Inquisition

Kellonius

Mizik said:

Kellonius said:

Mizik said:

You guys ever read classleads? Look for any in there by Tanris. We spent an hour one night fixing Priest.

I read those priest classleads and did not enjoy some of them. You guys wanted to decrease how much mana was taken during sap or something for one of them. Tanris said that with quick-witted he could outpace the mana drain on "anyone" with just sap. That in itself, is incorrect. I have quick-witted AND a diadem and I cannot outpace anyone by just sapping. Even with demons on and spiritwrack its difficult to get a reasonable mana drain going on a lot of people. There were a ton of nerfs in there with your "fixes", and I think it would have left Priest in a worse state than it was already.

Edit: Quick edit before I get jumped on. There were a lot of good ideas in there too, but I dont think the good ideas would have outweighed all of the potential nerfs, and in the end it would have made it harder for Priests.

Nerf or balancing?

There's nothing balanced about all aff insta heal. << I can't believe I actually have to type that sentence.

Nevermind double passive healing.

Agree that Sap can stay the same. Though, I do think its inability to be hindered is silly in some cases: 

Example: Mizik Sentinel vs Micositu Priest

Micositu is on the ground with all four limbs mangled and a concussion, Mizik just pounding away. We're sitting in Demons, Piety, etc. Micositu's thrashed on ground, spamming unstoppable Sap. Sap outpaces mana sip, Absolve also unstoppable. Forces the shield.

So, Sap unstoppable? Ok. Absolve? F that. Standing or bust! 5x Mangled, bro.

Let me get this out of the way: I've never defended being able to insta heal the moment you get balance, even though it is quite costly in terms of mana usage. I do think that requires so form of limitation, but considering the entire healing skill is comprised of just that, it would require a pretty huge replacement for me to be on board with changing it. Right now being able to heal without using balance is Priests only real saving grace.

Absolve is stopped by shielding when you get below half mana. Absolve is also stopped by staying above half mana, which is really easy to do. I understand your gripe with sap being able to be used prone and mangled, but its really not that big of a deal as long as you're prioritizing mana. I can see that being changed, but I'm concerned to what end. Mangled limbs stopping it? Prone stopping it? Needing both?

Sylvance

Kellonius said:

Right now being able to heal without using balance is Priests only real saving grace.

lol

Velyse

I wish I still had the inquisition numbers I tested, but roughly:

91-100% mana, inquisition does nothing.

81-90% mana, inquisition does nothing.

71-80% mana, inquisition breaks two limbs and lasts for 10 seconds.

61-70% mana, inquisition breaks three limbs and lasts for 20 seconds.

0-60% mana, inquisition breaks four limbs and lasts for 30 seconds.

I think that's about right but I'm unsure. Either the last two iterations are 20 -> 30 seconds, or 15 -> 20. I remember that 61-70% mana is the range you usually want to aim for before you bother using inquisition, because otherwise you won't get a full use out of hellsight. I tested hellsight and IIRC it gave an average of 3 afflictions every 5 seconds. Again, going off memory, but hellsight lasts a total of 10 seconds. According to an IG documentation, the hellsight afflictions are: Confusion, Dizziness, Epilepsy, Fear, Hallucinations, Nausea, Slickness, Stupidity, and Vertigo.

Edit two: Thank you to Chryseas for helping me test!

Hellsight seems to have given all of the aforementioned afflictions except nausea, which was probably blocked by constitution. It has an EQ of 2.143 with quick witted, which puts it at about 2.5 second EQ without (-.375 seconds from 15%, plus latency). So that's about 6.4 seconds of EQ to perform inquisition and hellsight with quick witted. It seems that it applies them completely random, without any regard for what afflictions they have, meaning that hellsight becomes less useful if you manage to stick hellsight affs on them, but is better for keeping at least a few affs on the target. When I gave it to Chryseas, I saw: Stupidity and confusion at 2s, hallucinations at 4s, dizziness at 6s, vertigo at 10s, epilepsy at 17s, slickeness at 20s. As she gets more affs, the rate of afflicting goes down because it's trying to afflict with things she already has. If she were curing, it would probably be a linear 1/sec.

@Sabiru If you can think of a way that these affs somehow make it easier to get someone to sub-50% mana in tandem with our otuer skills, then I'm all ears! I really can't figure it out, though. Slickness doesn't really help us at all, considering how random it is. Even if you're lucky enough to get it instantly as the first hellsight affliction, that's about four seconds of applying mending, so they'll probably be able to just touch tree and then use restoration if you manage to get them below 60% mana. Inquisition doesn't stop smoke valerian anyway. We can dazzle and chasten, and our angel can load them up with other mental affs through spiritwrack, but again we have no way to capitalize on giving them mental affs. The very best we can do is try to keep  confusion up to make shielding easy to circumvent with a hammer tattoo, but if we're keeping confusion up we're not sapping, and you're not in danger of being absolved anyway.

