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

Archaeon

Atalkez said:

Vakvyr said:

Archaeon said:

that's absolutely untrue, and that's the reason why most great fighters play prep classes. 

??? What I said applies to both momentum and prep kill paths. The point is that there are some kill paths where no amount of defense will let you live. Not every class has these kills. Some of these kills have always existed. There are just more of them now.

There are more: "This person has me prepped. If I walk into their room I die. So I guess I'll just fuck off until whatever resets."

I’m not sure where this is coming from. Every single class kill can be defensively mitigated. There is no one thing fits all, it’s entirely dependent on the class you’re fighting. However, there are counters to counters you take, and so in a perfect scenario you may die to the fork due to curing choices, but that’s intended counterplay otherwise no one would ever die.

except druid.  hate druid

Atalkez

You can survive Druid, the way to do it is not pretty, but you can.

[Deleted User]

dwb infernal laughs in the corner

Vakvyr

Makarios said:

So there probably is a better way to handle paralysis than we do at the moment, but I feel it is very easy to go too far in the other direction - because we have a huge number of assumptions built up around the role of paralysis in the current meta, some big and some small, some mechanics relevant and some player relevant.

Understandable. I was just throwing something out there.

Atalkez said:

However, there are counters to counters you take, and so in a perfect scenario you may die to the fork due to curing choices, but that’s intended counterplay otherwise no one would ever die.

That's..that's what I'm getting at. There's--

Jesus. Is there another way to say the game is more offensively inclined than it used to be?

Namino

I don't think the game is more offensively designed than it used to be. I think it's... tighter. A lot tighter than it used to be, on offense. Before, I could be really sloppy as a dragonraced monk and just combo a leg, combo a leg, axe kick combo with uppercuts, you're dead. Over the years, jank got ironed out, but in the process combat basically had to be 'matched speed' to the best combatants, so a lot of the offensive theory the skills got based around was theoretically optimal offense, and the skill changes that occurred reflect that. Now a lot of kill confirms get squeezed into a teeny tiny little window where you have actual milliseconds to spare, so  offenses tends to be blazing fast examples of 'no wasted movement'. You don't see cobbled together offensive actions so much anymore because they don't work -- because the game in some respects is less offensively biased. You used to get away with all kinds of mistakes while killing a person. Now you really gotta get that confirm right in most cases imo. The bias towards offense is most likely a player culture thing because killing someone feels like a 'win' and surviving someone feels like 'whatever' (unless you then kill them). So everyone is hyper focused on offense and only a few people really mess with defensive theory.

The reason I consider @Atalkez one of the great active fighters right now isn't because of his offense, but because of his defense. A lot of 'good' fighters just sit there and die once you close your jaws around them and start killing them. Even really high tier combatants, many of their entire defensive arsenal boils down to 'tumble behind this wall'. The defensive shit Kez has done to me in just casual spars on the regular is maddening.

TL;DR: In the land of offense, the defensive man is king.

Tali

Over the years the game shifted, I would say it was because of the advanced curing systems where the extra millisecond was vital so defensive maneuvers like tumbling or evading are successful; especially when the majority of strategies revolve around preparing/setting up. I do agree with @Namino and imo, I've seen the offense aspect toned down while defense relatively stays the same. 

Shecks

It's not intentional but I seem to have a deep-seated refusal to get better at parrying.  Maybe I'll take some time to just focus on that for a while, now that I really think about it.