Venom combinations and overall Knight Combat Techniques

Jovolo

All Knights get those, I thought he meant additional as he specifically said runewardens (Falcon's are also not silent, so you can easily see yourself get stripped of shrugging and put it back up.)

Mishgul

runewardens have algiz, uruz, isaz, othala, thurisaz, nairat which are all obnoxious defensive abilities. Giving them something like damnation or vivisect would just be easy mode esp with runed rapiers

Antonius

Jovolo said:

Antonius said:

There's the minor point of Runewardens also having one of the passive ways to strip defences that Paladins do, and that their damage isn't that far behind Paladin.

Is it passive? Assuming you mean tiwaz. I was under the impression it stripped defences only if you enter a room with it sketched (And a wunjo before it, too.). Its usefulness in this regard is not very high. It would be more helpful if it actually worked as a passive ability in the room instead of an on-entrance ability.

Why would I mean something in Runelore when saying that Runewardens also have access to one of the passive defence stripping methods that Paladins do? Paladins have Cleansing rite and their falcon, and the latter is available to all Knight classes.

Jovolo

I'm pretty sure we already covered falcons a while back ( Maybe not ? ) and we were talking about additional ways that the Knight classes individually have to help them deal with shrugging. Paladin's get Falcon+Cleansing, Infernals get Falcon+Leprosy, Runewardens get Falcon, and then have to deal with scales as an additional defence against their strategy of damage, not to mention thurisaz/hugalaz being so easily disabled. It isn't an equal situation at all, but I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. Runewarden's are already excellent against a large amount of classes and a rock papers scissors situation is interesting to have to deal with. Though the sheer futility / frustration in fighting a serpent as a runewarden cannot compare to the other Knight classes that at least have fun ways to try and kill a serpent through shrugging.

Falcon is like a 1/3 chance to strip a defence, and it is not silent, so the serpent can easily just see themselves being stripped of shrugging and then put it back up. 

Antonius

@Jovolo: I know what we were talking about, and I also know that you said Paladins have two methods of passively stripping defences, implying that neither of them is available to the other two Knight classes (which is simply untrue).

Cleansing is the only real factor that separates them, and that's only effective against people who don't handle it appropriately. Damnation isn't likely to be feasible against a Serpent with shrugging up (unless they have horrendous lag and/or curing) and disembowel has all of the same problems as for Runewardens, leaving straight damage - potentially an option, if they don't check their defences for scales being stripped regularly.

Tesha

I gave up on damning serpents on like, the third try. Lunge/engage works fine for them. And their tears lowered my water bill.

Santar

Serpent vs. Knight wouldn't even be remotely fair for the Serpent if Knights were buffed in any way in the matchup. Shrugging is necessary as is. Like I mentioned before, I feel that Serpent vs. Knight is fairly balanced, with a tendency towards the Knight winning if the fighters are evenly skilled.. Both classes have ways to survive against each other.  Without shrugging, Knights would just blow through Serpents  easily with any sort of prep. The hindering would be impossible to deal with as a Serpent and the lack of defensive abilities would cause us to just die really quickly. Yes, the Knight has to get a little lucky vs shrugging to perform a kill combo on a top tier Serpent, but if it wasn't that way, the Serpent wouldn't even have a chance.

You also have to consider that shrugging as a defense is only really highly effective against Knight class.  There's a few other classes it gives minor buffs against like Occultist locking and Jester axes, but mostly it's just a Knight defense. I don't get anything out of shrugging in most of my fights.

Regarding damage, any equally artied Knight pretty much blows through my health in 2-3 DSLs. The fact that none of you are artied/using damage as a tactic doesn't mean it isn't viable. I tried to fight Cooper once as a Paladin, and it was impossible for me to stay in the room with him for over 5 seconds. I am heavily artied and the majority of Knights I fight are almost completely unartied, then want to complain that they have a hard time killing me.

I'm not sure why you guys are so hard pressed trying to figure out ways to nerf serpents/buff other classes vs. Serpents. Aren't I literally the only combatant playing Serpent right now? Everyone else left the class because of how underpowered it is. Serpents basically can't win any evenly skilled match up. The Serpent has to be considerably more skilled than their opponent for it to be an even matchup.

Santar

Antonius said:

 disembowel has all of the same problems as for Runewardens, leaving straight damage - potentially an option, if they don't check their defences for scales being stripped regularly.

Scales doesn't do anything vs. disembowel afaik

I tested all this with Dunn a while back and pretty sure scales(and scalemail) both had negligible(or no) effect on disembowel.

Antonius

@Santar: I don't believe it does, either. Maybe that's worded awkwardly, but the problems for disembowel I was referring to was getting them prone around shrugging. I'm not convinced any Knight is in a bad place against Serpents, though.

Mazoth

Santar said:

Antonius said:

 disembowel has all of the same problems as for Runewardens, leaving straight damage - potentially an option, if they don't check their defences for scales being stripped regularly.

Scales doesn't do anything vs. disembowel afaik

I tested all this with Dunn a while back and pretty sure scales(and scalemail) both had negligible(or no) effect on disembowel.

