Passive Bedevil discussion

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Comments


  • Yeah totally - and in most cases, I just e-mail things like this straight to IRE.  The only reason I bring things like this to the forums at all is so that if there are any actual flaws with the concept or useful additions/suggestions from the community, I can add or incorporate them into the idea before sending it to Tecton & Makarios, and/or creating a classlead.  Since I didn't make the cool kids club, I only get 7 classleads, so I really do try to focus on the most important fixes, and try to ensure if at all possible that they are approvable.  This is probably why the majority of mine have been.

  • What does it take to be in the cool guys club?
  • Tag someone who actually knows :P  In Achaea though, I'm pretty sure it means you have an considerable amount of technical talent and knowledge and the ability to apply it, as well as the usual political savvy generally necessary to manipulate, er, get along with people.  This, unfortunately, does NOT always come with sterling ethical mindset, or much consideration of others.  But sometimes it does!  Usually people are sort of a mixture.  

  • Yeah, I just pretty much don't bother with the ACC (Ashtan Combat Council?).  Thanks to the new classlead system, there is absolutely no need to be a member to contribute or see your changes (provided that they are good ones) implemented.

    The only real "perk" is the test server, but that doesn't really result in any real advantage aside from being familiar with new changes before they're implemented (ie. "Lets all go shaman the week before it gets massive upgrades").

  • edited January 2015

    I think there needs to be a disambiguation between "Priest, overall, is fine", and "forced bedevil is fine".

    I totally agree that Priest is pretty well-rounded right now.   It certainly doesn't need an upgrade, and I was in no way proposing one.  I was suggesting that sometimes Priest might be "too good" (based on the assumption that Healing is so good that somehow people need a way to prevent it from being used), and the other half of the time, priest is dramatically screwed.  This averages out to Priests being "OK", but only on average.  In individual fights, it's more or less broken, in one way or another (again, only if you assume that Healing is so OP that it requires a 2 minute long method of prevention).

    I was proposing that forced bedevil was allowed to remain, or supposedly, originally intended to balance out a perceived problem.  However, it does a really poor job of addressing it for some classes, and goes way overboard for others.

    Due to the other countless variables that go into class balance, priest still ends up being "OK" overall, but that absolutely does not mean that every aspect of it is individually balanced.

    While I completely agree with you, @Tesha, that the core concept behind the ability working as it does is to use offense as your defence (the reason it disables Healing), I think you should read my post on the last page that goes into depth on how this actually doesn't work like this, against the classes it is most needed against (due to passive bedevil proc overlapping afflictions they already have - AKA doing nothing at all, most of the time).


    It's nice to see you drop in, but it'd be a bit nicer if you could at least read the OP.


    TBH I'd rather just see Bedevil (both forms) deleted.  There certainly are fights where passive bedevil can be used advantageously, but due to the loss of all active healing, particularly in anything outside of 1v1 combat, these are quite rare, and only possible against certain classes or strategies.  I'd ballpark around 70-90% of fights, passive bedevil is not worth the cost of using it (when you take into account the effects of affliction overlap, and the various other unobvious catches to how passive bedevil works).
  • Overthinking it. Don't rely on defense, smash them serpent noobs!

     i'm a rebel

  • edited January 2015
    Tesha said:
    Overthinking it. Don't rely on defense, smash them serpent noobs!

    We've both played both priest and serpent, and we both know that serpents can achieve locks far before priest can ramp up enough affliction pressure to maintain any form of meaningful hindrance (peace), particularly if the serpent already has you sealed.

    Not to mention, a good serpent would almost never let you reach that point, unless he was very near a lock, and was willing to gamble his momentum vs yours.  Since in almost all cases, a serpent is going to hypno, seal, evade, heal up, then return to initiate a lock attempt with a clear slate, I think it's more than fair to say that they have a pretty massive upperhand already, even without forcing bedevil.

    Also, I think you're a perfect person to ask - do you agree that serpents somehow "need" a way to prevent all forms of priest active healing?  Because this has been stated several times now - and nobody has commented back on my response that Fitness is much better than Heal asthma for preventing venomlocks, but nobody seems to be stating that "locking a monk, knight, or BM is impossible".


  • I have more trouble with evade than building momentum. Do you start with bedevil up?

