Okay, I've fought a few serpents. I won't lie most of them are Lolalts and it's easy to tell. Why you ask? They have the same illusions as the other lolalts. It's really really easy to go onto google and search for serpent combat. I know people don't mean to, but there are logs all over pastebin. I don't want to steal your shit, but look how easy it is. Serpent quite litereally is that STD that roams achaea, because you can catch it so damn easily, then use it however you want. But guess what, some other lolalt just got your illusions.
Thing is, does serpent really seem fair these days?
I understand in most forms of combat, there is a give and take sort of relatiosnship, between what you cure and what you don't. The thing is, serpent seems too slow to take advantage of any of these things.
i remember in the very very old days, serpent used to have asterisks in the paralysis line. Why was this? was it to give serpents a bit of an advantage over curing systems that slowly came out and nullified an affliction class that afflicts slower than herb balance?
I am a druid, so I play a limbbreak class. Even though freezepound is reaaaly tough, I still manage it. Thing is, my abilities synchronize well enough to allow me for my instakill. Serpent is one of the only classes I look at and see that a specific pattern of curing can actually stop it from working. That's why I call it an STD. It's simply a way for serpents to use other serpents illusions until they are fixed via ooc methods. This is why I find lolalts that are 10% my might, that can kill me like they are an iocun or something (also, I suck, that doesn't help things.)
With the declawing of serpents in almost every way, can we perhaps give them a buff? I dunno, the way they were supposed to stick paralysis seems like a good start. I'm seriously tired of seeing the best serpents be lolalts that only win because they can abuse my system with illusions. there is a masochistic side to me that actually enjoys loosing... when I die to a really good and creative prep/kill. Serpents.. well hell. You found one, you found them all. just like herpes
Replies the scorpion: "It's my nature..."
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Maybe SVO is the STD. One person learns how to cure a setup and everyone suddenly does!
Illusions really were the most fun part of being serpent and I really don't think that using them is as simple as seeing another serpent use them. I've tried to teach other serpents how to use my illusions before and seen them fail miserably while using the completely right illusion.
Serpent could definitely use some help. Lifevision should be deleted. There should be some minor nerfs to rebounding/buffs to serpent to help serpent deal with rebounding. Things like that. But I don't think relying on using illusions to trick systems is really a bad thing.
My problem might be that I'm not breaking systems though, which is apparently the way to go. I'm trying to lock people within game mechanics and only using illusions that are really hard to test for (like clumsiness), and those are all low priority.
(should add that I can always come up with a way to lock someone eventually, it's just that the sequence of events required sometimes seems totally impractical, either because of a) my skill level, b) my latency or c) it's really impractical)
Define "breaking systems." And "within game mechanics."
There isn't a magic illusion of dots, dashes, and numbers that'll cause a system to crash. You illusion things from within the game to trick the system into curing improperly.
And fitness keepup is impossible to beat. Though, it destroys their offense as well. The best you can really do is spam asthma endlessly until they just turn it off because they realize they want to attack, or go for ginseng stack/scytherus/camus, or go for sleeplock.
I can't think of a less awkward way to phrase it, but I'd rather be fighting a person and the priorities they chose than finding something wrong coding-wise with their system. A large part of this is that while it might work fantastically on SVO and Omni, I'm never going to have a copy of Sage or Oregano to dissect, so I genuinely feel like it's a crutch.
I'd also much rather be sparring and taking curing priorities at face value than looking through Omnipave's scripts to see what is going to make it implode.
And, at the fitness thing, that's what I had figured. I'm just finding it irritating because it looks like a lot of people have fitness keepup on as a default, so it's hard to jump knights with any degree of efficiency (and I have no silver fangs/artie bow).
EDIT: Cue Terra calling me a noob.
With the introduction of blademasters and alchemists, soon followed by the sylvan's vine attack (Afflictions or hinderances that last a specific time have no place in achaea) I would like to see a bit more of an actual mechanic behind a serpent's fighting. I want to see dualcretion. Secreting two venoms at once, biting at a much longer balance cost! Would help with that pesty rebounding I'm sure. I don't know honestly, but serpents need a buff that puts them in line with more mechanical based combat and less system oriented combat.
As far as the fitness upkeep goes, I know I can upkeep fitness and never die to a serpent, while just hitting legs when I get the tiny sliver of balance back. After yawning for 15 minutes, and slowly biting limbs.. BAM! all four limbs gone, eat your face, freezepound, whatever. I don't loose preps. You loose all your steam as soon as I shield.
Hate serpents, make them better then delete them plz
I should add that I actually enjoy serpent combat. I'd die of boredom as a knight.
@Panpardus Yeah, that'd be cool.
Coincidentally, @HighTierCombatants, would there be major repercussions to removing fitness as a defense and simply make it an active cure for asthma?
