or alchemist or depthswalker is outmomentuming you, you aren't just going to suddenly cure down and be alright. You have to actively stall their offense with hinder, pressure your own kill to stop theirs, or run away and reset. That's just how momentum combat universally works. It sounds like people are applying a different standard to psion.

If stupidity hinder is the issue, that's a very narrow issue. But several momentum classes have easy stupidity access and I'm not convinced their hinder isn't just as good. I also consider the imp/stupid hits one of psion's biggest strengths while a lot of the class's options are weaker than other momentum classes'. If that element was nerfed, the class would probably not be competitive at the top tier.

Like Pyori said, Penwize couldn't really beat me as psion. And I couldn't really beat Proficy as psion when he was 2h. The class kind of has a lot of weaknesses, imo. It's not at all my preferred class currently, without even considering suggested nerfs.

Archaeon

Why are we even talking about psion being op when dw exists.

Keorin

Farrah said:

@Keorin Lightbind is arguably the strongest room hinder in the game. Pinshot would be much worse because you give up substantial offensive pressure putting it back up. Tentacles is comparable, but Lightbind has the advantage of potentially proccing again after they leave your room to allow you to catch up. Its short downtime is its only drawback and doesn't make it weak. It makes it not incredibly insane.

Psion attacks are average speed. I agree serpent is faster but serpent isn't "most" classes.

It's not just serpent, though. Shaman, dwc knight, snb knight, serpent, bard, sentinel, and I believe shaman and jester all have a faster aff per second output than psion. They aren't incredibly slow or anything, but they're generally outputting affs at a slower rate than most other classes that focus on them, and I think the numbers are pretty clear there.

As for lightbind, I don't think it's weak in the abstract. It's something like a 4/5 total chance of keeping them with you, as opposed to 2/3, with the second room range, which i sobviously great (though it has the second downside that if they do get out, it breaks completely, meaning you can't chase and have it right back up like other mobile hinder). My problem with it is that I don't think it's great -for Psion-. Psion already suffers from being a class that struggles a lot more against prep than momentum, since prep loses little going for more defensive play to keep psion from ever making progress. Lightbind working the way it does exacerbates this by making it trivial to fully reset the psion every 22 seconds - generally much slower than their kills take.

On a different affliction class, lightbind would be nuts. On psion, it exacerbates one of their exiting major weaknesses. I'd 100% take pinshot over lightbind, because while pinshot does have a substantial momentum hit to re-up, lightbind gives a complete momentum reset before you -can- re-up it. I'd rather see lightbind made unusable off bal but be able to kept up.

Otherwise, I basically agree with everything in this post. Psion has some notable strengths that invariably cause frustrations, but as a total package it's really not strong. At most, it sounds like it might scale a bit too aggressively off of arties.

Mizik said:

I think unstoppable limb breaks every 8s is problematic.

I also have to say that every time someone talks about psion having super fast breaks, or how it ignores parry, that we're just badly comparing psion to other classes. Psion breaks primarily act as a -limit- for psion's afflictions, rather than being some separate strength. Psion can't salvelock, it doesn't have a prep kill, and its leg breaks basically take completely forgoing momentum offense to prep with. The entire purpose of a psion's head break is to let them give impatience, which is something that most lock classes can do whenever they want, it's pretty much completely incompatible to how other classes use breaks. If you took out limb damage completely from psion, and made its impatience not gated behind them, it'd be a -stronger- class.

Mizik

I wasn't comparing shit. I can't fight from the ground or while perma paralysed. My offense drops to 0. This happens very quickly and I can't stall it. 

Farrah

I think you are crazy re: pinshot vs. lightbind and would change your mind if you actually experienced it. Pinshot does not even last as long as lightbind. Psion has leg breaks and can easily pin their target down with those for the brief window lightbind is down, if necessary. It would be way worse to have to constantly reapply your hinder mid-offense, for psion specifically, because psion kills take longish.