    If you wait for them to force it, you're only getting the disadvantage of bedevil (not being able to use healing) without being able to make the most of the advantage of bedevil (being able to say stop hitting yourself). 

     i'm a rebel

  • Dude. Lol. Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn't mean they didn't read your post. They just think (gasp) that you're wrong.

    I don't really know what to tell you if you think peace is hard to stick as priest.

  • edited January 2015

    I frequently start with bedevil up (started outside of the room) against classes (or individuals) that are known to force it, but only because it can be forced.

    By starting it early, outside of their room, you take away their ability to time it and loop it indefinitely (at least, one time).  This can buy you a single active bedevil in the interim, which if the passive bedevil was started early enough, will prevent their forced bedevil from actually working, at which point it will drop much earlier in the fight.  However, this require knowing that you're going to be fighting a minute or more ahead of time, and even using this, you're still incredibly vulnerable during that time.  Without a single active cure, a serpent can put you one affliction away from a hard-lock with a single backstab combo.  That's a pre-existing affliction or RNG loki bite away from a one hit venomlock, that you have no way of preventing (which is, from my understanding, why almost every class has some form of active cure).



    Again, though, you've referenced passive bedevil as a powerful affliction tool twice now, and I strongly disagree that this is the case, particularly against venomlocks (because both priests and serpents open combat with kelp stacks, so in some* cases, reflected afflictions are overlapping things they already have, and aren't actually doing anything).   * the probability of this happening goes up the more afflictions they have.  Thus, the better you're doing, the more useless passive bedevil becomes.  Its proc chance is already quite low, and when it has a 80%+ chance of reflecting an affliction that they already have, it drops to a pretty meaningless figure.

    Xinna said:

    Dude. Lol. Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn't mean they didn't read your post. They just think (gasp) that you're wrong.

    I don't really know what to tell you if you think peace is hard to stick as priest.


    I mentioned that I'd like Tesha to read the post, because they clearly stated that they did not.

    Maybe you should read Tesha's post, and then contemplate on why you keep feeling the need to derail this thread (by repeatedly, and hypocritically, stating that I'm wrong, citing almost entirely nothing other than your opinion that you're so much smarter than everyone else).
  • But people build aff stacks generally by leading curare. If they already have curare, they're not attacking. If bedevil reflects curare, it's because they didn't already have curare. Curare is used very, very frequently. Bedevil procs roughly 30%-40% of the time. 

    As for anything needing a counter to healing... yes, any affliction class that requires locking needs a counter against healing. You can heal me asthma/angel aura, you can't fitness/touch shield. You can heal me asthma/heal, you can't fitness/fitness something else. 

    I don't have logs so I can't help you with your problem against serpent, unless it's purely theoretical. If you run into this problem in practice, get some logs and we can take a look at what's going on. Otherwise we're just debating theory blended with opinion, which isn't going to lead to anything beneficial. 

     i'm a rebel

  • Guys it's New Years and mak daddy answered you shut the hell up and drink 
    image
  • edited January 2015

    @Xinna

    I'm setting aside the beef we both know we have, if only for one post.

    I acknowledge that I knew what I said earlier about teaching you combat was going to upset you.  It was pretty dumb and borderline hypocritical of me to bring that up, as there really was no reason to do so other than to suggest that simply playing the game for a really long time makes one opinion more valid than any other, which is completely untrue.

    So, I apologize for that - and I'll keep on trying to avoid such things in the future.

    But please.  Stop trolling through every single post and thread I make copy/pasting the exact same statement into every single one.  I understand that you don't like me, and that is ok, but at some point you should recognize that almost every "issue" I've raised has been addressed.  You can say that I'm wrong, and you can say that I'm being overzealous, if you like, but the fact is, history has shown that regardless of how many people spam negative, personal jabs in response to threads/ideas like this, most of them seem to get fixed anyways.  One of the only good examples remaining just blipped out of existence, as the exact solution to the exact problem I prosed regarding snipe/ret was implemented.  And yet the same voices were there, repeating almost exactly the same exact thing that you're saying now.

    If for no other reason, just stop wasting your time.  If the idea sucks, it won't get implemented.  If it doesn't suck, no amount of beratement from the exact same list of people in every thread is going to stop it from being read and considered.

    The purpose of posting the thread is so that I can receive mature, informed second opinions from other people's point of view, and incorporate them into the idea before submission.

