What do you refuse to get better at doing in combat?

Vakvyr

Maybe it's not a conscious decision and maybe it's just something you do or don't do. 

Example: I suck at minimizing combat spam. I gag or sub very few messages. Could four line flavor texts be reduced to one easy-to-read, highly functional message? Yeah but it feels, idk, wrong.

Zackery

I second the spam thing, which is especially bad as an alchemist. My attack line easily takes up a third, maybe more, of my screen 

Armali

Buy artefacts.

Shirszae

Defend better. I can defend reasonably well but there's a lot of things I could to improve it, and the desire to do always just vanishes.

Atalkez

Adopt a win at all costs mentality. I often lose fights because I overextend myself or don’t go defensive enough.

Namino

I keep trying to do a new sexy thing instead of the old boilerplate that works reliably.

[Deleted User]

Atalkez said:

Adopt a win at all costs mentality.

At least in my experience, this kills the enjoyment of combat fast. Used to do it a lot in Lusternia and Imperian, and boy did it get boring real quick. I think Mizik was the same way, which is why he didn't defend nearly as much as he should have.

For me I refuse to take combat all that seriously anymore. It's rare that I partake too heavily in it anymore, the times I do I'd rather I at least passably enjoy doing it.

Reyson

Dueling. Caring about dueling, indulging the people who incessantly want to (and the boring, repetitive trash talk that comes with it), coding priority swaps and putting together all the bells and whistles I used to have when I played on mudlet. 

I'm pretty sure I could, there's just little as enjoyable as dueling to me. I take some bounties, mostly when I'm bored at work, and if you're not a huge pain in the ass about it, I'll fight you fair for a contract or something, but there's mostly no more annoying endeavour than dueling.

Gimme a good skirmish or raid any day of the week. 

[Deleted User]

Reyson said:

Dueling. Caring about dueling, indulging the people who incessantly want to (and the boring, repetitive trash talk that comes with it), coding priority swaps and putting together all the bells and whistles I used to have when I played on mudlet. 

I'm pretty sure I could, there's just little as enjoyable as dueling to me. I take some bounties, mostly when I'm bored at work, and if you're not a huge pain in the ass about it, I'll fight you fair for a contract or something, but there's mostly no more annoying endeavour than dueling.

Gimme a good skirmish or raid any day of the week. 

Just ritual duel, then you won't need coding.

Zackery

There's very little as obnoxious as people who act like they're entitled to your time and demand duels, then talk shit when you don't indulge them.

Melodie

All of my yes to "heck to duels". No thanks. 

Rhivona

using less instant kills

Lenn

Any sort of coding that takes more than a minute or two just about never happens, and even if it did, I vehemently refuse any client-side automation.

I also hate duels or spars because of paralysis/stun spam, so I guess I refuse to get better at dealing with that. 

Astarod

One of the easier kills with airlord is the updraft kill, just because of the 'safety net' it gives. I've used it a lot more lately because I'm annoyed, but generally I refuse to do kills that don't leave a body, because I'm one of those people (or used to be) who dueled for hours, and hours, and hours.  

I'm not ranting at anyone (@KUZ) for *cough cough* HEARTSEED *cough cough*

Vinzent

It is easier because most people don't see it often and react poorly, otherwise the counter(s) are trivial and nullify it completely.

Mercer

I have been told over and over that my biggest problem as a combatant, which keeps me from winning fights against basically anyone with half a clue what they are doing, is my inability to code curing profiles for every single class and swap them out on the fly.

In other words... I need to learn every classes kill paths on my own, even though I don't play them, learn to code far better than I currently do, then reinvent the wheel and come up with my own specialized curing system which I will somehow need to be able to switch during combat at milasecond speeds. Not that any of that effort will matter, as the only people who seem to WANT to fight me are people with thousands of dollars worth of arties who only want to duel.

I had a hard enough time learning my own class, and cobbling together a system for it with minimal coding skills. I think Achaean combat was designed with a very different and very specific type of player in mind.

Ererean

Mercer said:

I have been told over and over that my biggest problem as a combatant, which keeps me from winning fights against basically anyone with half a clue what they are doing, is my inability to code curing profiles for every single class and swap them out on the fly.

In other words... I need to learn every classes kill paths on my own, even though I don't play them, learn to code far better than I currently do, then reinvent the wheel and come up with my own specialized curing system which I will somehow need to be able to switch during combat at milasecond speeds. Not that any of that effort will matter, as the only people who seem to WANT to fight me are people with thousands of dollars worth of arties who only want to duel.

I had a hard enough time learning my own class, and cobbling together a system for it with minimal coding skills. I think Achaean combat was designed with a very different and very specific type of player in mind.

