Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
- 6.2K All Categories
- 3.1K Everything Achaea
- 1.5K North of Thera
- 26 Archives of the Terraformer
- 257 The Matsuhama Arena
- 885 The Golden Dais of Creation
- 299 The Scarlattan Theatre
- 149 The Blank Canvas
- 2K Getting Help
- 412 General Questions
- 258 Quick Class Questions
- 1.3K Tech Support
- 313 Client Help
- 486 Curing Systems and Scripts
- 841 Off-Topic
- 255 The Wander Inn
- 586 The Universal Membrane
- 298 Class Discussions
- 298 Individual Class Sections
- 20 Alchemist
- 9 Apostate
- 30 Blademaster
- 9 Depthswalker
- 14 Druid
- 4 Infernal
- 20 Jester
- 19 Magi
- 34 Monk
- 11 Occultist
- 8 Paladin
- 7 Priest
- 29 Runewarden
- 18 Sentinel
- 26 Serpent
- 20 Shaman
- 9 Sylvan
Two-Hander PvP Assistance
Salutations folks.
I've been trying to learn Runewarden two-handed combat and build a system of triggers and keybindings around abilities, but I need some help. I've been reading through the forums, asking around in a couple clans in game, and trying my best to apply what I get there to my systems and approaches. However, it seems like no matter what class I step into the arena to face off against, I keep getting wrecked in one-on-ones and I can't really tell where I'm flubbing up. I'm really starting to feel like I'm being a nuisance dragging folks in just to get exasperated, frustrated, and not making any headway, and while I try not to let that show, it's been getting worse lately. Sorry to the few of you that've seen that.
That said, if there's anything glaringly wrong you guys can see of my assessment below or any advice you can offer, I'd be really grateful.
To start with, I'm gonna cover what all I do know and some of the trouble I'm running into right now. Any insight you guys can provide is highly appreciated.
Skills:
Runelore Applications:
The basic flow of my fight, or my tactics as I attempt them, is as follows:
As of right now... I get to step five, get constantly locked by paralysis, have to spam my hit keys which fills mudlet with "frustratingly your muscles refuse to cooperate" or whatever the paralysis line is, I can't tell what hits I actually do get in, and then I have to back out of the room. If I'm lucky, I'm back to step 5 and stepping back into the room. If I'm not, I'm back to step 3. If I'm really unlucky, I'm at the spectator stands.
Any insight is really appreciated at this point. I enjoy the "feel" of two-hander and the theory behind its combat, but it's slowly becoming something that's really frustrating and draining dealing with.
I've been trying to learn Runewarden two-handed combat and build a system of triggers and keybindings around abilities, but I need some help. I've been reading through the forums, asking around in a couple clans in game, and trying my best to apply what I get there to my systems and approaches. However, it seems like no matter what class I step into the arena to face off against, I keep getting wrecked in one-on-ones and I can't really tell where I'm flubbing up. I'm really starting to feel like I'm being a nuisance dragging folks in just to get exasperated, frustrated, and not making any headway, and while I try not to let that show, it's been getting worse lately. Sorry to the few of you that've seen that.
That said, if there's anything glaringly wrong you guys can see of my assessment below or any advice you can offer, I'd be really grateful.
To start with, I'm gonna cover what all I do know and some of the trouble I'm running into right now. Any insight you guys can provide is highly appreciated.
Skills:
- Runelore, Weaponmastery, Chivalry: Transcendant
- Weaponry: Up to parrying
- Avoidance: Nada, but it's my next skill focus unless advised otherwise.
Runelore Applications:
- Basic Three: Jera, Algiz, and Berkana are needed for STR/CON +1, 10% damage reduction, and health regen respectively.
- Runeblade: Lagul, Lagua, and Laguz on an empowered blade. I've been using Hugalaz for extra damage, but would Nairat be better for hindering?
- Runicarmour: I've empowered my armour, so it's got the 100 months of Gebu/Gebo on it for increased blunt/cutting resist.
- Dagaz/Uruz: I've been trying to sketch up "safe" rooms with Dagaz and Uruz, leaving another rune slot free for utility or attack runes. I've also been trying to barge opponents into these "safe" rooms to get them out of harmonics/rites/room buffs to gain an advantage.
- Thurisaz: Been using a triple sketch of Thurisaz in an unsketched room to break shields and do some prep damage before barging.
