If you were a newbie combatant....

Wattsee

Something that may be of use, but a huge amount of work. Hosting some videos to actually explain something within a combat situation, I'm almost thinking like a Tankspot entry for each affliction.

"OK folks, here's paralysis... it's gunna suck because.. well, you can't do anything.

It can come from a lot of things, from denizens to venoms... but the way you can tell for sure, is you see this line "blahblahblah".

In order to cure paralysis you need to do A,B,C.

On a scale of 1-100, I would rate this as a very high priority to cure..."

Maybe even small videos showing basics of creating triggers (especially using Achaea's browser connection) that would help a newbie change from WTF to... oh, I get it, I think I can figure that out.

If I can go on Youtube and find out exact examples of what to do in WoW, even going so far as what order to cast spells in for specific situations, I think us Achaeans can put together something nice regarding the basics of combat. Of course building off that point will be the task of the person learning, but it would likely be very helpful to get past the newbie-lacking-understanding stage.

Caladbolg

Daeir said:

The sheer complexity of Achaea's combat is the barrier to entry for most, I think. I don't want to rave on about Serpent combat too much, but affliction classes in particular have it really rough since you seem to be playing against a system rather than a player, whereas breaking classes are playing against the other player (or a very good automatic parrying strategy). The pace of Achaean combat is also absolutely ridiculously fast to the point where latency has far more of an influence than it should - the fact that most locking strategies require you to get a very specific combination of venoms off in a window of half a second is a very tall order and something you really can't do without scripting yourself an improved interface to the game (aliases, offensive systems, so on).

What I would really like to see is automatic arena events hosted periodically during the Thoth Hours (or whenever really) that people could jump in to just have some combat fun. Cityless people in particular have it very rough when trying to get into events - especially if you're enemied to a lot of the cities they're hosted in! Adding a tertiary arena dedicated solely to automatic events would be a great way to get people more involved, I wager.

People hardly ever join my Delos Rampages and then there's 15k out the window

Edit: Also why is everyone hating on SVO It's the same thing you could do your self but someone else already did for a price. And honestly if I had to code my own system I wouldn't be playing this game. I already went dormant once because I couldn't figure out mudlet now I can make basic triggers and echos excuse me for not being a coding god.

Wattsee

Just an FYI, you can operate a world-wide event from Delos (useful for rogues and enemies) but Tharos-run events are always fun.


IV. Delos Arena Commission
--------------------------
We're pleased to announce a feature of the Matsuhama Arena in Delos:
The ability to commission an arena event on behalf of yourself or an
organisation you belong to!

Simply head to the arena staging grounds with 15000 gold in hand, and
use the following syntax:
   ARENA COMMISSION [FOR <org>] [REWARD <amount> <GOLD|CREDITS>]

A winner's purse may be specified in gold or unbound credits (this only
applies to events that have a singular winner)!

After you've commissioned the arena, you have access to tweak the
various ARENA commands (as outlined in HELP CULTURE), and then INIT an
event of your choice! Keep in mind that the commissioning will only last
for five minutes, so please make sure that your event is initialised
before the time limit expires.

Hhaos

The biggest help to me, was Dueling @Trey before he had got Knighted and I was still a Squire myself, shortly after Roroan left Hashan and I had no mentor. I had figured out how to vivisect by breaking leg delphinium, arm epseth but it only worked on a handful of people at the time. Obviously anyone with restore made me was to @Cain my laptop. After being vivisected by Trey I had a few words with him on an OOC Clan and asked him not only what exactly he did that was different but why it worked. He was kind enough to break down into steps exactly how his particular setup worked. I worked it out and was able to get a few kills with his setup, but still had issues getting it to work. After finally talking with @Batista when he came back who broke it down into how curing balance worked, EVERYTHING seemed to click for me like turning on a lightbulb. So something that I believe would help new players quite extensively would be making it public knowledge how certain times are set on the different balances for the new players, possibly even adding it to HELP CURING etc etc. It would help because while most of my defensive training came from the days of Roroan roflstomping us in Hashan to the point that we wanted to cry IRL, and then from there on. Though there are people who are able to pick it up and run with it @Illyose for instance, the vast majority are not able to just look things over and test test test until everything makes sense to them.

