The class is very strong and doesn't need any more tools - the only thing it needs is a revision of the way pets are handled for fear, being attacked, etc.
The reason Ozreas' classlead was rejected is because having your offense tied to a cloud of ents isn't an issue in the eyes of the Administration, and the class is balanced around having all of those effects from passive pet attacks continuously instead of merging them in to one or two entities that may or may not perform those passive attacks. Not to mention the class is themed around being a beastmaster or 'friend of the wild' - you aren't a nature mage or a shaman, you are just a particularly skilled warrior with a high raport for a handful of animals, with a companion icewyrm a la some odd DnD setting. For what it's worth, I don't disagree with their decision to reject the report and I'm part of Anti-Magick. In beta, the class was pretty strong and it has suffered one nerf since then - and we have had people like Kryss, Azefel, etc run around dominating people with it on live.
What Ozreas asked for was an upgrade for upgrade's sake - or more, a change for change's sake. The class didn't actually need it. From my position, I really think the only reason people are really on the side of removing them is the spam - but spam can be coded away with some simple gagging triggers.
Your second idea I am less opposed to, but I once again ask why? The class is fine as-is. It has access to some very strong afflictions, a great affliction rate, it has several kill methods, and axetoss is great if you can set it up properly (hell, the benefit of axetoss is largely tertiary - you don't need it to be a good Outrider). You can already time all your axes to hit at essentially the same time.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Axetosses are amazingly powerful, because most people (for some reason) don't know how to stop it (and I won't ruin it for you... yet). Anyone who actually spends a minute to read a log of themselves getting destroyed by an outrider should easily figure out how to stop basically 80% of their offense, and it doesn't even involve the pets.
The problem with the animal horde isn't the spam; gags can handle that trivially for anybody who cares about it.
The problem is that entourages are a frustrating pain in the dick to deal with for the player that owns them. So many movement(voluntary AND forced, both) skills lose them. Resummoning them is absolutely mandatory and usually fairly expensive in terms of time, and the skills that lose them are often repeatable.
"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 class is very strong and doesn't need any more tools - the only thing it needs is a revision of the way pets are handled for fear, being attacked, etc.
The reason Ozreas' classlead was rejected is because having your offense tied to a cloud of ents isn't an issue in the eyes of the Administration, and the class is balanced around having all of those effects from passive pet attacks continuously instead of merging them in to one or two entities that may or may not perform those passive attacks. Not to mention the class is themed around being a beastmaster or 'friend of the wild' - you aren't a nature mage or a shaman, you are just a particularly skilled warrior with a high raport for a handful of animals, with a companion icewyrm a la some odd DnD setting. For what it's worth, I don't disagree with their decision to reject the report and I'm part of Anti-Magick. In beta, the class was pretty strong and it has suffered one nerf since then - and we have had people like Kryss, Azefel, etc run around dominating people with it on live.
What Ozreas asked for was an upgrade for upgrade's sake - or more, a change for change's sake. The class didn't actually need it. From my position, I really think the only reason people are really on the side of removing them is the spam - but spam can be coded away with some simple gagging triggers.
Your second idea I am less opposed to, but I once again ask why? The class is fine as-is. It has access to some very strong afflictions, a great affliction rate, it has several kill methods, and axetoss is great if you can set it up properly (hell, the benefit of axetoss is largely tertiary - you don't need it to be a good Outrider). You can already time all your axes to hit at essentially the same time.
I get what you're saying on part 1 and I'm okay with "friend of the wilds" if that is where the class is supposed to go ... But I have a caveat - for being a pretty good chunk of my offense, it is awfully hard to access... and it is super easy to lose, mark return, flying, a lot of portals, and so forth all cause you to lose 3/4-all of your entourage... and that doesn't even include the forced movement problems with losing the entourage. And that is another x seconds I have to spend resummoning it unless I actually, you know, walk somewhere. As it currently stands, it's also pretty difficult to gag it all out, because about half of the passive pets actually do stuff that you need to know about or see - steal balance, give nausea, etc. and those are the ones I am not surging (pet 1... and I think pet 3?)... and then I am surging pets 4 and 5 so that you more or less always need to see their attacks as well... that leaves 1 pet that you can gag out? Woohoo for that spam reduction... but anyways, if you want to leave them in ... fine. My request then remains, though, can I get a shorter balance timer to summon them and can they not be intimidated?