- Othala: Been trying to sketch Othala as the first action during an engagement, but I've not had much luck with that. I've been trying to utilize it off a devastate arms so that I can sketch unhindered, but I can't manage to even get to that point.
- Overhand: I realize that most opponents going up against Two-Hander are going to parry head, so I make sure to reflexively check for head parry, and if my opponent is, I swap to an underhand instead.
- Underhand: Likewise, if parrying torso, I go for overhand.
- Arm/Leg Hew: Swap direction if parrying left or right side.
- Perceive: Using perceive before each attack and on regaining balance. I have this outputting info to a geyser GUI element.
- Recover Footing: Recovering footing at the start of each attack.
- Speed/Precision: Utilizing speed for underhand to add to the hurt and drop HP quick, using precision to stack fractures on limbs.
- Devastate: Been trying to get up to three fractures before making a single devastate so that it's 4 seconds of hinderance against melee classes.
- Envenom: Been using curare for the most part as a gamble hinder/herb crunch, but I'm starting to wonder if that's useless. Also have been taking a swing at epteth/epseth, but I'm not sure if both limbs are being afflicted. Also with it being a mending application, I'm not sure if that cures fractures/resets limb damage, but I've been erring on the side of "yes" for both.
- Barge: I push things gud. No but seriously as noted above, I've been using barge to push people into prepped rooms.
- Falcon: Got talons, order falcon to slay on every attack.
- Engage: I've been engaging after the first attack, and I'm systematically keeping track of if I'm engaged or not.
- Fury: This is probably the one ability I've gotten a lot of mixed info about. I've been saving fury for when I move into the kill phase of my setup - prepping legs, devastating legs, upsetting, impaling, and disemboweling. I am honestly wondering, since I'm not really able to engage at length, if I need to just Fury up at the beginning of each spar or fight.
- Curing: Serverside
- Defences: Serverside
- Offense:
- Client-side macros/keybindings, triggers, and aliases.
- A few server-side aliases (mostly pre-attack prep alias to avoid hitting the eqbal limit).
- Serverside queuing system. (Most of my attack commands are "clearqueues all" and "queue add eqbal ...")
The basic flow of my fight, or my tactics as I attempt them, is as follows:
- Turn on combat-focused defenses that I can't keep up constantly due to mana/willpower limits.
- Sketch prep rooms with dagaz/uruz
- Break shields and maybe do a little damage with triple Thurisaz.
- Barge opponent out of room and into prep room.
- Speed/Underhand with Curare to sips. First attack sets falcon to slay and engages target.
- Precision/Arms to 3+ fractures.
- Devastate arms.
- Sketch Othala
- Utilize restoration/othala down-time to heal
- Underhand precision to stick some sensitivity - 4-6 fractures.
- Precision/Arms to 3 fractures
- Precision/Legs to 6 fractures.
- Speed/Devastate arms for restoration balance.
- Devastate legs/battlefury upset to break legs and prone.
- Impale/Disembowel.
As of right now... I get to step five, get constantly locked by paralysis, have to spam my hit keys which fills mudlet with "frustratingly your muscles refuse to cooperate" or whatever the paralysis line is, I can't tell what hits I actually do get in, and then I have to back out of the room. If I'm lucky, I'm back to step 5 and stepping back into the room. If I'm not, I'm back to step 3. If I'm really unlucky, I'm at the spectator stands.
Any insight is really appreciated at this point. I enjoy the "feel" of two-hander and the theory behind its combat, but it's slowly becoming something that's really frustrating and draining dealing with.
0
Comments
Second, you're more momentum than a lot of classes. Don't run from them, make them run from you. Unless you're fighting someone super artied, not many people can stand in the room and tank 2H. If you run, they heal up and you have nothing to show for it but a little limb prep.
Third, be improvisational. Fractures work to give you more fractures when you have them spread around. Need more damage? Torso. Need to hinder them? Arms and legs. Is the head open? Take it. If you go in with the set gameplan of "I need X then Y", you're hamstringing yourself. Be flexible.
edit: always Hugalaz on 2H. You don't stack salves, want to hide affs, or drain mana fast enough to make the others worth it. Plus, an overhead with speed hugalaz proc is like Christmas.
