Improving Imperian Combat

Iniar

That is what I am saying. What is the difference? Why is automatic drsl such a bad thing?

Ahkan

Crescentcut is the best example of this. Look at how standing ccut Shou pks. This is 100% why auto raze is bad.

Other 'auto razes' have built in sacrifices:

-fiend occupies a demon slot (despite the fact most of those demons suck)

-inferno blocks the use of most of the good spatium skills

-devastate removes 50% damage and 50% limb damage

Knight specific: Dsl is too good to auto raze.

Iniar

Bring RSL speed to DSL speed. In built sacrifice DONE.

While we're at it, slow Fast statpack down, or vice versa, speed everyone else up. Also, cap all sabres to L3 speeds.

@Ahkan: actually, that makes no sense at all from a DK PoV.

The inbuilt sacrifice for DSL is slowing down for rebounding. Not latency. The sad thing is a sabre 'slowing down' for an rsl is too quick.

Let me rephrase: RSL is (or should be) the gatekeeper, not Latency.

There is also 0% ambiguity for when rebounding appears, so... no reason for the execution (but not the calculation) to not be done serverside.

Iniar

At any rate, I wasn't unhappy with hitting rebounding - it has some very amusing chuckle-factor. So chuckly in fact I rebound-killed myself against a group of 5 AMers, which makes it worth keeping around, just for that super special deny. Was simply a crazy idea.

Septus

Latency really shouldn't factor into it that much. You know rebounding is 6 seconds and that's unmodified. You know when they smoke linseed. The average fast dsl is between around 2.1 and 2.25 seconds. A lot of the time you're off balance when rebounding comes up (so irrelevant). The other fringe cases I think its fine to either have to wait that .2s to be sure or just rsl knowing that the rebounding is going to be there.

That said, my main objection to this is saying "there's no ambiguity so this should be automatic" is a way to make things pretty dull very quickly.

On a related note, it'd be a huge buff for rebounding hindered classes in teams. If you look over logs I guarantee you will see a huge number of dry razes where people have all gone to rsl at once. Those are all going to turn into claymore dsls 100% of the time with 0 chance of error. Removing that chance for human error is bad.

Iniar

Makes sense! Like I said, it was just a throw-away idea.

Latency really shouldn't factor into it that much. You know rebounding is 6 seconds and that's unmodified. You know when they smoke linseed.

Except for me, rebounding is anywhere between 5.7 and 6.3 seconds.

Also, I lied: Nothing irritates me more in the DK class than this:

t = 0.000 -- You rsl Abigail.

t = 0.200 -- You whip your weapon through the air like an idiot.

t = 0.240 -- Abigail has rebounding.

I did, at one stage, do that, and I remember why I stopped now: it's pants-on-head irritating. I'd much rather eat a self-inflicted 140 dsl and have a 5% of killing myself than see that.

Delrayne

Try using command separators. Sends everything in one prompt simultaneously thus negating rebounding from popping up in the middle.

Ahkan

That wouldn't solve anything.

Menoch

Rebounding still comes up on prompt and if you have shitty AU ping or just spike ridden ping, I can see where it's annoying. I try to compensate for the next 2-3 hits having clientside latency to deal with and I think I made the alarm like 5.8 or something instead of 6 to account for that. That said the infrequency with which rebound pops up same prompt as my queue'd dsl/rsl is tolerable for me. One accidental rebound in like 40-60 seconds of fighting isn't common, nor is it devastating when it happens.

Iniar

Yeap. I think once I ran RSL about 0.1 - 0.2s pre-rebounding and ended up RSLing just before Rebounding -so often- that I did practically nothing. 

Swapped to no pre-rebounding and afflictions became so much easier, even if it meant hitting rebounding once every 15-20 dsls.

(( Admittedly on my older better system :S I'm 150% embarassed at my DK now. ))

Ahkan

Honestly, don't button mash. This is the exact reason Kyrock was one of the better afflicters who went no where because the dude was captain rebounding.  In my experience, I'd rather have a bad raze than a rebound, so if my system couldn't decide it always assumed rebounding was up. When I had the necessity to manual, I could get the rythym of the rsl/dsl tango. Using the queue system to me is sort of a gamble because I'm committing myself to something early when there's a lot more variables I can't account for that haven't gone into play yet. That's a risk you take when using the front loaded queue/combo system.

None of this is really an issue that needs to be addressed for dsl. It's already one of the best skills in the game without an auto-raze component. Latency isn't really something that needs to be balanced around. It sucks, sure, but you can code around it and refine the 'art' of knowing then rebounding is about to come up. 

*the only problem with rsl is that claymore rsl is bs. That being said, the unnecessary upgrade to claymores pushes me to "Who cares, it hits like a truck and should be slow."

@iniar
Arctar mark is a poorly designed skill and you make bad decisions.

Juran

For most people, ping is pretty consistent. Even if your ping is awful, it isn't often jumping around between 98ms and 500ms every other prompt.