Part 2... maybe I just need more experience with and I'll defer if that is the case... but I think axetosses are pretty necessary? I THINK I need them to help me stick some of the more necessary afflictions that I need to give... Maybe I'm wrong... but if I am right and they are necessary, timing them to hit at the same time IS easy... provided someone doesn't do ANYTHING to stop it in between... where I struggle is Faz's (really good) point about them being insanely powerful if someone can't stop it at all - I can give burst afflictions like crazy (technically I could give up to 7 at one time if someone rolls over and lets me have 12 uninterrupted seconds)... and that would be retarded to be able to access that easily... but on a shorter term, more practical basis... being able to toss two axes unhindered (again, 2x the balance timer and minimum landing time of 6 seconds) would help a ton for the short term... but I also think this MIGHT swing the pendulum the other way and make it too hard to stop... I dunno, maybe it'd be best to leave it. My issue isn't the accessibility or the power with axetossing, my issue is how obvious it is. I guess another option if you could toss two axes at once would be to narrow the range of times that you could have an axe land so that you can't have as many in the air at one time...
Should have classleaded (classled?) faster summoning/calling eq or like a once-per-X-seconds instant summon.
You don't need axetoss at all, if going the shatter-route. It sure helps, and definitely allows you to fluidly switch over to aff-pressure if you realise the shatter setup isn't going to work out.
I'd say just handle one issue at a time, and right now that issue for Outriders is the # of ents you do. Personally, my pick would be to fight side-by-side with your wyrm, where it does the passive afflicting of the animals that they used to have as part of it's attacks. The other thing that would be nice is the ability to see the wyrm's health...they can heal it but can't see if it needs healing. You would then command your wyrm to do specific attacks (basically surge) and when the balance for that attack came up it would use it. Wyrm breath for nausea, wing slap for balance, claws/teeth for bleeding/dmg (2 claws/1 teeth attacks on separate balances), gaze for stupidity/dizzyness. That way you keep track of one animal, which you are mounted on (so it should follow you wherever you move and is quick to summon).
PS- You can reduce spam without reducing your tracking ability. Just have the system keep track and gag it so you don't see the message yourself. That should work, unless you are manually keeping an eye on all those triggers (with colors?) and not tracking it with your system, in which case you gotta keep the spam going.
No idea. Looks like it's from a Bollywood movie, though.
"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 problem with your offense being telegraphed is not unique to Outrider. Really, it's not even a problem because your opponent seeing what you're doing and reacting to it is part of combat. The ability to transition from limbs to afflictions to damage so well is what makes this class such a great hybrid and it's not like it suffers in any of those departments. Not to mention things like transfix, impale, drag, darts traps..
I think I am approaching axetosses incorrectly... I thought they were a bigger part of my offense than they actually are? If that is the case, then I don't have such a problem with how they currently stand. My issue wasn't so much the telegraphing of it alone, but also the absurd ease to prevent it... but if I don't need them, then I don't need them to be any more accessible or harder to stop in any way. Either way, I think it is a moot point at least for now and the thing that deserves more attention is the entourage.
General consensus I'm getting is:
- Get rid of the balance stealing pet (probably the eq stealing disrupt surge too?)
- Make pets easier to access (while I really like Rynok's idea about just making the class about the wyrm, and rolling all the pet utility into the wyrm, I don't think this is an option that is liked across the board? Seems like the spam issue is just a 'deal with it' thing)
- I'll probably want to look at something with intimidating/shard terrifying the wyrm away, while losing the smaller pets is annoying (read: one at a time... it's pretty hampering losing all of them on travel/forced movement), it's not a huge deal and you can have a bit more cost/benefit discussion on whether or not to resummon them... with the wyrm, I'm not winning without it and so the cycle of wyrm summon/intimidate is stupid...
Shard Terrify shouldn't have existed in the first place, and Intimidate was a shitty bandaid fix for things like sketches (which had no counter in the old days whatsoever). Effects that don't involve a similar investment of resources should not be capable of doing away with any crucial portion of a player's offense.
This means: Hunting ents, basilisk, roots, ourobori, treant, etc should be immune to this stuff. Seraph is oddly immune to terrify.