Froh

Sarapis said:

What are the things you would find most confusing/challenging/frustrating about combat without a system?
What I _do_ find most challenging...

 

1) Speed - the balances and rate at which you need to do things has been balanced over time for machine reflexes, not human.  Trying to keep up manually used to be sufficient 1v1; it is not any more.

2) Obscurity - As classes and entities and mounts are added how long does it take to work out what you need to do in response to a given attack?  And then how much longer to work out what other options are available/effective?  Even working out which types of movement will get you out of a room when blocked by a given type of obstacle/skill or what you need to do to stop a a non-instant attack is daunting: ok, I found one but is it the only/best?  Working all of that out is an insane time sink.

In short, it's one thing to need to spend a long time practicing to be GOOD at a game.  It's quite another to need to spend a long time practicing to even know what the game mechanics are.

 

Valden

Hhaos said:

The biggest help to me, was Dueling @Trey before he had got Knighted and I was still a Squire myself, shortly after Roroan left Hashan and I had no mentor. I had figured out how to vivisect by breaking leg delphinium, arm epseth but it only worked on a handful of people at the time. Obviously anyone with restore made me was to @Cain my laptop. After being vivisected by Trey I had a few words with him on an OOC Clan and asked him not only what exactly he did that was different but why it worked. He was kind enough to break down into steps exactly how his particular setup worked. I worked it out and was able to get a few kills with his setup, but still had issues getting it to work. After finally talking with @Batista when he came back who broke it down into how curing balance worked, EVERYTHING seemed to click for me like turning on a lightbulb. So something that I believe would help new players quite extensively would be making it public knowledge how certain times are set on the different balances for the new players, possibly even adding it to HELP CURING etc etc. It would help because while most of my defensive training came from the days of Roroan roflstomping us in Hashan to the point that we wanted to cry IRL, and then from there on. Though there are people who are able to pick it up and run with it @Illyose for instance, the vast majority are not able to just look things over and test test test until everything makes sense to them.

This is pretty much what I want in a nutshell. Talking after spars I get told to look at This and This or that you should try This and do This, but never the why and how. Now I know some people would just say "Well, just ask" but not all of us feel comfortable asking or even know what to ask about.

I always feel like I'm whining or annoying people when I try and get someone to explain something in a way I can understand it and after having them go through it twice I feel bad asking the same question again plus it just makes me think I'm being the idiot.

Xith

I don't have a problem with the coding required or anything. I like very much that Achaea is about that.

And the speed has to do with the rate each person/entity's balance(s) are recovered, which is a byproduct of the nature of Achaean combat. Multiple curing balances, multiple attack balances, timed effects.

I know that to someone who has never played a MUD or Achaea, a melee engagement involving 25 adventurers and their spam... would look like utter jibberish.

But just like the Matrix code, eventually all you see is blonde, brunette, redhead.

The only fixable thing about being a puzzled newbie combatant is the lack of intro information. HELP AFFLICTIONS should link to something that describes the basic 5-point affliction lock (ano/asth/slick/imp/prz) to give them an idea of the complexity. And potentially something that summarizes limb prep/breaking.

If new players could grasp those things sooner, they would be able to cope with the complexity a little quicker.

Sylvance

1) I don't think that 'the Cityless can't get combat experience' is of specific relevance to this thread; it's one of the many reasons that newbs are all but thrust into joining a City. If, despite the gazillion prompts and urgings that they are guaranteed to receive, a truen00b decides to be Cityless, then that's their decision. I particularly don't think it matters generally, nor for the purpose of this thread that people who are enemied to everywhere can't get combat experience.  They probably got enemied for something combat related, and likely knew what the repercussions would be. Again, somebody making these choices has decided to make combat training more difficult for themselves.