The best priest strategy is pretty much to hold down sap, so far as I can tell. All of our other active abilities (excluding force) are not only superfluous, but actively harm our momentum by giving you breathing room for little return.

Lyr

@Velyse, @Tvistor and I tested and it seemed to do nothing at all to him at 81%+ mana and I didn't see inquisition on his diagnose.

Edit: It may have broken his arm but didn't stick inquisition, so 5 seconds of EQ with diadem/quick-witted for a lv1 break.

Tvistor

Can confirm that inquisition did absolutely nothing to me at 81-100% but started affecting me at 79.5% or something.

Kellonius

Cooper said:

If *shallam had a really good monk/artie monk I'd go Priest to support no problem. We don't, though, and I keep hoping that our Priests will start being Priests instead of Smiters.

Lol, I didn't buy an Auroran mace to hands people.

Kellonius

Sabiru said:

This thread has uncovered most of what has always been wrong with priest (with the exception of the time that Ovid played), and none of it is skillset-related.

Somebody could surely go into exactly why inquisition was a buff to priest, but it's really not worth it when one person appears to only be aware of two of priest's three class skills. Play a little with inquisition on your own time and think about why being able to cause various mana malices to people whose mana you can drop a little but not enough to absolve might be beneficial to the priest class in 1v1 scenarios. When you're done with that, consider the combination of extreme tankiness, warding, piety, cleansing, beckon, ally full-heal, a 50% mana instakill, an eliminate-style instakill, bedevil and a comparatively tame learning curve.

Your class doesn't suck. Amazing support + absolve and judge doesn't suck - it's how I played and enjoyed the game for the past year or so that I was active, and that's without rites and the rest of the amazing shit in devo. Priest is broken in many ways, but none of those make it or its faction at all weak or disadvantaged.

I agree. I don't recall, and don't care to check, but someone said something about not understanding what the limb breaking did for us with inquisition. I lol'd heartily. In any case, @mizik @sabiru @cooper, if you guys want to talk about priest balancing in a more close forum where we dont have to worry about bad opinions and ignorance interjecting, I'm up for that. 

Cooper

The inability of people to let go of wanting to get kills and knowingly using their class skills wrong is incredibly irritating.

I'm not going to use mind lock, kai cripple, enfeeble, banish, combos, batter, disrupt, blackout, or any of my skills that are useful to my allies or harmful to my enemies unless they will damage and get me the kill.

That is incredibly selfish.

Lyr

(Note: I am not arguing at all that priest needs buffing in groups. It is awesome.)

@Kellonius, yeah, people forget that just shielding stops us cold (not to mention evade, but that's most people's natural enemy). Hammer tattoo stops momentum. Angel strip will strip shield MAYBE, as it has equal chance with every other defense, and even doing a lucky angel strip can stop our momentum.

I agree with @Aerek, there is no way to capitalize on all of the afflictions from hellsight: I overloaded @Tvistor with affs: 60% inquisition, hellsight, dazzle, broke head, and still couldn't kill him with mana priority and his focus/insomnia off. Those three things make it mechanically impossible if the opponent doesn't use mana (and even if they do, it's not even close to guaranteed).

The only way I won a 1v4 was filtering everyone through piety (very awesome and useful group tool, by the way, but paladins also have this), then sapping them in demons while they hadn't switched priorities/turned off focus or insomnia. Insomnia keepup is another 100 mana per sap, and focus is just icing.

Lyr

Cooper said:

The inability of people to let go of wanting to get kills and knowingly using their class skills wrong is incredibly irritating.

I'm not going to use mind lock, kai cripple, enfeeble, banish, combos, batter, disrupt, blackout, or any of my skills that are useful to my allies or harmful to my enemies unless they will damage and get me the kill.

That is incredibly selfish.

I think we're all confusing 1v1 with group. This is titled 'inquisition' -- NEVER something that should be used in groups.

Kellonius

Cooper said:

The inability of people to let go of wanting to get kills and knowingly using their class skills wrong is incredibly irritating.

I'm not going to use mind lock, kai cripple, enfeeble, banish, combos, batter, disrupt, blackout, or any of my skills that are useful to my allies or harmful to my enemies unless they will damage and get me the kill.

That is incredibly selfish.

I was being facetious lol.

Kellonius

Lyr said:

(Note: I am not arguing at all that priest needs buffing in groups. It is awesome.)