Bite is not useless. It could use perhaps a .1 second bal increase to keep it as viable against those rare few with the sub 10 ms ping, but even against those it has its uses.
Serpent could use some minor tweaks, does not need a major rework.
Certain AI checks should be changed to be unworkable, because they're too reliable (and just plain silly, like jump. I don't want to see this badass knight all in his black armour jumping up and down like an idiot while fighting the incompitent serpent novice dstabbing aconite aconite illusioning mind paralyse, but each to his own).
Illusion argument is a complicated one. On one hand its incredibly hard to balance because systems are constantly advancing, but on the other hand its such a cool and diverse mechanic it would be a shame to replace it.
Fitness solution is pretty simple. Fitness should not be a defence--it should retain its asthma cure functionality. Weariness also does not need to be focusable. (Yes, this is a minor buff to other class kelp stacks, but also makes riftlocking fitness users viable.)
That does sound like a major debuff to knights and the like, though.
Its a buff to certain things knights can do, debuff to certain other things.
Simply put though, knights aren't exactly struggling.
Unartied it's certainly difficult and defeated easily. I just hope that in the future it gets fixed so that it's not so reliant on having a thoth's fang as it's already being handicapped by the evolution of systems.
In turn though, Shrugging needs to be deleted.
You're right... but it was so nice just... not having to care.
And yeah, Jarrel is really good, but while Jarrel had to work for ages to be at his level, you can improve hugely defensively every time Vadi releases a new update. At least as a knight the fundamentals of prep stay the same (to my knowledge) and the only thing that changes is the actual execution of your vivisect/DSB based off however your victim is curing his limbs.
→My Mudlet Scripts
→My Mudlet Scripts
I think you should look at whatever illusions you see that "break" systems and ask why they break the system, honestly. I have -never- taken a widespread system, looked at the code itself, and somehow determined what to illusion based on the code. I found illusions by thinking logically about how someone would respond to the particular illusion. In some cases, this involves thinking about how the system will cure, yes, but that's true to some extent for every class, and it is really pretty much the same thing as thinking about how a person would cure, except you assume the person has time to do more complicated things (like jump to check for paralysis. Lol. Wat.).
I recall someone (now dormant) informing me Deridius had quite a few ways to make Omni 2 stop working and a long time ago the person in this log assured me what happened there was reproducible.
It looks like I mistakenly assumed that was the only way for serpents to fight at the high tier and wreck people very quickly. I'msuchanoob.
I use SVO for the most part, occasionally dabble in Omni or muck around with one I'm building myself. I've fought Serpents who use blatant system messages that are meant to come from the game itself to utterly - up the former. Not saying who they are or what the illusion was, but it happened. They said they were gonna email Vadi about fixing it though, and I haven't really fought them sense.
In regards to illusions, I've never been convinced that they're worth keeping. We seem to end up in an endless cycle of systems developing ways to handle the current illusions in use and requests for changes to make illusions usable again, and at some point it's worth wondering if the time couldn't be better spent on doing away with them entirely and balancing classes around what they still have and, where necessary, giving them additional tools.
Somebody (Tvistor perhaps?) mentioned fighting against the curing priorities of their opponent, and I suspect (though feel free to correct me if I'm totally wrong) that what they meant was finding an illusion for an affliction that will prevent their opponent from actually curing the afflictions they do have because it's a higher priority. I don't really see how that's particularly interesting, and there's a point where if you can do that on every doublestab or bite, serpent afflicting easily outpaces what somebody can reasonably be considered to be able to cure against.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
What happened in that log didn't seem to have anything to do with the illusions. The person was forced to apply restoration to their head, which the system didn't seem to acknowledge (probably because the command wasn't sent by the system), and that caused the system to spam mending over and over not recognizing that it was off salve balance (it probably also didn't have that failed apply line in it). It's a major bug in the system, but not really a special illusion trick. The head break illusion could have caused it, but if so that's probably just because the failed apply message for resto is different than the mending one maybe? And maybe that's the message that was missing from the system.
That is to say, as things are right now, I could probably leave a ton of low priority (and thus low threat) afflictions on someone, but would have trouble keeping something like paralysis on someone. On the other hand, keeping lots of low priority afflictions like clumsiness can help me stick higher priority afflictions.
There are also some other applications of course, like trying to mess with your enemy's sileris keepup, tricking them into applying salves or using their tree tattoo prematurely. I've found it to be the most interesting combat in the game. I haven't found SVO to be crippling me -- it just won't die in two doublestabs like the systems around when I first started playing. My biggest problem is smart curing (prioritizing weariness/impatience) plus intelligent shielding (because you can see the serpent snapping you) means at times I just read a log and have to spend ages working out how to get a lock, and the solutions I come to are usually a little bit contrived.
Alternatively, evade out, HT Naga follow me, gankstab while @Antidas snipes and steals your kill.