This is true, quick combat questions thread has the announce, but the damage from disembowel is unblockable like black dragon breath.

Wessux

I lost three setups to a serpent that barely knew which end of the dirk to hold. Shrugging shouldn't work on delphinium, that would solve most of the problems. I still can't kelp stack you well cause of shrugging, and I can't use the gecko method to get around parry. So you'll still have all the same defensive buffs and I can at least get you prone to disembowel. Everybody wins

Naisar

It's interesting to see people saying that Runie has the worst deal here.  Paladins and Infernals are the ones whose finishers get completely boned by shrugging - Runies have less tools to deal with it, but they also care less.

I dislike any ability that passively destroys setups, but in most cases having to re-prep a leg because delphinium got shrugged isn't a big deal.  I think that people just have a very low tolerance for shrugging ruining disembowel setups because of how long it can take to prep a Serpent with static parry.  In a recent fight with a Serpent it took me twenty-two minutes to prep his limbs.  God only knows how many setups the Serpent executed in that time - seemed like a metric -ton from my point of view.

I agree with Santar that Knights aren't in need of a buff against Serpents.  Knights already shred Serpents damage-wise and have all the tools needed to survive them indefinitely without too much trouble.  This isn't a good balance though- Knights get frustrated as hell when they can't outdamage a Serp because they have to spend forever on the prep (god forbid they mess up the execution), and Serpents are rightfully frustrated because they don't have a very good way to actually kill knights.  If we made Serpents more deadly perhaps we could justify getting rid of shrugging to shrink the preparation time of Knight setups, but as things stand now it would be pretty heartless.  On the upside though Serpent v Serpent would become vastly less idiotic.

Santar

Everybody wins? You mean Knight gets a massive buff versus Serpent, when the fight is already equal at worst for the Knight, if not stacked in the Knight's favour?

Stop being ridiculous. Also, stop acting like delph breaks on leg breaks is the only time it would ever get used(not going into delph abuse tactics here for obv reasons) What you're suggesting is a gamebreaking nerf to Serpent vs. Knight combat. Shrugging stalls your offense, yes. That's the intention of the skill. It doesn't prevent you from obtaining kills, it only sometimes delays your ability to get a kill. The problem is you expecting your kill combo to be 100% unstoppable and work the same against every person. Serpents have limited offensive opportunity versus Knights and can't perform any sort of prep like the knight can, yet you want knight offense to be extremely buffed to unbalance the matchup?'

I have it even worse than you. I fight Serpent vs. Serpent where literally my whole offense relies on affliction, yet I still manage to kill even top tier Serpents like Iocun on a consistent basis. Suck it up.

This is my last post on the subject.

Edit at Ninjasar:  I don't' disagree that Knight vs. Serpent is a troublesome fight for both sides, but personally I think it's a matchup  that is somewhat balanced and would be best left untouched. It can turn into a long fight, but it's a fight that both sides can win and have fairly similar offensive and defensive opportunities. To throw an example out there though..Monks have basically all the same defensive opportunities as Knights without being affected by shrugging at all, which makes that a very rigged fight. If Knights were given an easy shrugging workaround, Serpent vs. Knight would just turn into another Serpent vs. Monk, where the Serpent has to play literally flawless defense to avoid dying to unstoppable prep, while the Serpent's momentum offense is easily compromised by basic defense in most situations.  

Wessux

Santar said:

The problem is you expecting your kill combo to be 100% unstoppable and work the same against every person.

In what world is disembowel 100% unstoppable? All you have to do is apply restoration to torso/tumble off impale.

I know, a crazy concept that those two things easily stop it and that other classes do it all the time. I don't want to have to deal with terrible serpent combatants living for 30 minutes because I have really craptastic luck. Maybe your right and delphinium could be abused somehow, but jesus I would like to have fun too. Half the serpents I've fought don't even realize that shrugging is why they are alive. The other half could live just fine without shrugging stopping delph.

I like shrugging, I would just like it to not ignore delphinium, every other class deals with it all the time and I doubt serpent will really have that hard of a time too.

Mishgul

they probably will. It is really easy to turtle against a serpent and render 100% of their setups useless. As soon as you take awake shrugging, you are basically the fashion/obliterate class.

Tesha

Stop trying to nerf serpents, serpents are fine. Monks are the problem.  

Telvantes

I have a lot of relearning to do.... Whelp. Here we go.

Atalkez

Nice necro..

Tasleus

WELL SPEAKING OF NECRO...

This post aged quite well. I'm pretty happy by the changes to the system and just came back to this as a little trip down memory lane. I feel like a lot of the comments here helped shape some of the changes and you see little pieces where people had good ideas that were implemented. Fun stuff.

Amranu

Remember when shrugging was retarded and people defended it as necessary.

Shecks

inb4 thread gets forum justiced - @Amranu

Remember when shrugging was retarded and people defended it as necessary.

Def remember it being retarded, but don't remember people saying it was necessary. something was necessary, although as history has shown, it didn't have to be that. Good riddance to the old shrugging, god it was awful, for everyone involved (including other serpents).