You'd be wrong. Poor Iluv didn't have bandages. Go Selthis, go! We also consider team combat nowadays. (R.I.P. bellow.)
I went 8-8 last round. Better let me tackle this classlead. Selthis will probably not only get our bandages turned into new artifacts (spools), but will require buying multiple spools to fully cover each limb:(
“We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant."
You'd be wrong. Poor Iluv didn't have bandages. Go Selthis, go! We also consider team combat nowadays. (R.I.P. bellow.)
I went 8-8 last round. Better let me tackle this classlead. Selthis will probably not only get our bandages turned into new artifacts (spools), but will require buying multiple spools to fully cover each limb:(
The last classlead round I participated in, I had very good luck and you know it. Enjoy your improved transmog you ingrate.
So, while I've been goofing off in antimagick (looking at you, trade ministry), I decided to pick up predator class for it's super bashing abilities (prowling+lure). I've come to the conclusion that certain things need some work, namely stances, so I threw some ideas into this post.
So, in a resolution for this, I'd like to propose a simple solution that stances work the same as Taekate does. You assume the stance before you attack, and then with that benefit (based upon how much you've learned in knifeplay) you would be able to use your chosen attack. Aka, Taekate, as I said before.
To work along with this, I would add a posture ability high in knifeplay that would allow you to use a knifeplay stance with a higher endurance cost (and you may or may not need to adj the cost of spacing/circle/etc to account for this change).
Another solution is that knifeplay works the same, but add in a new ability titled FOCUS that allows you to gain the benefit of the stance naturally, while the skill would work the same as before. For example, you would FOCUS STANCE VAE-SANT, and all your attacks after focusing that stance would have increased speed. This would have a higher endurance cost as well. This would be somewhat similar to dancing in the Wardancer class, without the global message every tick.
For reference: AB KNIFEPLAY STANCES:
None - No benefit
Gyanis - A stance which increases accuracy
Vae-Sant - A stance to increase speed
Rizet - A powerful stance designed to increase damage
Ein-Fasit - A stance designed to reduce physical damage
Laesan - An agile stance which increases avoidance
I personally would prefer the first one, just because it would allow people to use this skill so they don't have to code a offensive system (or beg/borrow/buy one) just to be able to participate in regular combat (shardfalls). This would allow more people to use the skill, while also keeping the class on the same level.
On another note, AB BEASTMASTERY COURAGE:
This passive ability greatly increases your beasts' resistance to being intimidated.
I'd like to either a) change this to work like AB TAMING COURAGE, or b) add the AB TAMING COURAGE onto this effect. I'm not too concerned about people intimidating my pets, tbh.
AB BEASTMASTERY DELIVER Where is this, and why can my hawk retrieve items but not deliver them?
AB BEASTMASTERY VIEW
I suppose the alternative is PEER IN SPYGLASS, but it'd be nice to be able to HAWK VIEW and get a spyglass-report from the hawk.
AB BEASTMASTERY HOIST
Allow the hawk to bypass mass on hoist for the owner.
AB BEASTMASTERY TRAVERSE
I'd be lovely if this wouldn't be restricted to the area that people are in, but I have my doubts there. :P
AB BEASTMASTERY INTERCEPT With a random chance to fail, and give a global message on that failure, the only thing this ability does is stop the person from leaving the room. I'd like to see a random chance to web, or hit with paralysis, making this a viable alternative to intoxicate.
AB PREDATION SUBSISTENCE I'd love to change this to a weathering effect, but I have my doubts.
The predator stance system is 100% awesome. It's unique, and interesting, and it adds to predator combat in a beneficial way. It's not very hard to use; the only coding knowledge you need is how to use if statements and variables.
Also, you'd have to rebalance all the attacks and damages around every combo being possible in Vae-Sant, combos that weren't possible before being possible now, etc, etc.
"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."
I wouldn't tinker with the stance system much, honestly. There are a lot of subtle interactions to it that make a bunch of otherwise-very-powerful things impossible. If you touch it, most of Knifeplay would need rebalancing in light of whatever you do to it. I'm not saying it's perfect and the best possible solution, just that there's a lot more to Knifeplay than meets the eye.