I don't even code, probably should learn
ehh

[Deleted User]

Mercer said:

You don't actually need to do most of this. Learning class kill paths, yes. That's not really any different to learning kill windows in something like WoW for instance; if you wanna know how to beat them, you kinda have to know what they do, so you know what to avoid.

You don't really need to code to quite the depth that some people try and say you have to, though.

Antonius

"Coding a system" that has aff prios for each class can just be an alias for each class that sends all of the commands to update serverside curing with the prios you want.

Archaeon

I refuse to grow brain cells

Ererean

As said previously but not as clear
i refuse to put in work to code a curing script

Astarod

Ererean said:

As said previously but not as clear
i refuse to put in work to code a curing script

 I mean, I don't have anything for curing. I do fine.

Granted, my 'fix' is seeing them pushing a lock through some affliction and typing out 'curing priority asthma 2' or something like that midfight. I really should make new aliases... but, meh, live and learn. 

Nyneve

I really need to be more defensive. A lot of the time in duels I just can’t find the energy to run. I know, it’s weird that it’s just a few extra key strokes and it’s my character moving but I just can’t be assed. 

Torinn

I'm the same way.  If I couldn't beat you that time, I won't be able to beat you when the fight resets.

Farrah

Mercer said:

I have been told over and over that my biggest problem as a combatant, which keeps me from winning fights against basically anyone with half a clue what they are doing, is my inability to code curing profiles for every single class and swap them out on the fly.

In other words... I need to learn every classes kill paths on my own, even though I don't play them, learn to code far better than I currently do, then reinvent the wheel and come up with my own specialized curing system which I will somehow need to be able to switch during combat at milasecond speeds. Not that any of that effort will matter, as the only people who seem to WANT to fight me are people with thousands of dollars worth of arties who only want to duel.

I had a hard enough time learning my own class, and cobbling together a system for it with minimal coding skills. I think Achaean combat was designed with a very different and very specific type of player in mind.

The need for any prio swaps at all is actually highly exaggerated. You definitely do not need different prios for every single class. A few aliases to change a few prios will handle practically everything. But depending on who you are actually fighting, I mean, I could probably beat the vast majority of the game without touching prios even once. That's just because you can win by killing them faster than they kill you, and you can go defensive in ways unrelated to prios (running, shielding, tumbling). You definitely want your default prios to not suck. Some prios will easily get you killed. But you don't need to be constantly changing them usually. It's something people often say is the way to do better when it's usually not.

Ammar

To second what Farrah said, the preliminary step to prio swapping is understanding on a bone deep level what it is you're accomplishing by moving something up or down. Why do you bump haemophilia or ignore scalded? What do you get from putting deaf above dizziness? Honestly when it comes to combat there is no substitute for looking at your logs and trying to understand where and when the tide turned for you. if you don't want to put in that time, that's completely reasonable. But don't rush to blame the prios just because someone made an offhand comment about "swapping".

I think Wundersys has good default prios. The stock version will, I believe, get you killed to death.

Namino

Ammar said:

What do you get from putting deaf above dizziness? 

I am in this post and I don't like it. 

Minifie

Everything. Achaean PK isn’t the main draw for me, it’s an after thought to developed world, mythos and player-run politics that help advance it. I fiddle with it here and there, but it doesn’t take long before I want to duck off and play something more balanced, or more hilarious (24 person prop hunt is stupidly fun, or speedrunners, or being an asshole in streets of rogue etc).

Entry level combat is pretty fun with just going full-deathball or “just wack at each other until someone figures their shit out and lands a kill”, but after that it is too finicky and unrewarding IMO. 

Ismay

Exactly. The only draw pk has for me is group. All these ridiculous bounties can bite me. I just pause my system and let you have at it. I’ll always be of the option that participating in a group combat shouldn’t end up following you around a week or more later while you’re trying to extract or bash. 

All that said mainly because I refuse to spend ooc months or years trying to learn how to properly use a system that pisses me off so badly that I have to logout. It’s way too frustrating and complicated. The tiniest thing greatly matters when the system could be toned way down to make it reasonable for both older and newer players.

Lenn

Bounties are dumb.

Telinus

Some things I use to do when I fought a fair amount and wasn't as terrible as I am now, that I wish i still did:

- pay attention to what's happening instead of just focusing on my own afflictions

- know when to leave

- know when to shield

- know when I'm actually in danger, and when I can face-tank whatever is happening

- use active cures

- keep tabs on my mana levels against certain classes

As I moved more into learning about coding my own system, I'm starting to grasp these things again, though not fighting. As I moved more into easy-offense I got lazier and lazier and stopped fighting and instead just started pressing attack keys.

I want to get more involved again, and coding has helped me get a new enjoyment for an aspect I started to shy away from.