I don't really agree on the aff output either. Shaman, jester, and knights are not really pure momentum classes at all. And I don't see how shaman output is better than psion, though it obviously varies for both classes since both have some gated abilities that give more affs at once sometimes (curse + invoke when invoke is off CD, imp/para/stupid when head is prepped, etc.). Jester is not going to actually out-aff psion regardless of its technical "aff rate" unless it's using aeon strategies, which are not really based on aff output.

Knight is faster, but won't kill with purely affs generally. It's just hindering the psion (which it does do well).

DW, apostate, alchemist are all around the same speed or slower. And since we were talking about attack speed and paralysis upkeep, not just aff rate, I don't think sentinel attacks faster either. Serpent and bard are faster, for sure, yes.

I agree about breaks though. People shouldn't be getting hit by psion leg breaks frequently unless the psion is not actually doing anything to kill them, since they can't build afflictions while doing them. Head break doesn't on its own do anything special. It's just a free affliction. So it's really just the ability to do para/imp/stupid every 5 or 6 hits (considering you have to wait for head to heal before you can start prepping it again). Obviously para/imp/stupid is a strong combo, no question. But it's not like they're breaking legs every 5 hits while afflicting heavily. Leg breaks are very out of the way of the rest of their offense.

Keorin

You -can- time a leg break to overlay the three second window where you can't re-up lightbind, but it means prepping a leg, breaking it at the right time, and delaying your followup attack (since you can't fit two hits in a psion break). At that point, you're losing the same amount of momentum as something like pinshot, even ignoring the four hits spent solely on prep. And that's my point, psion either has to burn momentum to re-up their hinder (taking both a momentum delay of a similar length to pinshot and requiring prep to do) or they can't keep it up at all, and grant a free reset. to their momentum every 20 seconds. Agreed that pinshot has a shorter duration, but I think that lightbind creating more of a momentum dip but being able to be constantly up would be stronger.

And if paralysis upkeep and hinder is the measure here, sentinel double afflicts much faster with axe, and knights definitely upkeep paralysis at a quicker clip, even if that's not their kill, and shaman with swift curses is -much- better at constant paralysis upkeep. From the numbers I've seen, DW does edge them out as well on speed, if barely. Apostate and shikudo are on par in terms of raw speed, and alchemist is hard to compare, so I've been leaving it out (definitely slower on paralysis upkeep for the most part, though).

Really though, my point is that if you're a class that uses afflictions going up against psions, your attack speed is likely to be at -least- as quick, and very often better. And so, while getting para/imp/stupid sometimes is definitely strong, most classes are either bringing clumsy+stupid at a fairly comparable rate, have access to para/slickness forking, or have access to lethargy.

Overall, it sounds like if there's one thing that needs adjusting, it's that mana drain post-psi blast might be a bit too aggressive when fully artied, and might be a bit too easy to reach (since psion's strength at mental stacking makes blast the only route that prio swaps aren't as effective on). Maybe that could be adjusted a bit, and the other kills could be made more reliable to compensate.

Namino

This thread is really making me scratch my head hard. I am openly wondering if a lot of people even know what fighting a psion looks like.

The fact that anyone thinks that, post headbreak with lightbinds active, any BM could possibly ever stand up and attack efficiently enough to pommmelstrike/strike neck their opponent into an impale is actually... just straight living on a different planet, potentially one of those newly discovered ones well outside of Pluto's orbit near the heliopause. The only classes that can counter this situation are those with instant, single-hit momentum stalls (cripple, for example). Not two hits. Not a pommelstrike/neck loop. People saying 'don't touch shield' are baffling me here, unless they mean use an active instant hinder, which I agree is the move, but not everyone has.

Seriously. Psion hits you with overhand and breaks the head. Let's be fucking generous as hell here and say you were totally aff clean before this. You're now prone with four afflictions, two of which are hindering ones -- stupidity and paralysis -- plus prone and impatience. You eat paralysis, stand up and... what? Run away? Lightbinds are active.