RE hawk: I agree that it needs something actually, y'know, useful in combat. I'd like just one thing, that would open up a number of interesting options: put hawk swoop on a delay. This gives Predator good burst affliction power and makes cirisosis look a lot stronger on paper. As it is, swoop is just a worse twinshot, and there's not really much reason to ever use it (or hawk, really) in combat when you look at the things spider and bear can do. Thoughts: is this too strong with artie sheathes?
While we're on the topic of buffing Predator, I'd like to make crescentcut not awful. Having tanky people just eat 4+ full crescentcut combos gets a bit silly. Further, crescentcut is a little bit too much like bear pound (alright damage on a standing target, significant damage on prone targets). At the same time, I don't want trip/crescentcut/crescentcut spamming to be seriously useful either 1v1 or in groups. This change is slightly more complicated: make each consecutive prone crescentcut do more damage than the last, with the caveats that a) the first few crescentcuts should do less than they do currently, b) there should probably be a cap on how high the damage can get, and c) the damage multiplier would be reset by the target standing or the Predator using any other attack or hitting anyone else. I'm a bit more hesitant about this, because it could very easily be too strong in the presence of damage arties, but a feasible damage option that rewards the Predator for keeping someone down for a long time would be very nice to have.
(I also have a small mountain of other little changes I'd like made to Predator, but I haven't thought them over enough yet and worked out which are good ideas and which aren't. These are just the things I want to make 1v1 not an exercise in futility against people who know how to outrift kelp.)
Hawk swoop on a delay will just end up being used for triple-afflict break combos and such.
"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."
While we're on the topic of buffing Predator, I'd like to make crescentcut not awful. Having tanky people just eat 4+ full crescentcut combos gets a bit silly. Further, crescentcut is a little bit too much like bear pound (alright damage on a standing target, significant damage on prone targets). At the same time, I don't want trip/crescentcut/crescentcut spamming to be seriously useful either 1v1 or in groups. This change is slightly more complicated: make each consecutive prone crescentcut do more damage than the last, with the caveats that a) the first few crescentcuts should do less than they do currently, b) there should probably be a cap on how high the damage can get, and c) the damage multiplier would be reset by the target standing or the Predator using any other attack or hitting anyone else. I'm a bit more hesitant about this, because it could very easily be too strong in the presence of damage arties, but a feasible damage option that rewards the Predator for keeping someone down for a long time would be very nice to have.
This would be off the chain in a team environment and is in no way needed on AM, especially with how many damage multipliers you all can spam up from hinders.
I sympathize that the class kind of blows 1v1, but I don't think that is the way to fix it at all.
If the damage multiplier on CCUT was removed from Pindown (thus turning it into basically an entangle), wouldn't that severely limit how abusable Pindown + CCUT would be in teams? That should give Predators a lot of design space to buff CCUT one way or another without severely impacting team combat.
Yeah, having to rebalance the whole combat is annoying. Which is why I suggested the focus ability to allow preds to benefit from burst speed/tankiness/etc. I'd still like to see the beastmaster changes that I posted go through.
Hawk swoop on a delay will just end up being used for triple-afflict break combos and such.
Is that use a problem? If there's a second person message when you begin it, that's time to shield/hinder/GTFO. I'm not even sure that a one-shot 3-toxins-plus-breaks ability is all that strong considering what Predator could actually do with it, but maybe I'm missing something. (I actually would be using delayed swoop -after- they're prone, most likely.)
On the crescentcut multiplier idea: I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant for the multiplier to be per-Predator. Two Predators crescentcutting the same target wouldn't mutually benefit each other. In practice, this means that Predators would probably do less damage than they do now in teams: either you've got a smallish team and they're assigned to hindering, or you've got a huge team and the targets are dying before the multiplier can stack up.
