Quick Combat Questions

Cynlael

Killing them is a good way to hinder them.

Jovolo

Exelethril said:

How do you hinder afflictions from an occultist with a Thoth's fang/torc/diadem/buckawns?

Broken arms/proning doesn't really break their momentum(mind stupidity/paralyze). Shielding doesn't really help since gremlin works on a separate ent balance. I know rebounding works to a certain extent.

Also.. how does monkshood function with new chaos ent loyalty?

Gremlin is eq, where the eq recovery time is dependent on the amount of amount of afflictions you have when the Occultist uses it. Not comboable such as gremlin;jab

Torc paralysis is also not comboable with entity balance, t-fang jab sti is, however.

Disloyalty prevents an Occultist from ordering their Entities to attack you, therefore being unable to afflict.

The idea is to not let them build momentum. Tree often when you get to 3 or more affs, use Dagaz, mountjump/gular/wunjo+nairat. Crippled arms and freeze WILL help you (As freeze will make their jab balance slower and cause periodic disruptions and crippled arms will stop it altogether). Clumsiness will obviously help vs fang jab.

Antonius

Buy ring of flying, refuse to fight indoors.

Arador

You can already do that.

curare/kalmia, curare/monkshood. Rinse, repeat.

They wither get stuck with asthma and therefore disloyalty, or they get stuck with paralysis.

Atalkez

So if you hit a totem (sleep prone transfixed) and I impale you, you writhe off the blade before the totem.

Is this mechanic accurate? I assumed you would writhe off the transfixed first since it hit first?

Basically a dsb off totem hit is impossible.

Jovolo

Yes! Technically you wouldn't need to hit a totem if that were the case. Hit any old wunjo/nairat on the ground and you'd become disembowel-able. What if a Knight/(magi or sylvan) dsl curare/oculus + transfix? Easy disembowel. 

Writhing from a blade is separate to regular writhing, in that you can get hit with say, transfix and then start writhing, and then impale, and you can start writhing again once you recover balance from the first writhe at the same so you end up writhing from both simultaneously - transfix takes a long time to writhe out of, whereas writhing from a blade with no broken legs is considerably shorter - that's why you writhe out of impale quicker than out of transfix.

Atalkez

I have done it several times and using string actions (read ; ) to instantly impale and I've yet to get balance to dsb before writhe.

Eld

Atalkez said:

I have done it several times and using string actions (read ; ) to instantly impale and I've yet to get balance to dsb before writhe.

He's saying that if you had to finish writhing from the transfix first (which you don't), it would make for an easy dsb, because writhing from transfix takes so long. 

Antonius

You're not supposed to. They writhe off of impale before anything else and writhing is considerably shorter than knight impale balance.

Wilhelmina

What makes Runewarden easier than Infernal and Paladin? I couldn't find an answer via search.

Eld

Wilhelmina said:

What makes Runewarden easier than Infernal and Paladin? I couldn't find an answer via search.

Short answer: runes. Runewarden basically gets a permanent +10 to all weapon stats, which makes any strategies that depend on weapon stats that much more obtainable. If you compare them on the basis of their chivalry-based kill strategies (generally dsb), runewardens generally have faster attacks, more damage, and damage runes to provide additional damage on the finisher. The balance to this is that infernal and paladin have alternative kill strategies from their secondary skills.

Paladins' devotion instakill is damnation, which is generally held to be very difficult to pull off, so they mostly end up going for disembowels, so the above comparison is fairly relevant. Infernals have vivisect, which as far as I know is still fairly viable (though curing systems make you work for it), so I don't know if runewarden>infernal is as straightforward.

Of course, I've never played any of these classes, so this is all just me summarising my understanding of past forum discussions. I'm sure I'll be corrected as needed.

Cooper

Here's the big advantage of Runewarden:

Perma jera and weapon runes.

Jera = +1 strength = roughly 6% damage depending on your base strength

Weapon runes = let's say the average combatant rapier is 75/150/230, that means your is 85/150/240. 13.3% more damage, 4.3% faster.

Then depending on how you prefer to fight you can either sketch hugalaz or nairat on your rapiers. Nairat is basically free parry bypass and hugalaz is more free damage. I can't remember the exact numbers on hugalaz, but it used to be like 12% of the time if you use it on one rapier, or 10% if you use it on both. So if it's 10% on each weapon it's roughly an extra 10% more damage in the long run.