2) Nobody is 'hating on SVO' as far as I can tell. The simple fact of the matter is that systems paradoxically make it harder, not easier, for a true newb to get into combat, because it makes it damn near impossible for them to compete with somebody else who has a system and a little bit of knowledge.  As has already been stated, 'SVO/omni handles curing so I don't need to know when to Writhe' doesn't help a truenewbie to get better at combat as much as actually learning the curelist does, for a number of reasons that we needn't go into here.  To be clear, I love omni, and I love playing with code, but neither of them has made me any better at understanding the philosophy, flow and mechanics of Achaean combat, and even my tiny understanding of these things is higher than that of a person who is genuinely stepping out of Flame for the first time.

Xith, I've got to disagree with you in a similar vein: I don't think that the speed of Achaean combat is determined by balances. I think it's determined by systems. With my system worrying about curing, healing, standing etc (until it's broken/locked up by an experienced combatant), I'm left free to concentrate almost exclusively on offense.  If the person has attack chains scripted, then it's possible that all they have to actually do is think strategy ("Now I'll switch to dps" rather than "Tremolo/Epseth/Accentato next"). That is why combat is so brokenly fast in Achaea.

I remember as a newbie (this was ten years ago, so I shudder to think what it's like now) trying to manual in the Arena and wondering why everyone else was so much faster than me. When I learned about systems I felt I'd spent a couple of months at the butt of a joke that really wasn't very funny.

Sena

Sylvance said:

The simple fact of the matter is that systems paradoxically make it harder, not easier, for a true newb to get into combat, because it makes it damn near impossible for them to compete with somebody else who has a system and a little bit of knowledge.  As has already been stated, 'SVO/omni handles curing so I don't need to know when to Writhe' doesn't help a truenewbie to get better at combat as much as actually learning the curelist does, for a number of reasons that we needn't go into here.  To be clear, I love omni, and I love playing with code, but neither of them has made me any better at understanding the philosophy, flow and mechanics of Achaean combat, and even my tiny understanding of these things is higher than that of a person who is genuinely stepping out of Flame for the first time.

Publicly-available systems make it far easier for newbies to get into combat, without them the barrier to entry would be much higher. It is "damn near impossible to compete" without a system, but mastering manual curing well enough to seriously participate in combat requires orders of magnitude more time of effort than getting and learning to use a curing system.

It's true that you won't get very far with a stock system that you don't know how to use effectively, but it still lets you participate in combat, which is a huge benefit that wouldn't be possible without systems. Newbies just need to be taught not to just use their curing systems as a crutch and neglect actually learning to cure.

Arador

I'll write a decent post when I get home, but was wondering. What if all timers in the game were doubled? Basically slow the entire thing down. Any thoughts on the impact this would have?

Iocun

I'm not really sure whether systems make it overall easier or harder.

Systems (esp. public systems) make the gaps between different tiers of combat smaller. This means that with systems it gets more viable for a novice to survive for a while against a reasonably experienced fighter, but between two beginners, both of them having systems doesn't really make it easier than if both were manualing, perhaps even slightly harder in a sense.

I therefore do not think a lack of public systems would make entry into combat per se more difficult, it would just mean that you'd have a much smaller range of opponents you have a chance at winning against, resulting in a more pronounced dichotomy between those who can cure extremely well and those who can't. Seeing that Achaea's playerbase, while decent, isn't huge, and that the number of players who actively engage in combat is even smaller, I believe it's a good thing to keep the range of people you have a chance at fighting relatively broad, rather than putting a further emphasis on those things that separate "experts" from "novices".

Tasleus

Vadimuses said:

Ahh, the angry snipes because someone bested you. I'll just throw it out there that I don't advocate for getting a system and doing nothing with it - I'm all for people improving past it and raising themselves up. I'm giving them a stepping stone.

Vadi's right here. If you've ever used the Svo system and joined the clan for Svo, @Vadimuses will very often say something along the lines of "The system is just a tool. It won't do everything for you until you master it yourself." Among that, I mentioned one day over the forums that it's a good idea to try to build your own system first. I built a full-blown curing system on my own, and in doing that, I learned all my cures, and afflictions and venoms and all the goodies. It taught me a lot. I wound up getting Svo because its about 1839748390289734 times more efficient, but the fact of the matter remains that whether or not you have a system DOESNT MAKE YOU A GOOD COMBATANT. IT JUST DOESNT.

