Classleads

Atalkez · April 2018

Disagree entirely that serpent is easy to slow prep, or that monk can “stop it in its tracks”.

Calira · April 2018

Occultist has a really relevant weakness here that other momentum classes don't really share. The exact point where it starts to become deadly is when Cadmus Curse is applied, and that's accompanied by a dip in momentum. Any sufficient burst hinder or burst cure at this point will totally reset their momentum, as hitting 0 affs will cure the Cadmus Curse. The Tentas buff removed the perfect answer to Cadmus that every class had access to before, but there's still a lot of class-specific answers. Hangedman and Fool, fast breaks and prone (TekMonk, DWB), Dragonheal, Evade or Phoenix, Wunjo/Nairat or noose traps, Vodun Bind or Tarnel, Blackwind, that sort of thing. The Occ can throw a curveball with Unnamable, but the counterplay to Unnamable is similar, and you can't really threaten Unnamable and Cadmus Curse at the same time without a lot of momentum already built up.

Reyson · April 2018

You can't hangedman twice in a row, so I'm not sure I buy that one. Prone, if you're sitting on a leg break just for defensive purposes, sure, I suppose, but that seems like it might require some good luck, timing-wise. dragonheal will definitely not outpace occie affliction rate; evade is definitely good, but unless the occultist is hamstrung/pinshotted, can just mountjump to follow; nairat definitely won't save you since it's so quick to writhe from, blackwind is slower now (and Infernal has no passive cure, so it's a brutal matchup to begin with), and I'm not sure how much you can spam vodun bind, but if the writhe time is just ropes, that's not really a huge breather, unless the shaman really really knows the occultist's balance and is able to match up with it well (I dunno how slow bind is, vs. the writhe time, vs. occie's offence bals, but I can't imagine the balance is faster than writhing takes).

In the end, of course you -can- survive anything, mostly by not fighting it, but why is that ever a desirable state of affairs?

Accipiter · April 2018

So are we going to move into a new phase of 'slow momentum' where momentum classes phase/blackwind/astral when the slow preppers run away and wait for the damage to drop off?

[Deleted User] · April 2018

Reyson said:

I'm not sure how much you can spam vodun bind, but if the writhe time is just ropes, that's not really a huge breather, unless the shaman really really knows the occultist's balance and is able to match up with it well

Ask @Ashmond about when he was Occultist, sparring me as Shaman. Insta vodun bind the second he cadmus's, fucks the occie over hard. Bind is ~1.8s with nimble, writhe is like 2x as long almost. If feeling exceptionally scummy, can projection over icewall on bal immediately after bind, before they writhe. With Tarnel changes coming, that's only gonna get worse for the occie.

Calira · April 2018

Reyson said:

You can't hangedman twice in a row, so I'm not sure I buy that one.

That's true, but a well-timed hangedman can get you 2 cures in, which is enough with tree to burst down to 0 after the fastest possible Cadmus. And if not, Fool will easily close the rest of the gap. The point is that Cadmus comes with a natural dip in pressure, which makes it a convenient moment to go on the defensive and, ideally, clear the aff away. Dragonheal does this really well, as @Armali has proven every time we spar. Blackwind/Aform/Mistral are even worse, since the Occ has no way to kill you post-Cadmus in 2.5s and not even a good way to prone you given that short notice, those abilities are a free disengage. You could even start the blackwind on Madness/Hecate and be fine. Bind is exceptionally fast and has no CD, making it somewhat spammable, and Shaman can actually get fashions fast enough for it to be relevant.

Keorin · July 2018

I'm all for more shikudo nerfs, but rain not having a reliable parry bypass seems pretty rough. Against a random arm parry (which was already the most common parry strategy against stick monk), you'll have to roll the dice against a 50% chance of hitting parry, combined with a now more effective clumsiness from most opponents. With parry and clumsiness, it'll be something like a 77% chance of a given combo missing one of its two hits, and a 22% chance of missing both, if my math holds up.