On making pindown not boost crescentcut damage: maybe? It's only really relevant in groups. It was only something like 10% or 25% bonus damage or something when I tested it, and that stacks additively with the other affliction bonuses, not multiplicatively (except sensitivity, of course), and crescentcut's base damage isn't all that awesome to begin with. But, see above: unless you've got more Predators than you know what to do with, having them crescentcut spam is a waste because they've got such useful hindering abilities; if you have a big team with enough Predators that you can just have one whore crescentcut and not lose any hinderance, the target's going to die anyway.
Untrue. I can tank one (probably two predators) without any ability to stand up (I was fighting AM at the time). I didn't die. (because Lionas and Ryac were -awesome-)
**This has been thoroughly tested.
***Third edit: Despite the fact that I agree predadur's have a rough time of it 1v1, I think it would be hard (silly) to push through crescent cut damage upgrades. Argument one: Stupid in teams. This would add to an already over-stacked deck of burst damage with a heaping helping of have-sum-crowd-control. Argument two: You ignore auras. I appreciate that Cardi couldn't code a razing system. It's hard. So is life. I don't even know how this terd of a classlead floated to the top, but it's goofy. Predadur picks up an amazing amount of team utility just by showing up. Trip/Pin sets up a truly ridiculous amount of class synergy. Enjoy your support role!
In all honesty, crescentcuts negating rebounding should have only applied if the target was prone (Especially since the base damage isn't scary at all)...Standing ccuts should still have to deal with rebounding.
Standing ccut spam is so hilariously bad that I'd much rather have terrible people like Shou mashing them against me than razing manually and using real combos.
"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."
Ccut damage is halved if the target is standing, or perhaps doubled if the target is prone - either way a standing ccut does almost no damage at all.
If the target is prone, there are additional modifiers based on a variety of other things. Limb breaks, pindown, paralysed, and the like can stack up to an additional 100% damage bonus if you have a lot of them. You don't get most of this damage bonus in teams, because the only 'on demand' afflictions that are really efficient to use in teams are pinned and paralysed.
The 1v1 predator problem comes when that prone+damage bonus ccut isn't enough to cut through someone's tank. I would probably change the damage bonus to be more forgiving, not requiring all four broken limbs or some such to achieve their maximum possible damage. This would let a predator do more damage for somewhat longer, and perhaps lengthen their opportunity window.
Their only alternative to limb break based crescentcut damage modifiers is quarter, which is also based on a limb break damage modifier.
Yeah, that's the biggest issue with predator really, both of their main and really only feasible kills methods are both tied into limb damage. Not to mention anyone with enough health tank three ccut combo's requiring you to -attempt- a quarter is going to take so hiliariously long to break their limbs with lowhook/jab that you'll be dead from paper armour or overwhelmed by aff setup by then.
1v1, predator mitigation is actually pretty solid.
"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."
Admittedly I haven't played pred since the evasion change so things might have gotten better on that front. It still doesn't change the fact that you will easily get twice the amount of time you normally would to setup your kill because of the time it takes a preds to break your limbs. I'm not saying give them crazy breaking powers, but against @Khizan, @Justus, @Juran, @Risca and some others they'll be lucky to even get one set of limbs setup for a break, let alone all four before dying. Then take the pool down a notch to the likes of @Ahkan, @Lionas, @Bathan and the likes, you could probably pull of the break/breaks but you won't be able to deal out enough damage in time to pull of a quarter, let alone straight kill them from ccuts.
By the time you get them below 60% health from a quad break and get balance back, they've already sipped/toadstooled above 60% so you crescentcut again. By now, they've nullified two restoration cures so you have to get them to 40%, even if that ccut combo dropped them to 40% or below(which I doubt) they'll sip/eat again by the time you get balance back to use quarter. It's an endless cycle that the pred can do absolutely nothing about against a target with a certain health pool.
Predadurs have the great knight problem without having the great knight solution, afflictions. Static damage against the highest resistances in the game? Hells yeah!
Crash course: Knights aren't going to kill anyone with straight damage, straight afflictions or limb damage. Put all three of them together and you have a solid class that can kill with 1 trans skillset (Chivalry/Brutality). Everything after that is just icing on a very awesome cake.