There's still a TON of things you have to learn and prepare for, and sorry folks. I'm going to banish this thought here and now ; Systems don't make a combatant. Top tier combatants will attempt to use your system against you.

Tasleus

@Sarapis : I think one thing's clear from these forum posts so far.

From what I've seen, People don't feel as if they have access to information concerning combat techniques or skills on varying levels.

With that being the case, you've already got a small solution working : 

You have a Newbie channel.

Create a Combat channel for differing levels of combat proficiency, where technique can be discussed and mediated by IRE staff members and players.

Just a thought.

edit to include more detailed information about my thoughts : 

So you'd have channels and sub-channels than can be activated within the channel (Or just separate channels. Your call) that basically allow you to select your expected combat level. Myself for example, I might choose the Mid-tier combat system and turn it on. This would allow High-tier combat players to see my chat as well (If they choose to not turn it off) and they can respond and answer my questions, since they've got experience. It should be completely OOC though. However, I think retraining some of the Romeos and Juliets to Zorros and Xenas might help.

Sarapis

Averi said:

Random suggestion:

Also, if there was a server side way of highlighting things? like if balances were automatically highlighted and then there was a way to change it if we wanted to. That might also make things a bit easier. 

Well, we're either going to do some server-side curing, or, just as likely, build packages into the HTML5 client (client.achaea.com), which is the client we'll support going forward. It's also the client that anyone who hasn't played a MUD before is likely to use (unless they are IE users, in which case they can't use it until Microsoft decides to build a modern browser).

Cooper

Arador said:

I'll write a decent post when I get home, but was wondering. What if all timers in the game were doubled? Basically slow the entire thing down. Any thoughts on the impact this would have?

This would do a couple things.

Pros:

Obviously it would slow things down.

People would have more time to react.

Latency wouldn't matter as much.

Cons:

Any mistake you made is going to be much more apparent because people will have a longer time to watch for those mistakes and capitalize on them.

Set-ups that took 45 seconds to complete before are now going to take a minute and a half. If you're a Knight and set up a quad break (something that can take 2 minutes easily), you're looking at 4 minutes. If you execute the setup incorrectly, well, that sucks.

Part of the fun of combat is the fast pace. I don't think it would be as fun if it was slower.

Adet

Cooper said:

Arador said:

I'll write a decent post when I get home, but was wondering. What if all timers in the game were doubled? Basically slow the entire thing down. Any thoughts on the impact this would have?

This would do a couple things.

Pros:

Obviously it would slow things down.

People would have more time to react.

Latency wouldn't matter as much.

Cons:

Any mistake you made is going to be much more apparent because people will have a longer time to watch for those mistakes and capitalize on them.

Set-ups that took 45 seconds to complete before are now going to take a minute and a half. If you're a Knight and set up a quad break (something that can take 2 minutes easily), you're looking at 4 minutes. If you execute the setup incorrectly, well, that sucks.

Part of the fun of combat is the fast pace. I don't think it would be as fun if it was slower.

How about having it as an option for spars (or rampages) in the arena, then?  That way, it could be used as a learning and teaching tool, but wouldn't get in the way of actual combat.  Obviously, there would be the painful transition between slow arena and fast NoT at some point - but I think more people would be willing to make that transition if they had this "slow mode" experience.

Mannimar

Adet said:

Cooper said:

Arador said:

I'll write a decent post when I get home, but was wondering. What if all timers in the game were doubled? Basically slow the entire thing down. Any thoughts on the impact this would have?

This would do a couple things.

Pros:

Obviously it would slow things down.

People would have more time to react.

Latency wouldn't matter as much.

Cons:

Any mistake you made is going to be much more apparent because people will have a longer time to watch for those mistakes and capitalize on them.

Set-ups that took 45 seconds to complete before are now going to take a minute and a half. If you're a Knight and set up a quad break (something that can take 2 minutes easily), you're looking at 4 minutes. If you execute the setup incorrectly, well, that sucks.

