Single action kill

Jhulavdra

I was practicing Druid combat on some big artied folks the other day and got frustrated because I could barely get them below 50% health. The frustrating part about this is that they were just sitting there. They didn't have to run, they didn't have to play defensively, etc. They just sat and sipped and cured.

My question is why don't we give all classes a single action timed kill? Some classes already have this--Sylvans have heartseed, Runewardens have skullcrush. It's no wonder so many people loathe fighting when you can break both legs, prone, and gorilla pound a person twice and still not get them below 50%. Achaea is the only game I've ever played where someone could just walk away from their computer and a significant number of players with fully transcendent class skills wouldn't be able to kill them.

It's amazing how many hours I've spent trying to be able to kill players that aren't even fighting back. And, after I get to that point, I somehow have to be able to kill the people that are.

Another thought, if not a timed kill, why not just increase the damage percentages so that no one can out sip it? Mauling a person to death should be viable against any adventurer that isn't paying attention, in my opinion.

Edit: Upon re-reading this, I actually like the damage idea way more. This would preserve the artied folks protections when hunting, while at the same time making combat more accessible. Seasoned fighters are going to go for the faster kills, but players that suck at combat would at least have an option.

Edit 2: Should have mentioned... the gorilla pound was also with bees, pollen, and lashing all active.

Pruxi

I agree with your general frustration regarding artifacts, but it's a bad idea to make pure vitals racing viable. The real issue in the scenario you describe is that if they were attacking you they may be able to squish you with no strategy or skill involved because of the same artifact gulf. Being able to autobash an enemy to death flattens the design space, because even if a class has intricate skills... why bother, just attack with damage on balance!

To my knowledge there aren't any classes that strictly require pure damage racing even if they do have a damage based kill.

Everyone's primary kill involves either "prep": stacking up an incurable (or otherwise difficult/slow to reset) condition and then burning those resources for a kill window, "momentum": afflicting faster than cure balances to build up afflictions towards a lock or kill condition, or a hybrid where they have fast afflicting and also are building up a secondary counter that makes them more dangerous. 

That said, everyone does technically have a timer kill in weaponry, though simple triggers stop it even if the victim is afk. 

Jhulavdra

The main thing I was trying to say is that curing should not outpace simple attacks on a person that isn't paying attention. Expanding upon that, the damage path that I was following wasn't even a simple damage path. I was breaking both legs, proning, changing into a different morph and then pounding a proned victim mutiple times (with bees, lash, and pollen). But, I still didn't get this person below 50%.

You say damage should not be viable, but I don't understand what the problem is. Damage is so easy to counter. There are shield tattoos, weapon rebounding, barriers, ripostes, running, flying away, burrowing underground, swinging up into trees, tumbling, backflips, back handsprings, starbursts, Transmogrify, passive cures, active cures, and... simply fighting back, etc., etc., etc. Defense is EASY, especially if you are decked out in defensive/stat/sip artefacts.

I don't think damage should ever be faster than complex paths. As an Earthlord, once I prep their head and both legs, it takes three actions to complete a Calcify. But, the fact that my only option to kill these players as a Druid--even when they are AFK--is to Embrace them (breaking all four limbs and executing the appropriate action within an extremely tight time span) is bad design, in my opinion.

As a fully transcendent Druid, I want artied folks to have to do SOMETHING/ANYTHING to avoid dying if I'm hammering away at them. As it stands now, they don't even have to play defense. They can simply leisurely swat me away and win.

Again, I can't really think of any other PVP game I have ever played where a player could walk away from their screen and a major percentage of fully-skilled players would be unable to kill their character. (Maybe Path of Exiles, but that game was never really intended to be PVP anyway).

The fact that you have to have a complicated setup to achieve a kill is bad for the game, in my opinion. How many times have you asked for a spar and gotten the response "I'm not really set up for fighting" or "my system is broken". If a player has put the time in to reach Logosian and unlocked all of their class skills, then they should be able to kill any player in the game by repeating an attack over and over. Maybe it takes 15 hits. Maybe 20. It's a balance issue, but, they should be able to do it without being "set up for fighting".