    I can pretty much promise you that unless you have some actual points that I failed to realize, I'm not going to write a 3 page essay on why something should be changed, and just change my mind because some crazy on the internet keeps shotgunning negative responses to them.

    So please, just stop.  I know you're a good fighter, perhaps even top 20, but you have to admit that you really do not like me, and that almost all of your arguments are either in part, or entirely, based on the fact that you begin writing your post disagreeing with me, and then reading enough of what I actually said to fill in some words describing why.

  • edited January 2015

    "One of the only good examples remaining just blipped out of existence, as the exact solution to the exact problem I prosed regarding snipe/ret was implemented.  And yet the same voices were there, repeating almost exactly the same exact thing that you're saying now."


    I was a very strong proponent of the no sniping into retardation! So apparently not the same voices!

    I do not disagree with you to disagree with you. Only your ego tells you that. I disagree with you because I believe you are wrong, and I have explained my opinion with more than "I don't like you. You're wrong." I have read your posts, I have pointed out your false premises, and I have explained how I, as someone who has played a priest and does not seem to struggle with it as you do, know that priest is not as weak as you seem to believe. Tesha, another solid priest, has the exact same opinion of the class (that it is strong, not weak).

    We all know you think you're right about everything. We all know your opinion on the matter. Who is the troll?

    Edit: The -only- thing that makes me not want to fight serpent as priest is evade. But that's true of apostate and alchemist, too, and has nothing to do with priest defense.

  • edited January 2015
    Tesha said:
    But people build aff stacks generally by leading curare. If they already have curare, they're not attacking. If bedevil reflects curare, it's because they didn't already have curare. Curare is used very, very frequently. Bedevil procs roughly 30%-40% of the time. 

    As for anything needing a counter to healing... yes, any affliction class that requires locking needs a counter against healing. You can heal me asthma/angel aura, you can't fitness/touch shield. You can heal me asthma/heal, you can't fitness/fitness something else. 

    If you can heal me asthma/heal, then this is probably unintended.  Once again, if Healing is too good, then the fix should be to balance it, not leave it broken and add other equally but oppositely broken things to compensate for them.

    I proposed half a dozen solutions that don't involve this silly tit for tat broken mechanism trade-off that don't buff priest, but balance things out to work well for everyone.

    One additional suggestion that I'd be 100% fine with is if they just made Heal and Heal <aff> simply use full equilibrium, like normal active cures - so that the only aspect of Priest healing that in any way is better than fitness or magi/sylvan (that they can Heal/shield), can be eliminated, and there will be absolutely no justification for forced bedevil to continue to exist.

    I don't have logs so I can't help you with your problem against serpent, unless it's purely theoretical. If you run into this problem in practice, get some logs and we can take a look at what's going on. Otherwise we're just debating theory blended with opinion, which isn't going to lead to anything beneficial. 

    I'm basing this on a combination of pure combat theory and a large amount of experience playing as a serpent, priest, bard, magi, and all five fitness classes, versus the exact same list of classes, among others.

    In a previous post, I described in incredible detail, in theoretical terms, several different reasons that Passive bedevil does not actually do what most people think it does.  I know from personal experience that most people who haven't played priest (and most people who haven't written vastly complex affliction status/probability tracking systems) that people who haven't delved this deep into things would probably read what passive bedevil does, and simply assume that it's reflecting 30-40% of afflictions back onto people, and this simply is not true.  There are frequent and completely realistic scenarios in which even if the proc rate of passive bedevil was 100% guaranteed, passive bedevil can still result in a ZERO percent chance of actually reflecting an affliction that they didn't already have.


    I'd also like to point out that your logic is quite circular.  You suggested that you should put up passive bedevil early in combat purely to get the benefits the entire time, but this logic fails in two ways.  One, it completely cuts you off from a much bigger advantage (access to Healing and active Bedevil) for that entire time, and two, it assumes that an opponent would force it anyways, later in combat.

    The second logical problem is noteworthy - because (ignoring the Healing bit) using passive Bedevil early in combat is only a good thing if it can be forced, and I am suggesting that it shouldn't be able to be forced, which would mean that the entire reason that you use it ("if it's going to be forced, I may as well use put it up myself and at least get a few free afflictions from it") at all would no longer exist.

