Affliction Tracking?
Hello -
I have a basic understanding of how to script an affliction tracking module in my client of choice (Cmud). I do have a question, though:
How does one factor random cure methods into such a script? Focus appears to be on a priority tree, so I can track that easily enough, but I have no idea how to handle tree tattoo or purge blood in a tracking system - and for obvious reasons, starting an affliction stack over every time someone uses one of those methods would be inefficient. I also have no idea how to touch on passive curing from various classes, which I'm sure exists.
Tips, suggestions, ideas, tricks and the like would be welcome.
Gop, the Glutton
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"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
This means that if you stick to only one affliction per herb, and the afflictions with 3P messages, you can generally track easily. You have to figure out how you want to deal with things like tree and purge though. If you stick Hemotoxin(kelp with a 3P) message, !that's one less thing to worry about. That leaves tree. The easiest way to deal with tree is probably to guess at what it cures, but this is sloppy. You could also assume that it has cured the highest priority affliction you have, or you could even assume that it has cleared vital afflictions and redo them all. Those examples are all kind of sloppy, but you have to start somewhere.
The thing about aff tracking that makes it so fun/annoying, is that there is so much more information you can glean indirectly. From simple things like "they're attacking, paralysis is cured" and "they have at least one toxin aff but haven't purged in more than 15 seconds" to more complicated things like assuming high priority affs are all cured when they cure lowpriority(not always doable with custom priorities, but you can even figure out some of the target's priorities if you dedicate some time to testing things). Also, some classes have other tells. Hunter gets discernment(10% chance to see when a specific cure message on any kind of cure, even silent cures like passive) and they can trigger and watch for when a trigger goes off to know that a specific aff has been cleared.
For more specific information from us, we need to know what class you are, but that should be a decent overview. Start small with just things that you can know for sure, then build on as you get more experience.
If you like a challenge, aff tracking is right there for you. Anyone can mash a damage button.
Killing the people with great healing systems with raw damage is one of my favorite things in the game.
"Hey, take your Eclipse Mark II SuperHealerAwesomeSystem and cure around this. *druids all over somebody*"
Also, it's totally not luck. Or, if it is, some people(Azefel, Kryss, etc) are consistently lucky.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Not really so much about luck as you think, you've just got to find ways to deal with not being told exactly what has been cured. Or, block as many cure methods as possible, and assume that tree has cleared anything important that doesn't have a 3p message and isn't otherwise trackable.
I afflict with Recklessness and Peace. Almost everyone will cure Recklessness(3, Mandrake) before Peace(4, Galingale). Hemotoxin(5, Kelp) that was shocked before-hand ticks after you cure Recklessness. Recklessness is triggered for Impatience(5, Mandrake) and Heroism(7, Mandrake), but both are lower priority than Peace(4, Galingale), and so you cure Peace next when you regain plant balance right before I can combo again. Peace is triggered for Hallucinations(5, Wormwood) and Paranoia(9, Wormwood). Both are low priority, so neither will be addressed before I melt. I regain balance and EQ and afflict with Stupidity(4, Orphine) and Dementia(9, Wormwood). You cure Stupidity next because it's the highest priority left, and because I haven't stacked any other Orphine, there's no chance of you curing anything else instead. Stupidity is triggered with Confusion(5, Wormwood) and Lethargy(5, Nightshade), but could really be anything, since you don't have a chance to cure them before I regain Balance and EQ and melt you. Now, there are a hundred different reasons why that only works on some people(people that are bad 1v1, or have just never seen it before), but it's an example of making priorities and different herb stacking work for you.
The following is how I understand DK to work. You start by pushing Hemotoxin and just hindering with high priority things like Metrazol and Ciguatoxin. You'll know what they cure pretty easily at this point. Clear their Fitness(depending on class) by throwing in a use of Mercury. If you've got decent sabres and are fast, you afflict faster than people cure, so once you've gotten ahead of their curing and the afflictions aren't both cured before you can attack again, you move on to other afflictions. If you push other kelp afflictions(kelp stacking is very common in aff classes, and is facilitated by a lot of toxin afflictions with 3P messages), you can stack a bunch of other kelp afflictions on top of Hemotoxin, and reapply Hemotoxin when you see it cured(3P message). Kelp afflictions are easy enough to track because most have 3P messages. After you've stacked a few kelp affs, you can move on stacking high important things and force them to leave the kelp affs alone. I think at this point as a DK, if you've set up limb breaks and have stacked Butisol(drastically slows salve balance recovery), you could start the breaks with two high priorities like Ciguatoxin/Metrazol to make sure that the Butisol stays for a few salves, then hit with Benzene or Benzedrine when you break the second pair of limbs, if they've already repaired a limb. Since their restoration salve applications should be stupidly long to recover from now, you should be able to recover balance and Vivisect at this point. If this isn't working, keep pushing high priority/low priority to force them to cure the high priority and slip the low priority in. If you are tracking Metrazol, Asthma, and Hemotoxin, you should be able to slip in Nausea and Xeroderma, both of which tick damage. If you keep pushing Maidenhair and Asthma too fast for them to get another cure in after those two, you might pull off a Xeroderma kill, if not, keep pushing and hold the Nausea until they hit Unconscious from hunger, and limb break again. Might even be able to cleave during the Uncon time.