Gag paralysis messages if you're having a really bad time with spam, or alternatively, put in a check for tracking your own paralysis before sending in commands. The other thing you want to avoid is running into situations where you're curing paralysis off balance and then having it re-afflicted before you get herb balance back, delaying your own attack window. Solutions for this vary but a log will help.
A lot of what you're describing is going to be match-up dependent and experience dependent; momentum classes are largely about playing chicken and surprising people with your strategies. It's already been posted before, but having a long sequence of events you're trying to accomplish is going to hurt you more than help you, because almost no fight is going to just be a series of ticking off parts of a checklist. Ultimately your goal is to get someone prone long enough with a broken torso to disembowel - but the way you get there is going to change frequently.
At a glance your strategy is way too long and conditional. No matter what else you're doing, you want to focus on your kill condition and have a goal in mind for how you're getting there. Legs work to both reduce opponent's momentum (clumsy relapses) and hinder movement so you can punish them for waiting too long to run - focus on that, and use the other fractures incidentally as a means to an end. If they parry something that isn't head, punish it; otherwise you want to spread your fractures as needed while still pushing the leg ones as much as you can. Don't force the arm devastates in there as part of the strategy, because it's just going to slow you down. To my knowledge a 6 leg fracture devastate is more than sufficient to pull off a disembowel, so you don't really need to knock their restoration balance before that with another devastate.
If one of your problems is getting a kill once you do reach the disembowel, keep in mind that in most situations you need a broken torso for it to kill; didn't see that charted into your strategy.
Just for emphasis: running away from a 2H runewarden who has isaz, engage, leg fractures, stonewalls etc. is a nightmare. Force people to bail way earlier than they'd otherwise want to.
@Elisella: Got it. Fury uptime, take what I can get, and keep the pressure on. Most of the problems I run up against are from affliction classes like Bard and Serpent, but hopefully with checking my curing priorities on paralysis, like Torinn sugested, and gagging out the spam, that might help alleviate it a bit, focus on what I need to, and let me push harder.
@Torinn: I'll double check my curing priorities when I get home from the office today, but I could have sworn I had Paralysis as a top priority. That being said, I may have to adjust other curing priorities to have lower priorities too. I'll adjust and come back at it.
@Sobriquet: Originally my priority was to devastate arms to give me a window of unhindered attacks and then add to restoration time on the impale/disembowel. I'm now leaning toward that being an unsound strategy and that the clumsiness from any stuck wrist fractures will outweigh the benefit of the restoration salve application window, especially considering my opponent will probably switch to apply restoration to legs first before arms, making it all a moot point.
@Issam: I really should be taking more logs of fights to analyze, rather than just scrolling back through the log after the fact. I'll definitely start logging after I get all the other feedback sorted through. I'm really wary to gagging any of the affliction lines in case I actually do run into a case where I need to see a wall of spam and panic. So yeah, I'll probably make a tracker for paralysis, and then run my attacks through a boolean if statement to avoid spamming.
I've already found that there's a second argument to the send command with Mudlet that won't echo the line out to the console. Gonna make a boolean toggle and see if that helps cut down on spam too. I'm probably also gonna gag the prompt line and move it to a GUI element as well. Lots of coding to do. Yay!
One last question, and I realize this is probably going to be a glaring issue, but theoretically what's the ideal route for broken torso? I've not really focused on breaks, just more on stacking fractures and then getting the impale / disembowel as quickly as possible after sticking sensitivity. Is it just speed+underhanding right up until the breakpoint, hew leg to devastate leg + upset, speed+underhand break torso, and then impale? Is there a way for me to gauge how many hits its going to take to break the torso, or am I going to have to just whack at people and scratch tallies?
Edit: @Issam: Didn't see your post before I posted, but the question I asked should make it obvious that no, I am not pursuing a torso break, and I'm thinking that's the glaring, angry elephant in the room that's stomping me into the mud. Or at least part of it anyway.
If you want to break torso, throw in speed underhands while you're building up leg fractures. If you get enough leg fractures to double mangle on devastate, you might be able to pull off two DSBs, which may preclude needing to break torso against all but the tankiest of people.
It's what accumulates over a long period of time... after getting stomped. A lot. Which is just a part of the process for learning 1v1. Which I need to learn more of.
Most combatants already know what reliable kill routes they're facing, making their defensive play pretty tough.
So, don't get discouraged no matter what. Just keep the pressure on.