Resummoning could work on a 'stock' perspective. You have 6 charges of animal summoning at a much faster speed. You use one stock up per summon. Each stock comes back per X minutes. The problem here is that the defending player has the advantage in that they can just turtle out with intimidate or terrify. Boring. Just delete these two abilities and go from there.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Honestly, there is a larger problem at work here. The way the administration handles and treats pets is:
bad, inconsistent, impractical, a huge pain in the ass, stupid and more hassle than it's worth.
Step 1: Design a class with a 'decent' primary skillset. We'll say Torment (haha, shut up Ahkan) or Wyrmriding. Add a secondary skillset that uses a pet.
Step 2: Build these classes around the existence of a pet and/or pets.
Step 3: Make many of these skills require the pet and/or pets to be in the room. Logic, I'm feeling it.
This is a solid design process. It works. I like it. For some tragic reason, we keep going.
Step 4: The slightest mis-step will make the pet leave your entourage. Attach equilibrium cost to summoning my loyal pet that makes 33-66% of my skills work.
Step 5: ALLOW PET TO DIE. (Why?) Step 6: Make summoning a pet a cluster crap of an ordeal because it's 'arghpee'
Someone is going to say 'hur, realism' and they're dumb. I'm storing a million plants in an inter dimensional rift. I keep healing sodas in another inter dimensional fanny pack that can't hold booze (Eusto, sadface). I am able to hold 58 vials while hitting you with a flail that has thorny balls while I command a sexually charged tree person to hug you into submission. My best ic friend uses glitter to kill people and gives me brownies and hugs while his wife saves the world from demons, squirts out 8 of the scariest children I've ever met, and rides a pegabou. I shit you not...a pegabou.
I like pet classes. They add a really interesting dimension to the game and add a lot of variety to combat that would otherwise be very bland. The problem is, when you're balancing the profession's kit, you balance around the existence of that pet and/or pets. Imagine my dismay when Pedobear the birch treant takes a powder because I got vortexed or worse, Kliko forced him to drink alcohol and he -died-. Whelp.
I should post a list of pets I think this applies to, but :effort:
**Addendum: Sketches aren't pets. Disregard the part where I said "when you're balancing the profession's kit, you balance around the existence of that pet and/or pets." No one thought about your class's balance. Ever.
I'm going here because I don't want to be spammed by creating another new topic. Think of this as a subtopic.
Runeflares OP
History lesson:
Rune circles were notoriously op, but balanced by the fact that only an idiot would stand in them while they were being prepared. The effects were "cannot cure health/physical/mental." These were always balanced by the fact that this was a room effect. Anyone who ever did this was just as in peril as the person they were attacking. By an large, these were useless and only used for gimmick kills or shaming bads, like Dias. After that, people like Risca abused rune circles for 7 hit rune effects.
New flares:
You can flare individual runes at people for enhanced effects
Nairat - Next 2 physical aff cures fail (shares cooldown with loshre)
Loshre - Next 2 mental aff cures fail
Inguz - Prones target
Mannaz - Speeds up flares
Wunjo - Makes you hit ground rune (does not clear ground rune)
Eihwaz-strips next rebounding (not existing one)
Pithakhan - reduces next health sip
Nuahthiz - blocks toadstool
Hugalaz - blocks shield attempt
Kena - gives hallucinations
Fehu - Extra sleep hit
Sowulu - 10% health damage
Nairat Loshre
So, these are arguably good skills. Not on wytchen and runeguards. Tbh, most of these effects are batshit insane on anything that has the affliction potential of Runeguard/Wytch. To be honest, Runeguard is better at it than wytch because of the double-hit and the ability to administer hemotoxin. I meant to classlead, but I wasted my 36 slots on classleads. Despite the fact everyone knows this shit is stupid, no one classleaded it.
The most obvious problem here is loshre/nairat. With the affliction power of both classes, this is over the top. Nairat is shadow plants younger, better brother. It blocks -two- effects, so it eats your herb balance -and- your purge balance. Luckily, most runegards are retarded and do this incorrectly. The only person I've seen time it right is Septus.
dsl whatever whatever
flare nairat <-- you plan for the delay
dsl hemotoxin ciguatoxin/nairat sets in. <-- this is the longest window for no curing. You are 100% reliant on using herbs to heal out of this. You cannot cure paralysis for the next 2 herb balances. P.S. you're gonna get dsl'd again before this wears off. Total afflictions: 4. One of which is ciguatoxin. The fact 99% of runeguards suck at timing is not a balancing factor. Even without good timing this is effective as hell.