Predadurs pretty much roll with 2. The problem is you're never going to stick any of the good dps toxins and you don't have the affliction pressure to stick sensitivity. (You shouldn't either.) Why? Because you're a limb damage class!
This is just my spitballing from this point. I think predadurs are locked into the "if this did that then they'd be dumb in teams." Aka: Rough old mechanics are hard.
Old crescent cut was dumb. Standing c-cut should never have been an issue. Bad coding should not have dictated bad nerfing. If you don't code it poorly the first time, your unnecessary nerf wouldn't be a bug and lead to a round of even more unnecessary nerfs. The old bonuses used to modify each other so you could hit for 400 damage. Really, I think we need to go back to the drawing board and go into it knowing this:
-Quad breaks are an unreliable mechanic to build a class around. It's the same reason why malignists are a bad, bad, bad class. You're not going to limb damage overwhelm someone competent like this.
-Single and double breaks are going to be the standard fare.
-Idras really can't justify dishing out the affliction potential of a knight given their increased viability for limb damage/masked afflictions
With Crescent cut as it is now, I think it's going to be really hard to balance. If we fix CC and add more modifiers (clever sell, but lame) it's really going to add to the already simplified AM offense of #if pindown, bbt/cc/cc/get body. AM don't need more burst dps, kids. I'd honestly argue for removing all forms of entanglement from crescent cut damage bonus, because it's unlikely you're going to stack someone capable 1v1 (read: unlikely to never). The problem we get at is "how are we going to give idras more damage." Susser's solution seems nice, but it's going to whack in teams and get out of control fast. I'd really take crescent cut and make it standard attack that hits the spine. Give predadurs access to back damage.
I know I say this a lot, but I think even the predadurs need some situational modifiers to capitalize off of, sort of like there werewolves in Aetolia (rips, I think?)
I also think it's hard to balance because you don't see people exploiting holes in garrynbot like butisol on breaks (and associated variations, which are gross).
You just allow them to reach that maximum potential damage without quite so many factors. Pushing for 4 limb breaks can still be useful, as you can stop the person from shielding immediately after they stand, but it isn't going to hinder your damage as much to stop at 2 breaks instead of needing more.
You can keep the pindown damage bonus low, like it is. I would only change the secondary modifiers from breaks and mangles.
I'd also suggest an alternative to quarter that makes it a 'closer' without requiring it to use the same qualifications as crescent cut and attempt to steal away some limelight from 'doing damage'.
The ideal situation right now is that the predator will quad break (unlikely), and get a few crescent cuts in before they stand - then try to quarter off the unhealed arm breaks before they leave the room. It's a quirky sort of offense, but it's the only tool they have right now that works.
'Do more damage' isn't really a good way to go into classleads (flare, how's it going?). This unimaginative fix will have too much damage for the average fighter to heal, but not enough to put away your upper crust. That's a pretty crappy #fwp to back yourself into. Also, as stated earlier, the last thing AM needs is more damage.
By changing the modifiers I hope you're not going from 'damage breaks' to 'shrivel breaks.' Shrivel breaks would be silly and open a cornucopia of horrible to balance tactics (possibly intentional, likely..sure to be...) 25% per "broken" limb. No thank you.
Quarter is a hard sell. Team "Don't homogenize me" would have to fall on the sword of hypocrisy if you wanted a vivisect bear. No thank you. What's the next suggestion? 3 limbs? Just as hard as 4 limbs 1v1. Two limbs? Pummel, break, dead. Unstoppable? No thank you. Never mind the team combat implications. Pierce/pummel/eat. Again, no thank you. What other modifiers are you going to fish for? The 1v1 writhe stack the predadur won't get? You can't go for toxins as you're infringing on ciri's turf.
Going after a predator solution based on ccut or even quarter is going to nigh impossible. If you tweak either one at all it's either going to make the predator win every time or lose everytime. As @Khizan has told me time and time again, there just really is no middle ground on limb break classes. You will either be OP or horrible.
