Quick Combat Questions

Jovolo

Stasis does halve the decay rate. I would just get a pet, personally, and then wait for the soulpiercers. Then you can also save up an additional 100 credits to customise both the soulpiercers when you get them.

Achilles

You can make those rapiers last a long time with stasis and/or a storeroom.  I'd get SPs as a Paladin but not as important for Infernals or Runies.

Mizik

I'll buy those off you and you can get both.

Enyx

How much damage can a SoA take before it stops shielding you for a short time. I also want to know how much hits it can stand from a blademaster's blade.

Jovolo

Hehe. An SoA provides a permanent 20/20 cutting/blunt protection (the kind your armour has) iirc the numbers, and provides a 20% chance to negate the danage on an attack you receive. It doesnt cease effectiveness unless you unwield it. Someone might correct me on the numbers, but an SoA does not cease effectiveness. Great artefact. (My first and only)

Iocun

15% chance to negate.

Enyx

Alright, cool and I wonder can you wield SoA while being morphed (Sentinel/Druid) into a Jaguar and be able to attack?

Sidonia

The morphs are not physical transformations, so you can, yes. But a druid is usually better off holding their staff (two hands required) than SoA

Enyx

ah ha.. ok cool thanks for the info

Penwize

Kind of a vague question, I know, but how are Alchemists supposed to be handled, curatively speaking?  Particularly, how do you keep the insane bleeding they can give under control?
Also, I know ginger drops fluid levels, but how are the rest of their afflictions handled?

Shunsui

The tempered humours, which an alchemist needs to increase your fluid levels to afflict you with, are cured by draining your fluids completely. A few seconds fluids free will start knocking off any humours one at a time. You'll generally need to run to accomplish this since nothing really stops tempering. As for the bleeding...focus on sipping mana, and don't let the bleeding get very high, always clot to 0 bleed when you can. A tempered sanguine humour causes bleeding to increase by 25% (I think) at regular intervals, as well as increasing the cost of clot and reducing the effectiveness of the moss tattoo. If they afflict you with vitrify (causes attacks that use balance to make you bleed) slow down and space out your attacks a bit, especially as a monk where you're focusing on prep. If you don't let them get the momentum built up, the bleeding is easy to manage.

Makarios

You'll see a difference in entity balance if you spec int. You'll not see any change unless you do that (without artefacts).

Essentially, to get that offensive bonus you're going to have to sacrifice constitution.

Borran

wouldn't the right mog also help you reach that level of int?

Makarios

In theory.

Penwize

Shunsui said:

The tempered humours, which an alchemist needs to increase your fluid levels to afflict you with, are cured by draining your fluids completely. A few seconds fluids free will start knocking off any humours one at a time. You'll generally need to run to accomplish this since nothing really stops tempering. As for the bleeding...focus on sipping mana, and don't let the bleeding get very high, always clot to 0 bleed when you can. A tempered sanguine humour causes bleeding to increase by 25% (I think) at regular intervals, as well as increasing the cost of clot and reducing the effectiveness of the moss tattoo. If they afflict you with vitrify (causes attacks that use balance to make you bleed) slow down and space out your attacks a bit, especially as a monk where you're focusing on prep. If you don't let them get the momentum built up, the bleeding is easy to manage.

Yeah, vitrify is pretty brutal against monk's three-command attacks.  I keep going from completely fine to over 1000 bleeding between bleeding ticks.  Do you happen to know how much bleeding each proc of it causes?

It's tricky for me to find an alchemist to test with and get the numbers from being an Eleusian and all.

Sena

Penwize said:

Yeah, vitrify is pretty brutal against monk's three-command attacks.  I keep going from completely fine to over 1000 bleeding between bleeding ticks.  Do you happen to know how much bleeding each proc of it causes?

 According to my notes (which aren't as clear as I'd like) it's 35 bleeding for 1 second of balance loss, 50 bleeding for 1.5s, 60 for 2s, 75 for 4+s.

Jovolo

Makarios said:

You'll see a difference in entity balance if you spec int. You'll not see any change unless you do that (without artefacts).

Essentially, to get that offensive bonus you're going to have to sacrifice constitution.