Add all that up and you either get 25% (roughly) extra damage on dsl, or 20% (roughly) extra damage and pseudo free parry bypass, -and- the ability to do massive burst damage with thurisaz/hugalaz stacking.

That being said, Infernals and Paladins get access to the body and weapon runes too which sucks. I hope they change that eventually.

Antonius

Jera isn't the advantage of Runewarden (at least compared to Paladin), Algiz is. That damage reduction makes a massive amount of difference. Hands is great but not usable against a lot of damage setups due to being prone.

Achilles

Wasn't Algiz and Berkana effectiveness reduced for non-Runelorists awhile back?

Anedhel

Never heard of that being the case.

Eld

IIRC, it's the same reduction, but there's a difference in how it stacks with other defs (additively for runelorists and multiplicitavely for non-runelorists or something like that).

Achilles

Announce 3587

Runelore
--------
* ALGIZ damage resistance has been reduced for non-runelorists.

Jovolo

it's 8% for non-runeloreists I think

Jacen

Sena said:

Sena said:

So, despite what announce 3587 says, algiz is still 10% resistance for both runelorists and non-runelorists.

An update on this:
Your bug report (detail: algiz gives the same (10%) damage reduction for both runelorists and non-runelorists, despite announce 3587 saying that it was reduced for non-runelorists.) - has been removed because it is not a bug (usually meaning that this is the way things are intended to be). Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience or misunderstanding that may be involved. The following notes were included: It is the same reduction if that's your only defence, but algiz stacks differently with other defences for non-runelore users than it does for runelore users.

I'm somewhat confused on this, since it doesn't seem consistent with previous changes to resistance stacking.

Jovolo

Ah, wtf

Isaiah

the rajamala racial trait that adds a chance to dodge any one have any stats on this? is it like the equalivant of 1 point of dex or what? Also I know that dstab speed caps at 15 dex + lvl 3 dirk, what other skills would benefit from having an excess of dexterity aside from increased dodging chance *(above 15 dex).

EDIT - *

Florentino

Dexterity for the purposes of dodging is not particularly useful given everything else you can do (mounted, trans avoidance, speed elixir is supposed to put you at the equivalent of 24 Dex or something). For serpents, Dex impacts flay speed, phase channel time, and backstab channel time (maybe also balance recovery, I don't remember)

Jovolo

Doublestab speed, not all balance. Flay speed boost pretty significant

Cooper

After fighting Strata a day or two ago and missing 90% of my attacks, fuck dex and serpents and fuck anyone that says it isn't useful.

Lilian

How do I stop myself from being stuck with paralysis for five or ten seconds at a time against a knight..Hallelujah isn't helping me to much and not being able to get any sort of offense in..is not fun! and yes, I am prioritizing Paralysis over Asthma.

Cooper

Shield, rebounding, use hindering afflictions to slow them down

Jovolo

Lilian said:

How do I stop myself from being stuck with paralysis for five or ten seconds at a time against a knight..Hallelujah isn't helping me to much and not being able to get any sort of offense in..is not fun! and yes, I am prioritizing Paralysis over Asthma.

You will only get stuck with paralysis for 1.6 seconds at the most unless you get curare/kalmia curare/gecko'd, which is a 50% chance for being paralysed for 3.2 seconds at the absolute most, that's also what the tree tattoo exists for. You don't need to target as a Bard so rebounding and shielding as Cooper said will help you a lot, especially if you shield a second or so before your rebounding comes up, requiring them to raze twice in a row (about two herb eats for you) before they can hit you again. Clumsiness will help you a lot. Remember you can "prep" a leg with tremolo and then minuet apply restoration to head/tremolo for an instant 8s hinder if you need a breather. 

Florentino

Trueparry or better use of parry might help too, maybe?

Lilian

I've been using shield and rebounding. Thinking about It, I hardly tree so I'll start doing that more! But yeah I trueparry and the like, but I'll try to tremolo and force slave balance when I need to catch my breath, I hadn't thought of using those two things in a defensive manner like that before! Thanks!

my only other real problem has been is they stick clumsiness and paralysis so easily, so often that I don't get a chance to hinder them in return, as far as trying to hinder them back goes..

Eld

Slave balance? Is that a Mhaldor-specific thing?