If the goal was to tweak the affliction rate, I feel like there are better ways to do that then to make the rng way worse, if for no other reason then combat being a lot less fun when it feels like gambling. And heck, I think the kata count decay that was supposed to be getting implemented would've been a solid hit to the dumber things you can do with rain already, I don't really see why this was needed.

Proficy · July 2018

@Keorin
That stick monk change was badly needed, it basically made every hit they did bypass parry while still doing arm damage.
I think you all are forgetting about your kai ability to stop mounting. They should of never been able to dismount&prone in a single hit to begin with.
This hasn't changed anything except let the target have some sort of chance now trying to parry.

Keorin · July 2018

While I can agree that the prone every hit was a little silly in concept, having a reliable parry bypass is important for any class that needs to be maintaining affliction momentum.

And it's a pretty huge change overall. Since rain can't use paralysis in combos, frontkick was doing double duty both offering a parry bypass and mitigating the effects of clumsiness. Prior to this change, you were looking at something like an 18% chance of missing one of your affliction hits do to clumsiness if your frontkick missed their parry, or a 56% chance of missing one if your frontkick got parried. Since most people do a random army parry against shikudo, meaning hitting it was a coinflip, you were looking at a little over a third of your combos having one of your affliction hits parried.

Assuming all my math is right there, that made rain's odds of missing with clumsiness and parry pretty equitable to dual cutting (which has a one-third chance of missing at least a single hit, since hitting with curare first helps the second hit avoid clumsiness). With this change, shikudo instead has a 56% chance of missing at least one affliction hit in a combo just from clumsiness, and -then- you add in the 50% chance of hitting someone's arm parry. Getting hit twice moves rain's chances of missing at least one hit from 37% before the changes, to 77% after the changes (50% chance of losing one to parry, 56% chance of losing one to clumsiness if you didn't), which is a massive shift made all the worse by rain's limited affliction pool.

As for kai surge, it was actually the first thing I thought of, but it's actually a pretty poor bandage for this situation for several reasons: It's expensive for what it does, requiring almost half a kai pool to be used for a fifteen second duration. The best place to use it would be after leaving oak and before moving back into rain, which means you're basically losing a full combo on surge at a spot that already served as a dip in Shikudo momentum (since gaital loses paralysis/asthma/slickness and has no way to mitigate clumsiness). And finally, since shikudo has no room hinder, any opponent that can afford to run for a few seconds can just freely step out of the room, wasting your kai and forcing you to deal with the full rng again.

Parry already mattered against shikudo. It forces longer prep since we have to hyperfocus head, and a random arm parry against rain slows down prep and makes clumsiness more effective. This change just hugely magnifies the rng effects of both, which is the most annoying way to slow down the class. Whatever exact problem this was supposed to be fixing (can't really tell, since there was no actual classlead for this thing), it seems like there's a good handful of fixes that wouldn't have just been "more rng."

Proficy · July 2018

If your going for a set kill path.... automating..... your offense then it can be a problem, if your dynamic and adjust your attacks i.e change from your install path to a lock path or to even go a damage route, then it shouldn't be an issue.

I'm no stick monk expert by any means, but every other class has to be flexible in this manner.... time will tell

Keorin · July 2018

It's not an issue specific to one strategy, is the trouble. All shikudo paths need affliction pressure, and this is a heavy nerf to the pressure you can output in one of your core forms for every strategy.

In shikudo, different afflictions are tied to abilities that can only target certain limbs, unlike other classes. If there's only a 50% chance of hitting the arms due to a random arm parry, then there's a 50% chance of losing hits whenever the monk wants to use half of rain's small affliction pool. Being dynamic can't fix that.

Farrah · July 2018

I don't think it's as big of an issue as you think, though I'm not sure why we went with a solution that only helps people with swiftmount. Seems odd.