Yeeeah, I learned about trueparry going up against @Tasus and that's why I figured breaking arms might help to get around that. I feel like Perceive should pick up on that, but for now I'll just be mindful and go for the legs with speed.
Nah, I won't get discouraged. It's mostly just frustrated, which thus makes me a grump, and no one likes a grump when they're trying to help them.
Is there a good formula or reference table for two-hander limb breaks/damage? I was looking into @Antonius' counter, but it looks like it's just for DWC and SnB. Might still use it as a basis though.
(Hell, I'm probably gonna dig through most of Antonius' stuff anyway, that disembowel table is beautiful.)
Also, you mentioned arm fractures for clumsiness.. you have that wrong, legs for clumsi and arms for lethargy.
But I cannot echo @Gilliam more, limb breaks are so good for 2H, they can be pretty seamlessly incorporated into your fight and not only hinder foes and put em on the defensive (And 2H excels when people go on the defensive) it gives you juicy juicy skull fracs which just win fights.
An interesting tactic to pick up too, is propping a totem if you think your foe will walk into your room. Prone + Entangle will give you an opportunity to overhand through larry and start the fight with skull fracs.
Aegis, God of War says, "You are dismissed from My demense, Astarod. Go forth and fight well. Bleed fiercely, and climb the purpose you have sought to chase for."
So I tried hammer a bit in some testing earlier, and I seemed to be missing a whole lot. Like five out of six swings. I'm assuming accuracy with warhammer goes off weaponry skill level?
Costs 100 lessons to get one, HELP PROFICIENCY has details, and the teacher for warhammers is in Hashan.
Warhammer - Geld, of Hashan
Aaaand one mission impossible theme later, I've got warhammers now. Thanks for the tip!
Yep, that was bad math and info on my part. 1-3 produces mending, 4-5 produces 1 resto 1 mend, 6-7 produces 2 resto 1 mend.
I was working with a housemate yesterday and a bit today and have had a rather embarrassing realization. Did you know that when you get the disembowel off, you don't have your opponent impaled anymore? Cause I sure didn't.
Along with fixing that I'm going to probably be retraiting for strength traits since I was con traited back when I was a Monk. Utilizing fury and lagua, and as long as Antonius' chart is still accurate, I should be able to pull off a one DSB kill.
Against serpent and bard, my two biggest pains right now, I'm gonna need the hinder. Still, Hugalaz in the room is excellent, and if I'm not mistaken, it can be paired with Othala, right? Between my falcon raising shields, me whacking on them, hugalaz dropping hail, and othala bursting magma, that should be an impressive chunk of damage. If they disengage, that'll be a free hit on them, and then it becomes a chasing game with tons of engage damage too if I'm lucky.
Thank you, there's a lot of good information here, and you've given me a lot to think about and test on top of my prior analysis too.
Also raze every single time you can, it does a heap of damage, and punish prones with headshots any time you won't land a disembowel (be it from isaz/engage or a break+upset). Iirc if you mangle both legs you can disembowel x3 if they don't tumble, but you can break torso/disembowel on double break if you use hammer and speed for the last torso shot. I'm extremely rusty so my timing may be wrong/off.
Also (thanks Aerek) you can touch tentacle+arc or tentacle+engage maybe, if they try to spam fly on you.
Hammers are faster and swords do more damager BUT both have the same speed when it comes to breaking shields and rebounding. Make sure you always use your sword for that as it hurts noticably more and cam give a venom. If you can follow up their shield quickly enough, you can carve epseth upset to prone them and get an overhand in while they're off eq.
A little more advanced:
Possibly the biggest perk of 2h in my opinion is your ability to make excellent defensive use of battlecry. It requires your target to not be deaf but it will prone and stun them for two seconds and the big deal here is that you can do it while prone. Remember that cracked ribs relapse sensitivity which also undeafs the target. Basically that means that as long as they have some cracked ribs, if they go for a kill setup you can probably stop it. Tracking the relapses helps with this a ton but isn't totally necessary.
This is just kind of excessive:
Abuse falcon glance. Whether they get away or not you have access to what is essentially flawless tracking. FALCON SEEK FALCON SLAY and when they start running, FALCON GLANCE will show you where they are. If you're on mudlet you can even incorporate the mapper and gallop to the target. Duplicate rooms can be annoying with this but some clever coding gets around that pretty easily.