This is less of a problem with wytchen, but I can steam roll you with cig/loshre peace/lethargy and you're just going to wallow on the floor in self pity.
Nairat ground and flared Wunjo Before the runeflares, a rune on the ground only hit one person once. They had to leave the room and come back to be hit again. This is no longer the case, which is a bad decision. What makes this worse (and more abuseable) is that flare wunjo at @tar will transfix you and not consume the rune on the ground. Congratulations, you can now cycle transfix every 2nd dsl. Also, did you know that transfix may as well be flare nairats better better brother? It stops you from purging and using tree.
Now runeguards have a 2 mental/physical cure block and a block tree/purge until cured. These abilities relatively spammable and assist with and block curing hemotoxin. This is less of an issue on wytchen since they cannot reliably unblind, can't unblind/second toxin and cannot hemotoxin/unblind and have difficult access to hemotoxin.
The rest of them are pretty ho-hum. Eihwaz sucks for wytchen, but no one is willing to admit it does because no one plays it. I'm all for leaving the abilities in, even if they're still crazy for Runeguards, but something needs to be done to address flare nairat, flare loshre and nairat's interactions with oxalis/flare wunjo. I know most of us are tired of the nairat/flare wunjo to transfix spam wagon. You went the extra mile to remove pindown on behest of the runeguards, why don't we remove pindowns sibling spam nairat at the behest of everyone else.
Edit: I want to pre-emptively counter a bad argument here.
The problem with flares is that you can balance attack (dsl, curse/dustthrow) and pick up the transfix. No other class can do this. Please don't make awful arguments like "herpy derpy, you can treant entangle/touch web/hangedman" because that's an organic apple. Yours is a GMO frankenfruit. Looking at you, Mathiaus.
Edit 2: Forgot those. Something something, non-runelore classes picking up runelore benefits by using oxalis. <-- not smart
This is less of an issue on wytchen since they cannot reliably unblind, can't unblind/second toxin and cannot hemotoxin/unblind and have difficult access to hemotoxin.
Being able to block two cures plus dsl is never going to be balanced. On one hand you have nairat (as Ahkan covered), but loshre is just as big an offender. If you burn someone's tree/purge, it pretty much comes down to: stick asthma (two dsls), flare loshre, dsl iodine/bromine, flare whatever you feel like (hallucinations for lols let's say) and you have at best a window of 2 focus balances to go to town. If you're smart you'll stick more focus affs (plus paralysis, hemotoxin, etc) in that window (plus epilepsy if you're maxing out your hilarity factor with etchings). Its completely viable to stack focus affs and consistently be able to get loshre reflared before they cure the anorexia (if you don't just dsb them off the ten or so affs you stacked during the time they were unable to cure anorexia in the first place).
I'm ok with rg being the best aff knight, but there's a definite difference between being the best aff knight and being able to roll into a kill sequence the moment you stick asthma while someone's off tree/purge bal (that's all the time vs a knight, essentially). If you don't have fitness, you shouldn't bother fighting a good rg, and if you do you better hope your offense allows you to go off bal constantly and still kill someone (if it does, your offense probably needs looking at re: monk).
Inguz is a cool rune for rg, imo. It allows you to prone without having to hault your aff offense and roll straight into impale/bcry. This is awesome and puts it way above the curve in terms of affliction knight, and more kind of the things I'd think rg should be getting if aff superiority is the aim with it.
I have very little experience with wytch, so can't really comment there.
Wytch can do exactly the same thing. Flare Loshre > curse asthma/whatever until they have used tree/purge and have asthma stuck (3 curses at best) > roll into anorexia/slickness and proceed to follow the same steps as above, with the added benefit of swiftcurse being 1.2s if you opt to not use Arctar as well as having access to way more mental affs then Runeguard.
In fact, Wytch offence with runeflares is stronger even the runeguard. For one, you can choose to use Arctar for only a slight hit to speed and not have to worry at all about curseward. As well, inhibit prevents even the use of fitness while you also have aeon, choke and mark passive damage. The lack of hemotoxin in their skillset is no big deal at all. Once they purge early on they won't be doing it again for 15s. More then enough time to rain down so many affs that their next purge will likely cure something redundant or even to slash/throw axe with hemotoxin.