Part of the fun of combat is the fast pace. I don't think it would be as fun if it was slower.

How about having it as an option for spars (or rampages) in the arena, then?  That way, it could be used as a learning and teaching tool, but wouldn't get in the way of actual combat.  Obviously, there would be the painful transition between slow arena and fast NoT at some point - but I think more people would be willing to make that transition if they had this "slow mode" experience.

"slow mode" is an Occultist promising not to use Domination or blackout...

Vadimuses

Lusternia demonstrated it's already possible to have server-side curing that is client-antagonistic. Given experiments with Java and Nexus clients - I think it would be a better long-term help to make it be available for everyone.

Yue

please implement:

random spars, in a queue, where the server matches you with opponents based on might/level. pay when you enter the queue, as soon as a match is found (and no other matches are currently taking place, get teleported to the arena)

SPAR QUEUE <enter>

You have entered the spar queue. You will automatically enter the arena when a match is found.

say to Synbios I thought 'Synbios' was just your forum name. What a stupid name for an actual character! <enter>
You say to Sir Synbios Hagane, Blade Singularity, "I thought 'Synbios' was just your forum name. What a stupid name for an actual character!

A match has been found! You will spar Bevis the newb Blademaster as soon as the arena is available!

Sir Synbios Hagane, Blade Singularity says, "Lolwat."

Lord Hermes appears out of thin air, grabs you by the hair, and pulls you through the Void to the Delos Arena. Utterly disoriented, you gasp for air before sputtering, "Lord Hermes!! I thought You died?!?!"
The Divine Messenger shakes His head, His eyes sparkling with amusement. He lifts His hand to your face slowly, then suddenly grabs your nose and shouts, "HA, GOT YOUR CONK!!" before vanishing.

Having already paid your fee upon entering the sparring queue, you step into the arena, ready to face off with Bevis.

This is just an example ^ of how this could work. I think it would help newbie combatants a lot. It makes combat more accessible, and this way you could keep novices (likely no curing system, etc) sparring novices.

Vaehl

I like that idea, Yue. Getting things like sparwho more interactive.

Re: Systems
I really like how systems allow people to get into combat when they otherwise couldn't, but I prefer more of a very basic system. Newbies can use svo and can survive affliction classes and stuff and that's great, but it'd be better if they died instead because their priorities were wrong. They can then manually switch priorities, instead of their system, while also realizing WHY they aren't eating bloodroot first, or curing impatience first vs serpent, or eating kelp when they have more kelp afflictions. Not only does this help people learn, but when they're the ones changing priorities mid combat, treeing manually etc I believe they feel more involved in the fight.

Another example: retardation. A great vibe with lots of different tricks to do in it that aren't that viable outside it. I used to love fighting in it, myself being above average (at the least) in manualling. It really felt like I was fighting the other player; how they pick their priorities, what attacks they do, whether they attack or cure that frozen stiff affliction. It was really fun, but now it's just me manualing vs a system. I do win in retard, but it's just not as fun with the other person mashing offensive abilities with their system curing for them while I frantically attempt to catch up in curing or get ahead of theirs - likely both at the same time.

I'm not bashing on svo or other public systems, it's just my input.

Xith

Sylvance said:

Xith, I've got to disagree with you in a similar vein: I don't think that the speed of Achaean combat is determined by balances. I think it's determined by systems. With my system worrying about curing, healing, standing etc (until it's broken/locked up by an experienced combatant), I'm left free to concentrate almost exclusively on offense.  If the person has attack chains scripted, then it's possible that all they have to actually do is think strategy ("Now I'll switch to dps" rather than "Tremolo/Epseth/Accentato next"). That is why combat is so brokenly fast in Achaea.

It is determined by balances, which is why you see logs of people spamming 'dsl target' 30 times until it hits their balance. The system just takes care of those things in a more elegant way, like with dorepeat.

It still feels more responsible to sponsor player-created curing systems and just make note of them in the HELP files that relate to combat. And use those files to teach novices what happens in combat, just the basics. After that learning curve is overcome, they'll better understand how curing works, and why systems make it more effective.