So lets go at it in a different direction, cirisosis is something that never gets used because of its unrealistic requirements for a predator to get. How about some suggestions to make it more viable against those that ccuts and quartering just isn't an option on?
Quarter is a hard sell. Team "Don't homogenize me" would have to fall on the sword of hypocrisy if you wanted a vivisect bear. No thank you. What's the next suggestion? 3 limbs? Just as hard as 4 limbs 1v1. Two limbs? Pummel, break, dead. Unstoppable? No thank you. Never mind the team combat implications. Pierce/pummel/eat. Again, no thank you. What other modifiers are you going to fish for? The 1v1 writhe stack the predadur won't get? You can't go for toxins as you're infringing on ciri's turf.
Eh, quarter right now works as a health scaling incinerate rather than vivisect. I do agree with you that we don't need more classes with vivisect.
I can get cirisosis kills with no balance bonus', other then vae stance, after two limb breaks. It's not hard if you know how to use afflictions. My problem with pred have been keeping people in the room with me, other then that, getting kills have never been a problem for me.
Caelya embraces you in her arms and you feel a great weight lift from your shoulders. (-2 constitution)
<739/700h 355/355m 3042e 1311w 6x <e-> <bd> <0>
Syntax: PERFORM ABSOLUTION <player>
Devotion cost: 1540
A powerful curing ability, you will absolve the target of his sins,
curing Damnation and Undeath.
Considering how useful undeath is to the necromancer (and the lack of troll animating), the disparity in devotion/essence cost (1540/30%), and the lack of it being a circle-wide defense, this is a problem.
Solution 1: Remove undeath from absolution.
Solution 2: Make it an 'agree' command. So I can be like 'lol no."
Solution 3: Make it take 18s of equilibrium. Solution 4: Allow devotion to keep undeath to absolute, add in farag's rot/faerie fire to Demonic/Magick that consumes redemption. (I like this one, personally)
In all reality, that should probably be looked at, given how the undeath mechanic has changed since the creation of absolution. It should at least be given a look over.
‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Comments
To work along with this, I would add a posture ability high in knifeplay that would allow you to use a knifeplay stance with a higher endurance cost (and you may or may not need to adj the cost of spacing/circle/etc to account for this change).
I personally would prefer the first one, just because it would allow people to use this skill so they don't have to code a offensive system (or beg/borrow/buy one) just to be able to participate in regular combat (shardfalls). This would allow more people to use the skill, while also keeping the class on the same level.
On another note,
AB BEASTMASTERY COURAGE:
Where is this, and why can my hawk retrieve items but not deliver them?
With a random chance to fail, and give a global message on that failure, the only thing this ability does is stop the person from leaving the room. I'd like to see a random chance to web, or hit with paralysis, making this a viable alternative to intoxicate.
AB PREDATION SUBSISTENCE
I'd love to change this to a weathering effect, but I have my doubts.
"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."
EDIT: Disclaimer, I played a resto druid in Vanilla
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
RE hawk: I agree that it needs something actually, y'know, useful in combat. I'd like just one thing, that would open up a number of interesting options: put hawk swoop on a delay. This gives Predator good burst affliction power and makes cirisosis look a lot stronger on paper. As it is, swoop is just a worse twinshot, and there's not really much reason to ever use it (or hawk, really) in combat when you look at the things spider and bear can do. Thoughts: is this too strong with artie sheathes?
While we're on the topic of buffing Predator, I'd like to make crescentcut not awful. Having tanky people just eat 4+ full crescentcut combos gets a bit silly. Further, crescentcut is a little bit too much like bear pound (alright damage on a standing target, significant damage on prone targets). At the same time, I don't want trip/crescentcut/crescentcut spamming to be seriously useful either 1v1 or in groups. This change is slightly more complicated: make each consecutive prone crescentcut do more damage than the last, with the caveats that a) the first few crescentcuts should do less than they do currently, b) there should probably be a cap on how high the damage can get, and c) the damage multiplier would be reset by the target standing or the Predator using any other attack or hitting anyone else. I'm a bit more hesitant about this, because it could very easily be too strong in the presence of damage arties, but a feasible damage option that rewards the Predator for keeping someone down for a long time would be very nice to have.