@Kellonius, yeah, people forget that just shielding stops us cold (not to mention evade, but that's most people's natural enemy). Hammer tattoo stops momentum. Angel strip will strip shield MAYBE, as it has equal chance with every other defense, and even doing a lucky angel strip can stop our momentum.

I agree with @Aerek, there is no way to capitalize on all of the afflictions from hellsight: I overloaded @Tvistor with affs: 60% inquisition, hellsight, dazzle, broke head, and still couldn't kill him with mana priority and his focus/insomnia off. Those three things make it mechanically impossible if the opponent doesn't use mana (and even if they do, it's not even close to guaranteed).

The only way I won a 1v4 was filtering everyone through piety (very awesome and useful group tool, by the way, but paladins also have this), then sapping them in demons while they hadn't switched priorities/turned off focus or insomnia. Insomnia keepup is another 100 mana per sap, and focus is just icing.

Not cold because we can still do a few things like sap, force, etc. If someone shields it does not necessarily stop us cold, but we do have a few tricks that we can get around it, but we need to be crafty. If you want I can message you a few more specifics and tips.

Lyr

Kellonius said:

Lyr said:

(Note: I am not arguing at all that priest needs buffing in groups. It is awesome.)

@Kellonius, yeah, people forget that just shielding stops us cold (not to mention evade, but that's most people's natural enemy). Hammer tattoo stops momentum. Angel strip will strip shield MAYBE, as it has equal chance with every other defense, and even doing a lucky angel strip can stop our momentum.

I agree with @Aerek, there is no way to capitalize on all of the afflictions from hellsight: I overloaded @Tvistor with affs: 60% inquisition, hellsight, dazzle, broke head, and still couldn't kill him with mana priority and his focus/insomnia off. Those three things make it mechanically impossible if the opponent doesn't use mana (and even if they do, it's not even close to guaranteed).

The only way I won a 1v4 was filtering everyone through piety (very awesome and useful group tool, by the way, but paladins also have this), then sapping them in demons while they hadn't switched priorities/turned off focus or insomnia. Insomnia keepup is another 100 mana per sap, and focus is just icing.

Not cold because we can still do a few things like sap, force, etc. If someone shields it does not necessarily stop us cold, but we do have a few tricks that we can get around it, but we need to be crafty. If you want I can message you a few more specifics and tips.

We can sap, sure. But they can just spam a move direction while shielded and run around to regen mana. Force is a huge EQ loss and so I consider it useless 1v1 except preventing people from tumbling out of the area.

Kellonius

Lyr said:

Kellonius said:

Lyr said:

(Note: I am not arguing at all that priest needs buffing in groups. It is awesome.)

@Kellonius, yeah, people forget that just shielding stops us cold (not to mention evade, but that's most people's natural enemy). Hammer tattoo stops momentum. Angel strip will strip shield MAYBE, as it has equal chance with every other defense, and even doing a lucky angel strip can stop our momentum.

I agree with @Aerek, there is no way to capitalize on all of the afflictions from hellsight: I overloaded @Tvistor with affs: 60% inquisition, hellsight, dazzle, broke head, and still couldn't kill him with mana priority and his focus/insomnia off. Those three things make it mechanically impossible if the opponent doesn't use mana (and even if they do, it's not even close to guaranteed).

The only way I won a 1v4 was filtering everyone through piety (very awesome and useful group tool, by the way, but paladins also have this), then sapping them in demons while they hadn't switched priorities/turned off focus or insomnia. Insomnia keepup is another 100 mana per sap, and focus is just icing.

Not cold because we can still do a few things like sap, force, etc. If someone shields it does not necessarily stop us cold, but we do have a few tricks that we can get around it, but we need to be crafty. If you want I can message you a few more specifics and tips.

We can sap, sure. But they can just spam a move direction while shielded and run around to regen mana. Force is a huge EQ loss and so I consider it useless 1v1 except preventing people from tumbling out of the area.

No skill is useless, especially not a skill that can make your opponent do things to help you.

Lyr

1v1, I consider a skill is useless (a waste of time/effort) if it does not aid in your ultimate goal. Feel free to message me, though, maybe I'm wrong

Kellonius

Lyr said:

1v1, I consider a skill is useless (a waste of time/effort) if it does not aid in your ultimate goal. Feel free to message me, though, maybe I'm wrong

Will do.

Velyse

Most of the suggestions people have given me for how to take advantage of force, offensively, revolve around forcing people to do things that they can't do anymore. The most common one is "make them put all their vials in their pack," which doesn't work anymore. I've also had people suggest I force dragonheal (or some other dragon mana-intensive ability), which you can't do.