    When considering changes to combat balance, I always look at it like this:  If the game existed as I am suggesting it, and that was considered normal, would anyone ever actually want to change it to how it actually currently works?

    Takeaway:

    If the current mechanism was that passive bedevil wasn't forcible, and Healing was not able to be paired with shield, would you propose that we change Heal to be able to work such that you can combo heal/shield, and also suggest a method that completely removes not only Heal, but several other abilities, for two full minutes, to compensate for the first change you are suggesting?

    I think the obvious answer is: Why would you implement an obviously poor mechanic, then implement a second mechanic that dramatically overcompensates for the first one, but only for some classes, while not impacting others in any way.


    I swear, I'm going to put this in my sig, because I've said it so many times now.  The argument for passive bedevil being forcible relies on the assumption that Healing is somehow OP.  Since most people, including, evidently, @Makarios, seem to be subscribers to this* notion, then the obvious solution would be to fix the problem - not invent more bad stupid things to counter out the good stupid things.  Then everything just ends up being stupid.

    * (even though several other classes have quantifiably much better healing capability), 
  • k

     i'm a rebel


  • To be clear, there are two reasons that I am so motivated to see this issue addressed.  The first is that I obviously think it is a bad mechanic that's compensating for an exaggerated, if not entirely non-existent problem.  

    The second reason I am so irked about it is that the sequence of logic and events that led up to how it currently works is, at best, really poor practice.  It's impossible to know how abilities are going to end up being used months or years down the road.  However, in this case, priests noted that it was a problem that passive bedevil can so easily be forced, and this "problem" was allowed to remain solely to counter a different "problem" (Healing), which had, in fact, recently been massively nerfed, and was no longer actually a problem.

    I see this like saying "Oh, you have a broken left arm?  Let me fix that for you, I'll just break your right arm, so you're even.".

    I also see it like saying "Oh, your arm used to be broken, and has long been healed, but since I already just went ahead and put another cast on your arm, we may as well just leave it there."


    Juuuust saying, nobody would ever design the system to work like this, it's just the result of a bunch of shoddy shortcuts, that leaves some class matchups allegedly broken in favor of priests, leaves other matchups pretty clearly broken in favor against the priests, and makes a Transcendental ability a purely detrimental, almost punitive, ability to ever even learn at all.

    The game isn't going to crumble to the ground if this isn't reviewed, but it really should be, because it seems like everyone is still pissed (people who can't force commands are irked because IRE seems to be acknowledging that Healing is OP, but the "fix" arbitrarily didn't extend to their class, and priests are (or at least should be) irked, because against serpents, bards, jesters, occultists, and other priests, they are reduced to having the worst affliction mitigation in the game, against the most dangerous affliction classes in the game)
  • edited January 2015
    Xinna said:
    I have read your posts,

    Oh, you clearly stated that you weren't going to.

    I have pointed out your false premises,

    You pointed out a few insignificant, and subjective, statements that you don't agree with, not "false premises".  A crack in a wall isn't going to make it tumble, even if it actually is a real crack.

    and I have explained how I, as someone who has played a priest and does not seem to struggle with it as you do,   

    Isn't this exactly what you just berated me for doing?  Completely foregoing an actual valid argument, and simply stating that you're right because it happens to be your opinion, and you're automatically correct because of how brilliant you think you are?

    Also, I never stated that I "struggle" with priest, or even with passive bedevil.  Putting those words in my mouth is a pretty obvious attempt to make a class problem look like an Ernam problem, which accomplishes two things for you: continuing to damage my reputation, and simultaneously helping achieve your goal to leave Serpent/Bard vs. Priest in its broken state.  It isn't a secret that those two classes are coincidentally the classes of your two main characters, and that they both frequently engage in PK against priests.  Guess what, Manu was cool with 55% damage area-wide doppie-warps, too.


    Nobody had a problem with enfeeble/absolve, either, as long as they simply accepted the fact that they had to be at exactly 100% mana at all times.  There was a massive portion of the forum community that said that it was fine, because it was "balanced" by the fact that it didn't work from 100% mana - and that people should just stop whining about it.  (Those people also used rhethoric and misdirection, as you are doing, to belittle and marginalize the people asking for it to be fixed, in an attempt to somehow "win favor" with the jury by attacking the character of the people pushing for it to be fixed.