Yeah, figured. It's a good idea, though a little difficult to handle with the random bloodleech at the speed it delivers, considering it just gives a random aff from the pool that you can instill from, (And out of 6 afflictions there are only two cures for the whole lot so keeping track is a pain) but it's good to see that imba full offence/full defence trend after the trait and spec system, hopefully knights soon. Hey.

With 16 int now, bloodleech hits around 1.9 seconds, and with 19 int it was almost as quick as herb balance, so pretty nice. Would be amazing if the bloodleech and storm/humbug affs could be controlled, but I'm just thinking wishfully there.

Anedhel

Ginger eating to bring balances back into a normal range is stupid at the moment. You shouldn't have to spend a couple minutes for about 10-12 seconds of attacking on their part, curing up. It makes fighting alchemists really boring, tbh.

Iocun

Not necessarily boring at all. For me, fighting alchemists is all about killing them before they can temper too much, which results in the total opposite of boredom.

Anedhel

Eh, I suppose it depends on who you are. For me, I can get about four DSLs in (roughly eight seconds) before I have to run out and mill around for a minute to not get schooled.

Penwize

That's sort of my problem right now, I can only get a couple of combos in before my bleeding starts to explode and I have to spend quite some time running to drop my fluids back down and get my bleeding back to within reasonable levels so I don't get aurified.  That's why I was wondering if I was doing something wrong with handling them, because I need to run from them entirely too much for it to be reasonable compared to every other class I've fought.

Eld

Penwize said:

That's sort of my problem right now, I can only get a couple of combos in before my bleeding starts to explode and I have to spend quite some time running to drop my fluids back down and get my bleeding back to within reasonable levels so I don't get aurified.  That's why I was wondering if I was doing something wrong with handling them, because I need to run from them entirely too much for it to be reasonable compared to every other class I've fought.

Well, since tempered sanguine compounds your bleeding exponentially (increases by some percentage of the current level on some regular tick), if you can regularly clot off all or most of the bleeding before a tick or two, I think you can keep it pretty manageable. That will probably also require slowing your offense so you're not compounding it too much with vitrify. But if your bleeding is increasing too much between bleed messages, sounds like maybe you need to identify things that are causing bleeding and clot preemptively, rather than waiting for bleeding ticks to see how much you're bleeding.

Anedhel

I haven't found any solutions yet. Just the whole run-around-like-an-idiot-for-too-long thing.

Enyx

As a newly sentinel I want to know whats the best traits for hunting? I have only Nimble but not sure if sentinels need it or not.

Sidonia

Enyx said:

As a newly sentinel I want to know whats the best traits for hunting? I have only Nimble but not sure if sentinels need it or not.

For bashing probably nimble, robust and then lucky or aim to kill for majors. Minors can be anything but I'd recommend meticulous care, knife thrower (not useful for bashing but needed for pk), then the willpower or endurance regen traits depending on your fitness/philosophy.

Kuy

So, bard seems really neat, though I don't think I'll be able to have three trans skills for a long, long while.  The three knight classes also look super cool, though I'm leaning toward Runewarden and Paladin.

What sort of weapon stats do people look for?  The forging system here is waaaaaay different than what I'm used to.  How tough is it to find combat-viable weapons?

Achilles

If you cant tritrans then knight is a good class for you. You really only need to trans chivalry as a Paladin and Runewarden and maybe mythical for devotion or runelore.

Combat viable rapiers aren't that hard. You can get by with 74 160 223 rapiers.

Exelethril

Kuy said:

So, bard seems really neat, though I don't think I'll be able to have three trans skills for a long, long while.  The three knight classes also look super cool, though I'm leaning toward Runewarden and Paladin.

What sort of weapon stats do people look for?  The forging system here is waaaaaay different than what I'm used to.  How tough is it to find combat-viable weapons?

That's entirely dependent on your standards and willingness to pay. "Elite" rapiers will most likely be out of your present affordability range but like Achilles mentioned, it's alright to start off with 70/160/220+ rapiers while you learn then progress to better ones.

Nakari

I'm curious, what was old serpent stab speed?

Sena

I think it was 2.8s base, 2.5s with nimble. Not certain of that though.