Pruxi

Jhulavdra said:

But, the fact that my only option to kill these players as a Druid--even when they are AFK--is to Embrace them (breaking all four limbs and executing the appropriate action within an extremely tight time span) is bad design, in my opinion.

My limited understanding of Druid combat is that this IS your primary kill method, not an afterthought.

Against a target that isn't fighting back or running, it shouldn't take complicated code to pull this off. It's a method that's sort of curing proof, as it's mostly based on prep so the only thing that really counters it is pre-apply code but more seriously running away or killing you before you can set your prep.  It's designed to be very forgiving in the windup, as you don't NEED to stay in the room the whole time taking hits and you don't need to react very much to what your opponent is curing as long as you keep building limb damage. In trade, you get a short window for your actual kill sequence once you decide to start it, and need to be smart about your opponent's condition before you do. 

That's... good design in theory! Active choices you and your opponent both need to make, and tradeoffs between speed/safety. 


A big issue with balancing around pure damage racing* is that an incredible amount factors into the calculation. We're talking miniskills, armor, offensive stats, defensive stats, enchants, con artifacts, str/int artifacts, speed artifacts, regen artifacts, sip artifacts, reserves artifacts, damage artifacts, shields, shield artifact, talismans, and so on. The potential matchup range between a 'naked' or 'naive' fighter and a fully kitted fighter is potentially massive! Any balancing has to take into account the huge compounding swing value present for health and damage. 

There is a certain amount of swingyness inherent in prep or affliction momentum, chiefly speed artifacts for eq classes and artifact weapons for weapon prep classes, but it's nowhere near the same. Frankly, this is one reason I really dislike any speed artifacts in particular - it makes it difficult to fix or patch classes because of how easy speed can make or break a strat entirely. 

In the realm of small group combat (2v2) where it's still meaningful to talk about balance aside from movement skills, damage stacks perfectly. 100% of the damage you deal benefits your ally who is also dealing damage. Whereas with afflictions, if you aren't attacking the same balance or stack you can be 'wasting' effort with attacks that don't synergize towards your ally's kill. 

The mitigation strategies you note work as well if not better against many other types of combat, particularly momentum combat. They also apply to prep combat, but with tighter response windows if you aren't planning to entirely disengage as you have to "waste" their prep by letting them partially begin their kill sequence and interrupt. 

For those reasons (and more) straight damage should ideally be undertuned in an average matchup. That way:
1) you can't just lean on one button and kill enemies (yawn) meaning;
2) you want to use more of your skills, and
3) you actually CAN kill kitted out enemies, without
4) those kitted enemies just squishing you in turn

Which is the final point on the subject: If you could kill a theoretical afk fully artefacted opponent by virtue of baseline big damage, when that opponent  returns to the keyboard they will absolutely delete you no matter what you do - they take your baseline damage and multiply it with their artifacts! Personally I think that damage is already way too high at baseline, that fewer things should factor into damage both for defense or offense to narrow the gap somewhat and then decrease PvP damage numbers (or increase pure damage healing) across the board so that everyone is less likely to "accidentally" kill with damage while pushing for another kill. 

In other words again, I generally agree with the statement that it sucks that there's such a dramatic gulf between haves and have-nots in terms of damage and damage mitigation... but it really should go the other way with a bias towards pure damage tankiness for everyone rather than pure damage output for everyone. 


That's all as a matter of general principle. It may be that Druid needs specific buffs to its class skills and setups, but without logs it's hard to tell. I'm quite sure the answer to a Druid woe is not to boost damage across the board...


*I'm making a distinction between "damage kills" as a strategy involving setup or stuck afflictions and just leaning on a single attack or a simple combo/gate. There's definitely space for kills where the last blows are in the form of damage, after you've been locked or have gone through some other setup condition. It just sucks when someone chunks 50% of your hp each combo in addition to the affs and prep they're actually trying to deal. No bueno.