Attack them? With what?

Let's have a little fantasy together and say stupidity doesn't affect you in any way (lol). Paralysis/clumsy? They eat paralysis. Okay, let's assume they have no tree balance, again, being generous. Now they're clumsy and about to attack you after your next eat. If you ate impatience, they overhand you with a damage head and provide it again. If you didn't, they backhand and give you stupid and dizzy with an epi prepare and welcome to fuckedville, population: you. Clumsy isn't a hard counter. It doesn't even seem to be a good counter, as the proc rate seems very low:

41) You told Armitage: Okay. Let's say it this way. What afflictions are available for you to give

me on your next balance, given that you are clumsy?

42) Armitage told You: Clumsy doesn't affect me much.

43) Armitage told You: So I'm not worried with it.
44) Armitage told You: It might have a 20% proc rate or so.

If you got impatience and focused off stupid, you're impatienced again, paralysed, and prone. You stand up, para/clumsy again and get another low clumsy proc chance to stop their next weave, which comes before your next eat. Backhand with an epi prepare: stupid, impatienced, epi, dizzy. Enjoy getting blast'd. Okay, so unless we got two favorable eats in a row here for impatience with bad RNG, we're ravaged. The psion begins overhanding us repeatedly, taking our mana and reprepping our head. Lightbinds drop, and against dizzy/stupid we manage to exfiltrate and run like a bitch until it's gone. We crack our knuckles and walk back in for revenge and get our head broken again in a single goddamn hit because of all those overhands they used on us while ravaged. And now with a fresh set of lightbinds, we're in the same situation as before, just even longer before we can run. And if epi/dizz proc on your flee attempt, you'll probably get re-hindered by lightbinds and die after the ravage.

Seriously, what are you guys suggesting you attack with when you're stupified with a head break here that isn't a single hit momentum stopper?

Namino

Double post, sorry: If I run out of the room from Mizik's apostate with three lock affs on me, another momentum class, he has to hit me more than one freaking time to get the three affs back. The Psion doesn't. It can be as little as a single hit depending on where your head is at. This argument that other momentum classes are the same as psion holds no water whatsoever with me. Curing off the affs from a non psion momentum means they have to start building back up. With psion, there's a very strong chance they're just as close to screwing you as they were before, even if you've disengaged and totally peeled off all your affs.

That is unique.

Keorin

You're acting like stuck stupidity with paralysis being delivered at normal, often slower attack speeds is a game over scenario, when there's a -ton- of classes that can do that and have more powerful hinder options besides.

Does psion have some unique strengths? Yes, but it's also got a -lot- of weaknesses. And the speed at which they're taking a target from hindered to dead in your examples is not at all uniquely fast. If you think psion is this hard to fight, I don't know how you're dealing with serpent/bard/DW.

Gilliam

Without a mirror, you'd only need to avoid two hits while mindravaged to straight up out sip/moss/moon the excise. Admittedly this discounts unweavingmind being stuck, but the point is to demonstrate it's more narrow than you might think. I'm not saying you'd be in a happy place at that point, but as blast is psion's only kill that's avoided not by shifting curing prios but instead by counterplay, it is also the strongest. Everything else we could do pressures you to allow us to attempt an excise, because despite psion being about pressuring three kills at once, excise has the most requirements so it's where your curing is necessarily weakest.

SnB has a similar if not more oppressive affliction output with a similar if not faster turnaround on kill attempts with its focus locks, all while leading to one of the most secure prep kills in the game. And Paladin can fork that with an insta while keeping up piety. What you're describing with psion just doesn't sound that out of line with other classes to me I guess.

Taryius

Those classes don't have access to muddle too make stupidity incredibly more potent. 50-66% chance for stupidity procs is insane, especially if you're any class with dual command attacks, even more so if one of those can't be used off balance (like Priest/Alchemist/Magi/Monk etc.). 