Most important things to notice there, everything important is trackable. You're not usually stacking more than untrackable thing with trackable things, which makes the untrackable stuff trackable. Only potential issues I see with that method would be tracking tree(again, most of the time, it should hit something trackable. otherwise, have a lot of "if smoking then asthma was cured" statements. When dealing with passive curing, I'd assume you could do about the same thing as dealing with tree, you just don't have the luxury of actually seeing when passive ticks.
When dealing with mental affs, in my limited experience stacking mental affs, it's mostly a game of either sticking impatience first, then hitting with high and low priority affs at the same time, slipping low priority affs through one at a time. Hunter works that way. You push impatience first, then stack Wormwood and Orphine affs and as long as you keep pressing high priority afflictions with toxins, and don't let them cure impatience, you should be able to stack mental afflictions pretty well. Since they're not focusing, and Hunter has a way to deal with tree, you know that if they haven't eaten Wormwood or Orphine(which they shouldn't, since you're only stacking low priority afflictions), they haven't cured any of those afflictions. Add some low priority Mandrakes so they have less of a chance of curing Impatience, and you should be able to stack pretty quickly. If they do cure Impatience, you'll know when you see them focus. Drop it on again next round with another high priority aff, and they should have only gotten in one focus. Six mentals shouldn't take long to stack, so when you hit that point, melt. Or, you can drop Poison Mind, then start stacking Bloodpoison for a Rupture. Not sure how Diabolist deals with things, since they've got Infirmity, but I think it's more about stacking until you can Infirm a few things, then focusing on a different herb and Infirming that, then once you've got a few set, you should be able to Cath very easily.
Diabolist has a far slower setup then either of the aforementioned classes. Not only must one generally prepare the room, one must then slowly set infirmities (probably at least two) to have any chance of killing with catharsis. Of course, one might just try and stick addiction but there are ways around that. Anyway, Diabolist is hindered by rebound where Hunter and Assassin are generally not. You can choose to have a razorfiend (which razes rebounding) over a nightmare but that won't help your afflictions any. I still believe the class works and have seen it work both at the hands of others and at mine, it's just that it requires considerably more effort on the users behalf.
Now Deathknight is an old relic of a class as indeed are knights in general. Whilst they have seen little tweaks here and there they in general remain tried and true to how they always have been. In setting up afflictions you will have to always be aware of rebounding and whilst it is possible to advance afflictions you will find that one lucky cure is all it takes to force a restart. However, knights have the advantage of also dealing damage with every attack and depending on who you're fighting, that damage might well be enough. Alas, there are many people who have such high resistance and survivability that it will not be and that even should you manage to lock them up they will fitness and passive their way out of everything and still be sitting on 100% health. This is where you might think to vivisect and whilst that is a very good option indeed you should just be aware that you will be dealing then with rebounding, parry, changed priorities, resetting limbs and all manner of other things that can end even the most perfect setup (balance knocks, unfortunate rebound timing, paralyzed sword arm..)
All of this is just a hasty rant, so take it with somewhat of a grain of salt. All of the classes mentioned above have plenty to offer besides various means to cut cookies and your choice of class should likely not be based on that alone.
Plot twist - Bard is better then all of the above. You get to deal out heaps of afflictions (masked ones too!) whilst continually stunning, confusing and disrupting your target which renders any offense against you almost nil. You can work toward dealing out really high damage or an instant kantae all the while content in the knowledge you don't have to worry about rebounding, have passive healing and even a faster writhe time to boot.
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
The problem is that affliction offenses are precisely that, affliction. Most classes have modes of 'affliction'' or 'damage'.' (Haha, wait until you see Summoner and Mage. No one told them that). 100% affliction doesn't transfer so well to the team game that is called "OMG DAMAGE." Sure, you can 1v1 your way through team combat and be absolutely useless (I'm thinking of someone here...) but you're going to drag your team down. Team is all about the quick the quick put away, which is always damage. This is why you see the Shayleis and Rugas of the world rolling druid. The class is one button.
Edit:
Limb counting is easy if you know how to multiplication.
Runeguard needs to affliction track to be a duelist. In a group fight, though? You can roll claymore or axe as Strong and just hit dude and defend squishy people, and you'll be 100% totally awesome and everybody will love you.
And something like discernment would be amazingly strong here. Giving them discernment would mean rebalancing them all around it, and we're talking major rebalances here.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."