Dunn · July 2018

I’m also confused about it for the swiftmount thing. I guess it makes it more like SWK?

I gotta test it later to see how it feels tho.

Keorin · July 2018

I guess I'm just not sure how rain having a 50% miss chance for clumsiness won't be a big deal, given how powerful clumsiness is in affliction fights presently. But I'd certainly love to be wrong.

I wish I knew what the actual rationale was though. There was no classlead to go along with the change, so I can only guess as to the goal.

Reyson · July 2018

Clumsiness was toned down quite a lot, recently. When I tested the DWC change, the miss rate hovered at around 12% vs. an 11-dex, trans avo, unmounted target, in 250 attacks (125 DSLs).

That was the worst offender, if I remember correctly, and Apostate also got a change to make it less obnoxious for them. No class should really be getting stopped dead in its tracks anymore, I don't think.

ETA: Anecdotally, I would say the rate used to be much higher, almost one in three vs. trans avo, unmounted targets with average dex. I could be off, of course, never sat down to test it very meticulously. Certainly felt super horrible.

[Deleted User] · July 2018

Reyson said:

Clumsiness was toned down quite a lot, recently. When I tested the DWC change, the miss rate hovered at around 12% vs. an 11-dex, trans avo, unmounted target, in 250 attacks (125 DSLs).

Clumsiness never procs when you care about it proccing, and will proc 95% of the time when you don't want it to.

Fact.

Keorin · July 2018

Hrm, how does clumsiness actually work now, then? Is it just an accuracy penalty added on to existing miss chance, or what? Sounds like the numbers I thought were right were pretty off then, at least.

Armali · July 2018

Depends on the class. Static miss chance for some, penalty to to-hit to others.

Kyrra · July 2018

What was the classleads with tattoos all about? I don't understand that one at all.

Reyson · July 2018

Afaik tattoo slots now show up on AB and match certain tattoos, lessons-wise.

Proficy · July 2018

Farrah said:

I don't think it's as big of an issue as you think, though I'm not sure why we went with a solution that only helps people with swiftmount. Seems odd.

It helps everyone who can mount, just means they have to sacrifice an extra second or so to stay defensive against being prone, exact same concept as swk as Dunn said... except stick monk still does limb damage with the hit and is not completely wasting a strike.

Keorin said:

It's not an issue specific to one strategy, is the trouble. All shikudo paths need affliction pressure, and this is a heavy nerf to the pressure you can output in one of your core forms for every strategy.

In shikudo, different afflictions are tied to abilities that can only target certain limbs, unlike other classes. If there's only a 50% chance of hitting the arms due to a random arm parry, then there's a 50% chance of losing hits whenever the monk wants to use half of rain's small affliction pool. Being dynamic can't fix that.

Kind of the same issue with ANY class that can be parried against, except with others they can only target a single limb all together meaning they didn't waste 50% of there attack, but 100% of it..... it's not bad, it just makes you have to pay attention more.

Keorin · July 2018

That's not how shikudo works. If you want to afflict with half of your afflictions when you're in rain, including clumsiness, you -have- to target an arm. Other classes can target any limb or no limb at all, and also all have additional ways of bypassing parry altogether.

As for why swiftmount makes such a difference, without it you only have to worry about the extra parry chance for one hit before they're dismounted and can't remount, giving you your parry bypass again. Against people with swiftmount, you lose the parry bypass entirely. It's a pretty huge difference between artied and unartied.

Proficy · July 2018

You still have the other arm to hit.

Not seeing the difference... if they are parrying an arm then they are not parrying other limbs and those still hit in preparation for your slow prep.
If your going for a locking path. Then hit the other arm to give the affliction..... or use kai surge and then go for it.
I'll stop throwing little ideas out for you, as I said I'm no stick monk expert, but I imagine in rain you can bypass parry all together to set up your limb prep, and if not you can still afflict with what you need by not hitting that parried limb to try and lock.