    I, as someone who has played a priest and does not seem to struggle with it as you do, know that priest is not as weak as you seem to believe. Tesha, another solid priest, has the exact same opinion of the class (that it is strong, not weak).

    This is a straw man argument.  You've created a completely different argument that you know nobody would agree with, and replaced my actual statements with your own, in your reply.

    If you want to argue against someone who believes "priest is weak", then you're going to have to find someone else.  I did not say that "priest is weak" nor do I believe that to be true, at all.  I said something entirely different, which you have yet to actually reply to, directly, with anything other than repeatedly stating that you simply do not agree.


  • Jinsun said:

    How many credits do I have to buy to get a moderator to enforce the forum rules?

  • Bedevil is fucking dumb in all incarnations and should be totally repurposed.
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  • edited January 2015
    Mizik said:
    Bedevil is fucking dumb in all incarnations and should be totally repurposed.

    Repurpose it into contents of a trash can.  Neither active or passive bedevil is actually necessary for any reason (they're just neat perks), and both of them have a purely negative net impact on overall priest combat.  (The negative aspect of active bedevil is that its existence somehow necessitates that passive bedevil disable all forms of Healing - logic so imbalanced that many priests would prefer not even learning the ability).

    You could also simply just delete passive Bedevil.

    If it's as amazing as the various people in this thread would have you believe (it is not), then nobody should have a problem with simply getting rid of it, and leaving active bedevil as a neat ability with a huge cooldown, that is powerful but comparable to several other existing abilities.

    If serpent/bard so desperately need a way to prevent Heal, then that can be handled as a completely different issue (which is what should have happened in the first place).  Make Heal respect Weariness, making it a very slightly modified version of Fitness, fix Bedevil, and call it a day.

    Or any of the other like.... 8 solutions I mentioned in the OP.
  • What part of Makarios said no, did you miss?


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  • edited January 2015
    Jinsun said:
    What part of Makarios said no, did you miss?

    I guess the part where he actually said no.  (was it before or after he said yes?)

    He also confirmed two of my main assertions:
    • That passive bedevil was left as an unpreventable forceable ability due to Heal <affliction> (and not active Bedevil or random Heal - both of which use full balance and have cooldowns)
       < this is a problem that could easily be handled in countless other ways >

    • ...and that complete prevention of all active heals available to the class was either an oversight or an overreaction that needs to be fixed.

    Makarios said:

    The main problem with healing isn't that it can cure any affliction. We could cut it down to impatience/asthma/a couple other big ones and likely there'd be no tangible change. The issue is that it is able to be combined with other abilities (its selling point), particularly abilities such as shield, permitting the user to actively attempt to escape a situation with fly/leap/etc. This essentially let's you continue to escape the situation while allowing you to optimally heal afflictions, something (assuming equal skill level of both players and no extenuating circumstances) that isn't reasonably counterable. There are options of course (knife sigils was the big one), but these are all based upon the priest not being aware of the appropriate counter measures, which isn't something we can really assume when making changes.

    There is however something to be said for the lack of any form of active heals on the class with active bedevil up. The change I'd personally be inclined toward would be something along the lines of allowing the eq-based untargeted heal to work with [passive] bedevil up, but to have an affliction to stop it. That's a purely spontaneous thought however; we've not talked about it at all and I haven't really considered implications. I'm pretty sure that's the most extreme change we'd make though, given the existence of their passive healing and fairly hindering offense.


  • Probably the part where he told you that Passive bedevil was not "the most significant defensive weakness in the game" and said no to your suggested solutions. Why am I arguing with you? Good night.
    image
  • edited January 2015
    Jinsun said:
    Probably the part where he told you that Passive bedevil was not "the most significant defensive weakness in the game" and said no to your suggested solutions. Why am I arguing with you? Good night.

    So now you're just making things up?  Why are you arguing with me?

  • edited January 2015

    Wait. Now I have two mains, and one of them is serpent?

    I am learning so much about myself in this thread.

    Edit: Isn't Shecks a bard? I will fight bard you as priest me literally any day, Ernam, and then you will complain about how crap bard is and how OP priest is.

  • I want to hear more about why it's "fucking dumb" from the Mizik (and I bet I'm not the only one).
This discussion has been closed.