The Pummeling Bears

Ahkan

I meant to do this last night, but omg, work. For those of you considering going back to graduate school: Be warned.

Ok, so. Bears were incorporated to help Predadurs get kills from limb set ups. Pummel pretty much gives the target limb level 1 limb damage.
Standard eq time: 4.2s
Raw damage: 155 blunt
Afflictions: Level 1 limb break, shriveled limb

Quarter
[spoiler] 

Syntax: BEAR QUARTER <target>

If your target has been successfully weakened, you can order your bear to quarter the helpless body, killing its owner instantly. A successful quarter requires that the target is at less than 20% of maximum health, plus 10% per each limb that is broken to the point of requiring a restoration salve (up to a maximum of 60% if all four limbs are broken). [/spoiler]

Pummel is pretty neat in the 1v1 arena. It gives predadurs a much needed way to throw in some extra limb pressure so they can't damage kill you with c-cuts. If they're they're lucky, or good, they can take you out with quarter. In teams, things start to get a little hairy because we're dealing with restoration balance on a shared affliction across three or four classes.

-Kai strike is limited by kai. Generating booku kai is limited by the monk blowing through a ton of mana.

-Plimb is balanced against the fact that it does 0 damage.

-Bear is blocked by parry (which becomes negligible in team combat) and shield.

Basically what happens to the 'victim' of the Game of Quarters, you get stuck in the loop of expending salve balance (~4s) and getting hit with another limb affliction. 1v1, you can stay ahead of the game. It's not that pummel is broken or even that quarter is broken, it's the fact that the restoration salve is doom if you have to spam it. That's 4s of not being able to use a salve cure. Imagine if you were not able to eat an herb for 4s out of a fight and this was brought about by an easily accessed, no-prerequisites skill. Regardless of how it plays out, you can't shield for 4s, you can't apply salves for four seconds and you're about to pick up two more salve afflictions (which means you won't have salves for 8s when you get your "how many limbs are broken damage check.)

As someone already cried about in another thread, "you're making it easier to die to x instant kill, stop it." This remark didn't apply there, but it's reasonably accurate in this scenario. Pummel is pumping out solid health pressure (155 raw blunt @ 4.2s) while playing towards a pretty badass instant kill end game. Two bears becomes (310@4.2) and you won't be able to outpace or avoid the instakill due to salve balances. This runs along the same thought process as the cryfest about dsl/bcry-bellow. The precedent has already be set and held up against forms of combat the don't allow themselves to be effectively countered. 

That being said, I'm not really sure how I would fix it, considering the availability of limb damage for AM. My first suggestion is going to be to drop the initial damage output of Bear pummel alone in the range of 50 < pummel < 100. It's still viable, but the sitara would be a better option. I'd almost suggest that the bear pummel be unable to give the level 1 limb damage affliction without some sort of prior hit on the limb. If full hits on the limb --> shrivel limb. If half hits on limb --> break limb. This would allow for more set up, and widen the gap between forced restoration applications.

I'm sure some people are going to reply with things such as: better target priority, bring more people, etc.

Bear pummel and game of quarters doesn't open itself up to being sniped out (like catharsis). there's going to be a back up predadur who can easily quarter. Wardens/Monks/Clerics can offer the limb damage pressure if bear 1 dies. If they don't pull off a quarter, the 150 damage set you up to be bursted down by the rest of the team. Bringing more people is a pitiful argument because it's a variable that's outside the control of the participants. I can't make people log on and I wouldn't try.

Khizan

The problem, imo, is not with quarter.

The problem is that restoration cures take so long, and AM can break limbs so quickly since it has so many limb damage classes. The same thing that's dangerous with quarter would be only very slightly less dangerous with a Strong Monk dropping backbreakers or crescentcuts.

I'm not sure there is a solution to that, either, no more than there's a solution for teams that can overwhelm with raw damage, or with affliction spam, or anything else.

EDIT: Unless maybe you want to go with messages like "You try to pick up Ahkan for a backbreaker, but that stupid bear is still in the way" or "Ahkan smells too much like Kai right now, and bears hate Kai."

Juran

Anything that has a timer is prone to being exploited if multiple people pressure that timer. Damage, percentile mana attacks, healing timers, aeon, the 6s delay for speed elixir - you see facets of this problem in every aspects of combat

Is pummel itself excessive? I would say no, because it's practically plimb against most people and according to your log looks slower. Is quarter itself excessive? That's a harder question. It's a scaling incinerate that will almost always be worse than incinerate was - intended to give predators a very situational way to kill people that they can't just pressure down with damage.

Ahkan

I want to go with Khizan's options, just for lulz. I kind of like the idea behind your idea, though.

I like the idea behind quarter, it's something that predadurs really needed to pull of some kills in 1v1, since crescentcut has two modes (broken and useless).I would almost say someone should look at our limb-damage mechanics and come up with something more interesting and less time-bomb. No, I don't think pre-restoring is the answer.

Plimb is subject to limb armor. Pummel doesn't seem to be. I'm sure this was a balancing factor as far as pummel is concerned. I still don't think it needs to be churning out 155 blunt damage on top of limb damage. Aside from that, I really like and appreciate the necessity for the mechanic.

@juran

Most of your exploited timers are exploited timers in the way that you mean or in the way that relates to the problem in this thread

-Health and percentile attacks can be countered with balancing stat pools and min/maxing resistances, artifacts

-Same with mana. (factor in class skills, reserves, artifacts)

-Aeon, the delay isn't the problem, it's the associated command bottle neck.

-Aeon is also not a problem because the defense has a 6s timer (like rebounding, curseward). The cure does not. The cure is one second and done.So, you can get aeoned ten times in a row, just in time to smoke, to get aeoned, to smoke, to get aeoned. You'll keep pace without a hitch.

Limb damage is ever lurking threat that you can't avoid or reduce. It's just going to happen. Health pools and limb armor help a little, but just delays the inevitable 4s salve-balance lost, which is a no option, must commit to or bad things happen. In teams, you're just going to be letting those 4s balances stack up until you just can't avoid death. AM just has their pick of classes that can do limb damage.

Juran

I agree that limb damage is a grenade waiting to explode that's hard to really do anything about, but I also agree that pre-restoration is an awful solution to the problem. I've spent a decent amount of time trying to solve it in a way that I feel would be fair to everyone involved, but short of entirely redesigning salves and limb damage I really can't think of a way.

That said, quarter and pummel are only symptoms of the problem. Nothing being done by predaotrs in the past few days couldn't be (and hasn't been) done with kai strike, plimb, and incendiary arrows.

Khizan

If any change needs to be made, it's just that Pummel should do less damage, because repeated pummeling shouldn't put people into the 'incinerate range'.

Ahkan

Sure, they're symptoms. Most of them are manageable and have been manageable. Pummel comes really close to crossing that line. Quarter is just feeding off the ease of mangling from pummel.

And really, they're symptoms that are easily treatable, without having to revamp the limb damage system.

Juran

People that get hit really hard all at one time die immediately, people that take 3-4 saps or leeches at one time die immediately, people that get multiple mangles at one time die immediately. That is the nature of team combat on this game. So that part doesn't bother me.

If anything I would do what you and Khizan both suggested and lower the damage slightly so it isn't auto-pushing people into incinerate range without any other damage sources. People would then be encouiraged to attack with the sitara for damage, and the bear for breaks.