Maybe stupidity procs need to be looked at, and the ridiculous rng ones need to be axed. Like secrets, forced movement into lightbind, etc. But looking as an alchemist specifically, I lose my active cure from stupidity so I can't use that to relieve pressure, and now I've got a super clumsy effect removing half (if I'm lucky) of my temper/wrack combo 66% of the time.

Namino

And again, we're ignoring the big issue which is that if the psion is overhanding in between cleaves, the non psion never gets a chance to pivot back to offense because surviving the first attempt at blast will likely involve taking several overhands while defensive, and the psion puts you right back into the hole literal seconds later. The ability to hold momentum regardless of your opponent surviving your first prep as a psion is unparalleled imo.

Gilliam

Muddle is insane and shouldn't exist IMO. Like it's an awesome idea and super unique and I love the concept of it but mechanically it is straight ass.

Taryius

Gilliam said:

Without a mirror, you'd only need to avoid two hits while mindravaged to straight up out sip/moss/moon the excise. Admittedly this discounts unweavingmind being stuck, but the point is to demonstrate it's more narrow than you might think. I'm not saying you'd be in a happy place at that point, but as blast is psion's only kill that's avoided not by shifting curing prios but instead by counterplay, it is also the strongest. Everything else we could do pressures you to allow us to attempt an excise, because despite psion being about pressuring three kills at once, excise has the most requirements so it's where your curing is necessarily weakest.

SnB has a similar if not more oppressive affliction output with a similar if not faster turnaround on kill attempts with its focus locks, all while leading to one of the most secure prep kills in the game. And Paladin can fork that with an insta while keeping up piety. What you're describing with psion just doesn't sound that out of line with other classes to me I guess.

You also have to take into account natural mana drain from attacks and focus and clotting. It might not seem like a lot, but it does add up. If you've got 5k mana, focus alone is 5% of your mana every few seconds if the Psion continues with mentals. Mana using classes can end up spending 150-250 mana per attack too, which is a few percent every few seconds, so odds are you're not sitting at 100% when the ravage comes in. Mana draining defences can throw a few more percents every seconds, depending on class. Clotting is also a 100-200 mana per attack, a chunk more if they manage to get a prone deathblow, and not clotting can be punished with combustion. And, like you said, unweavingmind which can be 8-20% every 5s depending on time stuck. Moon doesn't offer any real relief to mana drain either, with its flat 75 mana every 10s.

Armali

Alchemist is mana heavy and not a class that I'd comfortably want to try and bring in against Psion because of their easy stupidity and their impatience removal dohickey.

Keorin

100% agree that stupidity needs to stop being super clumsiness against some classes, and also that some of the more debilitating effects it rngs into should go. Psion is hardly the only class with good stupidity access, but it -always- sucks.

Losing or winning fights due to bad rng alone is plain boring.

Atalkez

I’ve always hated the balance/eq knocks in stupidity. Losing an attack/command can often be bad enough, but then being thrown off balance with no way to not have that happen can be frustrating.

Keorin

Could stupidity just be changed to have a % chance of making a curing action fail, and extending that balance by a short delay, equivalent to how long ss waits to retry the cure now? That could keep its predominant effect, while removing its highly variable effect on offense and the eq/balance hits and also standardising its effects between ss and clientside.

Krizal

Stupidity is also pretty debilitating vs serverside curing, since ss doesn't try the same cure again until .1s or so later if it gets blocked by stupidity, and it can even happen multiple times in a row.

Mizik

I do agree with Gilliam, I think this wouldn't be so bad if we brought their prep to S&B levels, 14-18 slashes to break rather than 4. He's onto something. Can discuss parry/rebounding/missing if we want, as well. 

Is there any reason breaks need to happen in 4 shots, design wise? That and the passive mana pressure are my two main gripes. Of course, as Knight I couldn't even envenom/slash/smash vs them through muddle.