Jhui

Starting combat is similar to starting Achaea.

You need other noobs around you to make the game (or combat) fun or you just feel out of place and feel like a burden.

Sure combat is fast, complex, and impossible at times, but that is mostly when you are competing with experienced people.

If noobs are fighting other noobs, generally the pace is much slower and much simpler.

The problem is finding people that are near the same level as you to fight with.

Back in my day...

Factions were less separated for noobs, there seemed to be more noob-arena events, and there were more non-experienced fighters than experienced ones.  Learning was easy because you always had people you could match up against and possibly beat.  You would talk afterwards and probably spar multiple times and you would learn together (no matter what city you were from).

I don't think combat speed, mechanics, or systems are to blame.  That stuff doesn't get exposed until people are already pretty invested into the game.  The problem is that the playerbase has shifted from 10% experienced 90% noobs to 99% experienced 1% noobs.  The noobs have no other noobs to feed off of, so they quickly lose interest or get disheartened.

tldr:  where mah noobs at

Zeon

Even with the constant repetition of the word noobs, I agree.

My first ever achaea spar was as a level 18 eleusian sylvan vs a sparring buddy I made off sparwho who was an ashura monk. I think I won our first fight because I used this new ability freeze and he got disrupted and there was no way to stop that. Then he won because he was able to break one of my limbs. And neither of us knew what caloric or restoration was, etc, etc. Learning bit by bit vs other people of equal might/skill made things really fun because you get to learn mechanics at a slower pace as you're forced to interact with them.

It's hard to find others of your might/understanding these days. 99% of people interested in combat have trans survival + class skills + avoidance with maybe artefact pipes and a good curing system. That means you need at least that much to compete at an even level, or at least something close. It gets harder and harder to find other 'noobs' as Jhui so elegantly put it.

Yue

I would just like to point out that technically, I am a noob, so my post should carry some weight  

Valden

@Zeon with so much as a barrier to entry into low-tier combat it also plays havoc with trying to gauge someone's might. When I spar against someone who is 10% my might and they kick my ass because they are an alt or just generally have more skill and less lessons. 

Maethros

Newbie combatant here!  Seconding (fourthing?) what others have said, these have been my biggest issues with getting into combat:

- Timing, timing, timing.  In order to set someone up for the kill, I have to be pretty much spot on with my venoms, limb hits, and everything else or I'll be completely boned.  Herb balances, salve balances, balance balances all affect my strategy, and that's not even counting all the skills that other classes possess that I haven't even begun to study.  Some of the most useful help files I've read on one of my clans have second-by-second breakdowns of fight mechanics and strategy which is enormously helpful to a newbie, except that it highlights ...

- The unbelievable complexity of the Achaean combat system.  Which, again, is great. I can't wait for the day when I can actually beat people (I say, fingers crossed).  But right now?  Trying to dive into spars? Holy mother-er.  I don't even know where to begin.  I'm still in the process of trying to figure out the best aliases and bindings to create, remembering those aliases and bindings once I've created them, and not losing my head entirely in a spar and thus rendering those first two things totally useless.  

This is where the apparent lack of other newbie fighters that @Jhui mentioned really hurts.  Because the people in my House/City are very patient and helpful, but there are a lot of questions I leave unasked because I have absolutely no desire to be all "please stop whatever you're doing, and allow me to ruin your enjoyment of this game by asking you my 500th question about afflictions and herb balance. 'kay, thanks!"  A reluctance which is only compounded by the fact that I'm so ignorant of combat, I probably don't have the first clue about what GOOD questions I should be asking to actually learn what I need to know.  

- Fight spam. Oh god, the SPAM.  In my very first experience with group combat, I died to Tanris in a raid before I had the slightest clue about what was happening.  Walked into the room. BOOM. Dead.  I didn't know whether my newbie shortsword jab even went through, much less how I died, and had to scroll up just to see that I was hit by, like, 12 chaos rays (the number of rays that hit me will continue to go up every time I relive this epic tale of Good v. Evil.  Come back in five years when I'll have been hit by 300 rays, tossed at me by every occultist to ever play the game).  Slowly creating echoes helps a little, but I barely knew echoes were a thing until, like, three weeks ago. 