Nah, flare loshre anorexia is weaker because focus/salve balance/tree/purge. Asthma and slickness are a physical afflictions and won't be blocked by loshre. First cure focus fails, 1 salve balance, 1 salve balance. I have curing up and running before you get dsl balance back with a broadsword. All things pale to nairat/cig/hemotoxin. There's no arguing around this. Impatience/confusion/lethargy isn't even a big deal because I have purge, tree, focus, plants waiting on the bench to help me blow through my 2 failures.
Inhibit only prevents the use of fitness -if- it knocks you off eq which requires lethargy and confusion on the victim. It's important to mention that lethargy is physical and confusion is mental and can't be blocked together.
In this case, you're probably using cadmus (because of curse-choke) which only ignites if you have 5 afflictions on the target, then it does damage based on # of afflictions.
If you're using cadmus, that means you had to stop what you were cursing and switch to dustthrow with mixing to stick aeon
Aeon only relapses the damage done by the wytchen. This damage drops to what, 40% when aeon is cured, which is pretty easy to cure against a wytchen.
The lack of hemotoxin on wytch is a big deal. It was designed not to have hemotoxin because it was too good...like you could say it is with RG. The reason why flare nairat is so gross on a runeguard is because you can hit with HEMOTOXIN and ciguatoxin. The only cure method here is plants, locking you in to two herb balances.
If you have asthma and Loshre is already up on you and you're then hit with slickness/anorexia in one attack you are then on a very, very fast downward slope whether you are against Runeguard or Wytch. You will focus and then need to wait another five seconds to focus again. Wytch can then just curse impatience and go straight into 2x inhibit and you're 99% dead outside of passive healing. Knight will likely start piling on more mental affs so that you're playing the rng when you focus next.
Yeah, but in that log you had tree and purge balance. In a fight, you wouldn't use slickness/anorexia until your system had seen them use both tree and purge. The only balance you will be going on is focus.
So your argument is "under a finite set of ideal circumstances my plan will work" which is what you're using to say wytchen is as op as runeguard, whose set up is always effective. Thanks for the support.
So, this time I focused/ purge blood/touch tree before flaring loshre.
Even under your ideal circumstances, nairat/hemotoxin/ciguatoxin is still better. (because it limits curing types to 1. Something you can't duplicate).
Specific toxins and whatnot aren't important. Note the six toxins inside a nairat window. This is trivial due to mannaz making nairats activation period shorter than an herb balance.
As a heads-up regarding where we're at, the majority of the reports is done and almost all Defiler changes are designed and coded as well. I still need to figure out what I want to do with Bards, and once that is done, we'll be able to get the beta started.
I cannot really give any time estimates, sadly, but it shouldn't take too much longer now.
Comments
The reason Ozreas' classlead was rejected is because having your offense tied to a cloud of ents isn't an issue in the eyes of the Administration, and the class is balanced around having all of those effects from passive pet attacks continuously instead of merging them in to one or two entities that may or may not perform those passive attacks. Not to mention the class is themed around being a beastmaster or 'friend of the wild' - you aren't a nature mage or a shaman, you are just a particularly skilled warrior with a high raport for a handful of animals, with a companion icewyrm a la some odd DnD setting. For what it's worth, I don't disagree with their decision to reject the report and I'm part of Anti-Magick. In beta, the class was pretty strong and it has suffered one nerf since then - and we have had people like Kryss, Azefel, etc run around dominating people with it on live.
What Ozreas asked for was an upgrade for upgrade's sake - or more, a change for change's sake. The class didn't actually need it. From my position, I really think the only reason people are really on the side of removing them is the spam - but spam can be coded away with some simple gagging triggers.
Your second idea I am less opposed to, but I once again ask why? The class is fine as-is. It has access to some very strong afflictions, a great affliction rate, it has several kill methods, and axetoss is great if you can set it up properly (hell, the benefit of axetoss is largely tertiary - you don't need it to be a good Outrider). You can already time all your axes to hit at essentially the same time.
"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."
"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."
That balance knock pet needs to go though.
This means: Hunting ents, basilisk, roots, ourobori, treant, etc should be immune to this stuff. Seraph is oddly immune to terrify.
Resummoning could work on a 'stock' perspective. You have 6 charges of animal summoning at a much faster speed. You use one stock up per summon. Each stock comes back per X minutes. The problem here is that the defending player has the advantage in that they can just turtle out with intimidate or terrify. Boring. Just delete these two abilities and go from there.