When they start making your weapon actually respect "weapons" aura.... then you can complain about restraints.

Zheo · July 2018

Sorry for my noobness but I thought there was a shikudo ability to make your attacks apply no limb damage. Does this not affect parry too?

[Deleted User] · July 2018

Kyrra said:

What was the classleads with tattoos all about? I don't understand that one at all.

You get extra slots as your skill in tattoos increases. Essentially, the benefits of superscribe got spread out a little bit through the skill instead of suddenly giving you twice as many slots at trans. This has been the case for at least a few years, but the only way to know about it was to look at HELP TATTOOS, which was especially weird after the back slot(s) were added because they do show up as an actual ability in a skill. So now the other extra slots are represented by abilities in tattoos, like they probably always should have been.

Farrah · July 2018

Zheo said:

Sorry for my noobness but I thought there was a shikudo ability to make your attacks apply no limb damage. Does this not affect parry too?

Correct. It's still a targeted attack (stopped by parry). It just does 0 limb damage.

Keorin · July 2018

Proficy said:

You still have the other arm to hit.

Not seeing the difference... if they are parrying an arm then they are not parrying other limbs and those still hit in preparation for your slow prep.
If your going for a locking path. Then hit the other arm to give the affliction..... or use kai surge and then go for it.

I think you're missing my point a bit. The problem here isn't -static- arm parry, it's a -random- arm parry, where people will randomly switch between which arm they're parrying when they attack. It was already the optimal parry strat against stick before this change, and pretty widely used. Static parry is obviously no trouble to deal with, but if someone moves their parry randomly, then your only choices are to try and hit arms (with an unavoidable 50% chance of missing on that attack), or don't hit arms (which for rain form means losing half your affliction pool and output).

On a different note, the numbers I posted earlier were wrong. I did some proper testing for clumsiness' effects on Shikudo, and it looks like it's a flat 25% miss chance, or thereabouts (tested over a few hundred hits). I doubt anyone actually cares, but since I'd rather correct my mistakes, the more accurate numbers would be:

Before the change, if only taking clumsiness into account, there was an 11% chance of missing an affliction hit to clumsiness (25% chance of frontkick missing, and a 44% chance of one of the two affliction hits missing without frontkick). With a random arm parry as well, this raised to a 27% chance of missing at least one affliction hit (since frontkick instead has a 62.5% chance of failing between the random arm parry and clumsiness). Going by @Reyson's numbers, this would already make shikudo fairly sub-par at dealing with clumsiness compared to other classes, especially since it's possible to miss every single hit of your combo.

After the change, when fighting someone with swiftmount, there's instead a 44% chance of losing at least one affliction hit from clumsiness alone, since frontkick can't prone (each hit has a 75% chance of going through, so there's only a 56% chance of both going through successfully. This is what gaital is stuck at always, as well). This is the case whether or not you actually aim any of your affliction hits for their arms. If you do use ruku (you're stuck with weariness, lethargy, dizziness as your entire comboable affliction pool if you don't), then you're instead looking at a 72% chance of missing at least one of your affliction hits (as you'll have one parried outright 50% of the time, and one will miss 44% of the time that you do get through parry).

In total, rain form is now substantially less accurate under clumsiness even if you avoid arm hits as much as possible (27% chance of missing at least one affliction hit changed to a 44% chance). However, avoiding arm hits like this is also a huge decrease both to your affliction pool and to your total affliction output. If you -do- decide to try and hit an arm for those other afflictions, then rain is hugely less accurate (27% getting raised all the way up to 72%). Either way, it's a fairly substantial increase in the rng of rain form, and a large nerf to shikudo's overall rotation and options. Unless you're too poor for swiftmount, that is.

Rangor · July 2018

Fighting bards must be fun for you.

[Deleted User] · July 2018

Rangor said:

Fighting bards must be fun for you.

"I love fighting bards."

~said by literally nobody, in the history of ever.

Dunn · July 2018

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