Game-side triggers would be a wonderful thing. Omnipave and SVO are wonderful things. But just as (more?) important are the other suggestions in this thread, like the automated SPARWHO, combat channel, or even a newbie-centric combat zone.  Anything that encourages us noobs to go out and learn the theory and strategy behind the combat.  Not just waiting for "'You are asleep and cannot do that!' TRIGGER: wake" to kick in.

TL:DR :-O ( :-t  <--- Me, attempting to fight.

Xer

I don't remember how I got past low-tier combat. When I started out, I got lucky with teachers and generally just kept at it until I got to where I am today. I started combat seriously about 6 ~ 8 months ago, and the most I did was probably theorycraft kill strats, spar enough to figure out how other classes kill me, theorycraft ways to survive, test those, fail and die, and then revise methods, and pretty much rinse and repeat for both defense and offense. For example, I'm coming up with variations on how to slowlock people more effectively, but I didn't have time to practice/revise it yet on people so in actual duels/spars, my execution is horrendous. Need to humiliate a stationary Ayoxele before I consider a good enough method to try on other people (or go back to the drawing board if he plaughs ).

Um... theorycrafting a lot, and trying to put my theories into practice is probably what helped me the most, personally. Knowing times, balances of all my abilities, and then thinking about what the "usual optimal curing" would be, and working out offensive strategies helped me a lot in starting kills.  I practiced on a stationary curing target, and if it works consistently under the conditions I specified, then I try it out when they actively fight back. I realised that my timing gets totally thrown off when they start hindering me - since I know my kill strategy is viable under the conditions I stated, my preparation then becomes how to achieve those conditions quickly, and then progress into my killing strat seemlessly. And then I would start to get kills. Then I faced better people who would vary things, or do "unusual curing", and then I would develop ways to deal with that. For each set of "conditions" that we could be in, I have killing strategies, and ways to prepare into it. I do the same for defensive situations as well. Just doing that enough times gets you a long way I feel. But the prerequisite knowledge to theorycraft means learning every herb, estimating balance times, your own balance times, knowing all the various abilities, how curing works, what prevents what abilities, etc. etc. Once you get the hang of it, it comes a lot more quickly though.

EDIT: I was lucky (realllly lucky when I look back at my Achaea life) in that I had no shame in asking questions (granted, it might have had something to do with the attitude/personality of my teachers :P). The lack of similar level novices wasn't really a problem because of all the theorycrafting I did. The biggest hurdle for me I would say would be obtaining the knowledge to do what I mentioned in the above paragraph - not sure how that came about. I'm pretty sure I got some basic strategies and how to break it down from Garao, and then I just started doing it to everything else by following that example.

Nim

@Maethros: I really agree about asking questions being a pain. I hate being a burden on other people, and want to learn stuff on my own, but there's only so much you can do that way.

Can I re-suggest a wiki, or something like that, to make combat information more transparent and wide-spread?

The biggest downside I could see is that it'd transition a lot of learning from IC to OOC, but, frankly, combat discussions tend to be OOC pretty often anyway, so I don't think it would really inhibit that. It might even improve combat education roleplay, since there'd be a place to go to learn the OOC mechanics, letting IC discussions focus more on strategy, ethics, etc.

Another downside might be misinformation leaking into the wiki, but I think that's an issue no matter how you go about it, short of the developers writing it all out themselves.

Averi

@Xer Echoing what you said about amazing teachers, @Garao is AMAZING. <3s

Sarapis

I'd love to see people updating the wiki (wiki.achaea.com), particularly with combat info. I don't think there's a very active crowd of wiki editors though. Bal'met doesn't even have an entry yet, for instance.

We'd be happy to lend support to someone(s) who wanted to take a stab at really making the wiki useful for combat info.

(Also, a combat channel seems likely. I like the idea.)