Step 6: Make summoning a pet a cluster crap of an ordeal because it's 'arghpee'
I should post a list of pets I think this applies to, but :effort:
Runeflares OP
This is less of a problem with wytchen, but I can steam roll you with cig/loshre peace/lethargy and you're just going to wallow on the floor in self pity.
Before the runeflares, a rune on the ground only hit one person once. They had to leave the room and come back to be hit again. This is no longer the case, which is a bad decision. What makes this worse (and more abuseable) is that flare wunjo at @tar will transfix you and not consume the rune on the ground. Congratulations, you can now cycle transfix every 2nd dsl. Also, did you know that transfix may as well be flare nairats better better brother? It stops you from purging and using tree.
Now runeguards have a 2 mental/physical cure block and a block tree/purge until cured. These abilities relatively spammable and assist with and block curing hemotoxin. This is less of an issue on wytchen since they cannot reliably unblind, can't unblind/second toxin and cannot hemotoxin/unblind and have difficult access to hemotoxin.
I want to pre-emptively counter a bad argument here.
The problem with flares is that you can balance attack (dsl, curse/dustthrow) and pick up the transfix. No other class can do this. Please don't make awful arguments like "herpy derpy, you can treant entangle/touch web/hangedman" because that's an organic apple. Yours is a GMO frankenfruit. Looking at you, Mathiaus.
Forgot those. Something something, non-runelore classes picking up runelore benefits by using oxalis. <-- not smart
Being able to block two cures plus dsl is never going to be balanced. On one hand you have nairat (as Ahkan covered), but loshre is just as big an offender. If you burn someone's tree/purge, it pretty much comes down to: stick asthma (two dsls), flare loshre, dsl iodine/bromine, flare whatever you feel like (hallucinations for lols let's say) and you have at best a window of 2 focus balances to go to town. If you're smart you'll stick more focus affs (plus paralysis, hemotoxin, etc) in that window (plus epilepsy if you're maxing out your hilarity factor with etchings). Its completely viable to stack focus affs and consistently be able to get loshre reflared before they cure the anorexia (if you don't just dsb them off the ten or so affs you stacked during the time they were unable to cure anorexia in the first place).
I'm ok with rg being the best aff knight, but there's a definite difference between being the best aff knight and being able to roll into a kill sequence the moment you stick asthma while someone's off tree/purge bal (that's all the time vs a knight, essentially). If you don't have fitness, you shouldn't bother fighting a good rg, and if you do you better hope your offense allows you to go off bal constantly and still kill someone (if it does, your offense probably needs looking at re: monk).
Inguz is a cool rune for rg, imo. It allows you to prone without having to hault your aff offense and roll straight into impale/bcry. This is awesome and puts it way above the curve in terms of affliction knight, and more kind of the things I'd think rg should be getting if aff superiority is the aim with it.
I have very little experience with wytch, so can't really comment there.
In fact, Wytch offence with runeflares is stronger even the runeguard. For one, you can choose to use Arctar for only a slight hit to speed and not have to worry at all about curseward. As well, inhibit prevents even the use of fitness while you also have aeon, choke and mark passive damage. The lack of hemotoxin in their skillset is no big deal at all. Once they purge early on they won't be doing it again for 15s. More then enough time to rain down so many affs that their next purge will likely cure something redundant or even to slash/throw axe with hemotoxin.
Inhibit only prevents the use of fitness -if- it knocks you off eq which requires lethargy and confusion on the victim. It's important to mention that lethargy is physical and confusion is mental and can't be blocked together.
Either way, both the flares are super strong.
http://pastebin.com/WzURuqAJ
And that's about that. For those who didn't click the paste-bin link.
Additionally: (assuming level 1 balance)
Even under your ideal circumstances, nairat/hemotoxin/ciguatoxin is still better. (because it limits curing types to 1. Something you can't duplicate).
Had a quick look through logs for the first nairat situation I could find from my perspective.
http://pastebin.com/2rNLjdsa
Specific toxins and whatnot aren't important. Note the six toxins inside a nairat window. This is trivial due to mannaz making nairats activation period shorter than an herb balance.
I cannot really give any time estimates, sadly, but it shouldn't take too much longer now.