Sylvance

Velyse said:

Most of the suggestions people have given me for how to take advantage of force, offensively, revolve around forcing people to do things that they can't do anymore. The most common one is "make them put all their vials in their pack," which doesn't work anymore. I've also had people suggest I force dragonheal (or some other dragon mana-intensive ability), which you can't do.

Just get them to put mending/restoration in their pack.  You'd be amazed how many won't notice you doing that right up until the point that their system goes ape and they wonder why the hell they're quadbroke and can't fix it.

ETA: Writhe is also fun *shrug*

Iocun

Kellonius said:

Absolve is stopped by shielding when you get below half mana. Absolve is also stopped by staying above half mana, which is really easy to do.

The main issue here is actually not one of priest offence. It's that the fact that you can sap and absolve while hindered is a means of forcing an opponent into shielding, thus breaking his offence. Thus, it only really adds to defence, an area priests are already (too) strong at, while not helping them terribly much offensively, since as you said: one can just shield. A way of stopping sap/absolve by hindering the priest without sacrificing ones own offence would go in another direction and encourage more offence from both sides.

Lyr said:

@Velyse, @Tvistor and I tested and it seemed to do nothing at all to him at 81%+ mana and I didn't see inquisition on his diagnose.

Edit: It may have broken his arm but didn't stick inquisition, so 5 seconds of EQ with diadem/quick-witted for a lv1 break.

Pretty sure the 81-90% bracket gives no lasting inquisition effect, but cripples the right leg.

Cooper said:

The inability of people to let go of wanting to get kills and knowingly using their class skills wrong is incredibly irritating.

I'm not going to use mind lock, kai cripple, enfeeble, banish, combos, batter, disrupt, blackout, or any of my skills that are useful to my allies or harmful to my enemies unless they will damage and get me the kill.

That is incredibly selfish.

Well, monks are in the rather nice position of being both very able to assist others with abilities like the ones you mentioned, but also have some very effective damage abilities (bbt, choke, etc.), allowing them to be both supportive and score kills, depending on the situation and their mood. Some classes are more limited in that area. A serpent can't support groups (at least large groups) quite as well and will thus often end up in the role of the "kill stealer", while a jester or priest will tend to find himself stuck in an enabler/support role more often than not. It is thus understandable that members of classes without such variety will sometimes seek to venture a bit outside their main domain, even if it's not objectively the best thing they could do. I sometimes feel bad about just snipe-killstealing all the time as a serpent, so I'll go melee and do stuff like shatter/web/stick sensitivity/flay shields, even though neither of those are quite as good as what other support classes might do. Likewise, I can quite sympathise with a priest who just wants to smite or try for an absolve once in a while, or a jester who gets sick of bombing/hangedmanning and wants to try a jitb kill. As long as that's not all they do, I'm perfectly fine with that. We're playing a game, and if having fun in the game involves using some suboptimal tactics from time to time, just do it.

Sylvance said:

ETA: Writhe is also fun *shrug*

Why would you use an ability that throws you off eq for several seconds to make them do something to throw them off balance for ~a second (or less with nimble)?

Tirac

ITT: So many instant fullheal methods that nobody knows which one anyone else is talking about.

Aktillum

more Priests should own Thoth's fangs. Jab + Chasten opens up lols.

Kellonius

I use handaxes. 

Kellonius

Tirac said:

ITT: So many instant fullheal methods that nobody knows which one anyone else is talking about.

Not true, but still funny. 

Sylvance

What does ITT mean, folks?

@Iocun: It's fun.

Kellonius

In this thread

Tvistor

Sylvance said:

Just get them to put mending/restoration in their pack.  You'd be amazed how many won't notice you doing that.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you might be trolling. If your opponent is going to be that oblivious you could probably just start judgement. No one has fallen for that since the last time I sparred Hataru.

Sylvance

Tvistor said:

Sylvance said:

Just get them to put mending/restoration in their pack.  You'd be amazed how many won't notice you doing that.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you might be trolling. If your opponent is going to be that oblivious you could probably just start judgement. No one has fallen for that since the last time I sparred Hataru.

Hmm, seems I need to up my game

Iocun

Eh, you'd be surprised how many do, particularly assuming some spam. I also remember how many people Cezil killed by forcing elm pipes into packs/letters. It usually only works once on a given opponent, but that's still one kill!

Tvistor

It worked twice on Hataru*.

I stand by my point though. Everyone I spar is intelligent enough to notice something like that unless I do it in blackout.

I'm also thinking it doesn't make force that 'useful' if you can only expect it to work once (sometimes) on any given opponent.

Iocun

Tvistor said:

It worked twice on Hataru*.

I stand by my point though. Everyone I spar is intelligent enough to notice something like that unless I do it in blackout.

You clearly should spar me more often.