(I also have a small mountain of other little changes I'd like made to Predator, but I haven't thought them over enough yet and worked out which are good ideas and which aren't. These are just the things I want to make 1v1 not an exercise in futility against people who know how to outrift kelp.)
"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."
I sympathize that the class kind of blows 1v1, but I don't think that is the way to fix it at all.
On the crescentcut multiplier idea: I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant for the multiplier to be per-Predator. Two Predators crescentcutting the same target wouldn't mutually benefit each other. In practice, this means that Predators would probably do less damage than they do now in teams: either you've got a smallish team and they're assigned to hindering, or you've got a huge team and the targets are dying before the multiplier can stack up.
On making pindown not boost crescentcut damage: maybe? It's only really relevant in groups. It was only something like 10% or 25% bonus damage or something when I tested it, and that stacks additively with the other affliction bonuses, not multiplicatively (except sensitivity, of course), and crescentcut's base damage isn't all that awesome to begin with. But, see above: unless you've got more Predators than you know what to do with, having them crescentcut spam is a waste because they've got such useful hindering abilities; if you have a big team with enough Predators that you can just have one whore crescentcut and not lose any hinderance, the target's going to die anyway.
"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."
By the time you get them below 60% health from a quad break and get balance back, they've already sipped/toadstooled above 60% so you crescentcut again. By now, they've nullified two restoration cures so you have to get them to 40%, even if that ccut combo dropped them to 40% or below(which I doubt) they'll sip/eat again by the time you get balance back to use quarter. It's an endless cycle that the pred can do absolutely nothing about against a target with a certain health pool.
Crash course: Knights aren't going to kill anyone with straight damage, straight afflictions or limb damage. Put all three of them together and you have a solid class that can kill with 1 trans skillset (Chivalry/Brutality). Everything after that is just icing on a very awesome cake.
Predadurs pretty much roll with 2. The problem is you're never going to stick any of the good dps toxins and you don't have the affliction pressure to stick sensitivity. (You shouldn't either.) Why? Because you're a limb damage class!
Old crescent cut was dumb. Standing c-cut should never have been an issue. Bad coding should not have dictated bad nerfing. If you don't code it poorly the first time, your unnecessary nerf wouldn't be a bug and lead to a round of even more unnecessary nerfs. The old bonuses used to modify each other so you could hit for 400 damage. Really, I think we need to go back to the drawing board and go into it knowing this:
You just allow them to reach that maximum potential damage without quite so many factors. Pushing for 4 limb breaks can still be useful, as you can stop the person from shielding immediately after they stand, but it isn't going to hinder your damage as much to stop at 2 breaks instead of needing more.
You can keep the pindown damage bonus low, like it is. I would only change the secondary modifiers from breaks and mangles.
I'd also suggest an alternative to quarter that makes it a 'closer' without requiring it to use the same qualifications as crescent cut and attempt to steal away some limelight from 'doing damage'.
The ideal situation right now is that the predator will quad break (unlikely), and get a few crescent cuts in before they stand - then try to quarter off the unhealed arm breaks before they leave the room. It's a quirky sort of offense, but it's the only tool they have right now that works.
So lets go at it in a different direction, cirisosis is something that never gets used because of its unrealistic requirements for a predator to get. How about some suggestions to make it more viable against those that ccuts and quartering just isn't an option on?
Eh, quarter right now works as a health scaling incinerate rather than vivisect. I do agree with you that we don't need more classes with vivisect.
Solution 1: Remove undeath from absolution.
Solution 4: Allow devotion to keep undeath to absolute, add in farag's rot/faerie fire to Demonic/Magick that consumes redemption. (I like this one, personally)
In all reality, that should probably be looked at, given how the undeath mechanic has changed since the creation of absolution. It should at least be given a look over.
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”