What this means is you can time rebounding client side and have a pretty good idea of when the next rebounding is going to pop, and with a one line trigger give yourself plenty of advanced notice of rebounding before it happens.

Menoch

ITT: Echoes

Iniar

Haha yeah I played dps Wytch for a long time - I buttoned mash nothing for the longest time. Now when I dsl at 2.11 though, waiting for that info means I actually dsl at 2.4, if my reaction times were 0.00 (it's more like 0.250, which probably means my 'full' dsl time without mashing is 2.7). To solve this, I use Queue. But I still hit that same problem of my Clear going through about 300/2 ms later. Its OK. Best is to use damage class ignoring defence: Summoner.

Juran

Does assassin still pre-flay, or did they fix that? That was always the best.

Iniar

I am finding it highly un-amusing that an unartifacted druid can drop my mana into the 30% even without wisp poison, and without a lot of effort (ala Diabolist). Not amused. Highly not amused. Magick's damage class is better at providing a mana kill than my mana kill class.

Kryss

To add to this, I am able to reduce Iniar's mana from 100% to 0% in 25 seconds using only evocation drain, naturebinding drain, poisonous wisp and rainbow wisp. No tornado or anything else. Should he try to fight back he'll just drain his own mana even quicker. Testing without poisonous wisp gives the same result, only slower.

This is on a class that can also:

- Deny all balanced based offence [balance empower, evocation enfeeble].
- Hit harder then pretty much any class without even expending any kind of resource, they only grow stronger as the fight continues [imbue, air].
- Double all mana costs at the same time as neutering opposing sap mechanics [oppression].
- Kill someone at 25% mana or at 40% with hellsight, easily done with a delayed hypnotic wisp.
- For some reason has an artifact that scales better then others, with a 10>20>30 progression rather then a 10>15>20 one.


There's more, but you get the idea. Although I'm sure by now I think (I hope) that everyone is already aware of how broken it is and why it needs to be seriously adjusted.

Menoch

You mentioned oppression but didn't mention the other tools in the kit to accomplish these ends,

Curse - block regens

Strength Earthsong - flat 10% increase to damage

Iniar

(R): Kryss, "This is the setup."

(R): Kryss, "Watch."

Kryss rebounding down.

Kryss raises a sharpened quarterstaff above her head and begins to draw wide circles in the air. The staff glows dimly for 

a moment as a swirling tornado slowly forms around her, loudly sucking in air.

The tornado swirls rapidly.

Kryss smoked linseed.

480[100] 575[100] eb db 0 0 39.41 0 [A: 0][M: 0] 

Kryss quickly summons a metallic wisp and with a commanding gesture, sends it flying towards you.

Psychic wisp.

 -70 [14.6%],  94 (25.5%)

Kryss turns towards the swirling tornado.

The raging tornado begins spinning faster and faster, until it suddenly implodes into itself with an ear-splitting sound.

You choke violently as the air is forced painfully out of your lungs.

-105 [21.9%], 141 (25.5%)

Kryss swings her quarterstaff and an animated blackthorn root spins around and batters you, shredding your skin mercilessly.

 -37 [ 7.7%],  80 (53.8%)

Your hearing is suddenly restored.

267[55] 575[100] eb b 10 0 39.41 0  [A: 0][M: 0] 

Let's play the haaaave-you-met-Ted-defiler game

Menoch

The most important thing is that this is unartifacted, fast statpact, fast specialisation druid.

Sarrius

We play too soft with the tuning of Druids because we apparently just never think to check that work in betas. The most recent of the betas was like the fourth time we had the opportunity and did not.

Ahkan

Oh, the work was checked. No one cared. Incinerate took precedence.

#beta4lief

Eldreth

And the ranks of ex-druids who didn't seem to mind these problems until they had to deal with druids themselves continue to swell.

Ahkan

(khizan)

Ahkan

You make imperian combat more fun by fixing druids. @garryn

The big thing I'm hitting here are the destruction of 'the everything combo'. Druid is a mindless class that hits 1 button with damn near every druid skill in it to button mash to victory (Eldreth, Ichimoru, Zachariah, Shaylei, Ifreann, Risca). When you look at other combination damage classes, there are hard cooldowns you can't side step and limiting mechanics that stop you from rolling 100% all the time. What you have with druid is 100%/80% damage combo rotations. With the numbers as is, this is ludicrous.

I still think the stacking modifiers from empowerment are bad but you seem 100% resistant to actually check the math. The argument is still "Pre-charging is possible and there's nothing to make you lose a free % modifier to damage."

#1. Your 'charge' mechanic needs a purpose outside of a terrible % modifier that stacks with other % modifiers.

Hey guys, I'm going to hold on to this 100% empower for eternity.

-Make it drain on-hit (50% per strong hit)

-Use an intensify mechanic like summoner to turn on empowerments

#1.b Just get rid of the effect at 100% empower (past 2 years of classleads, time to listen)

#2. I honestly think you should have to choose between toxins or special druid effects.
I.e. You either hit me with strychnine or rocks, but never both.
-This addresses the 'everything combo' and forces a tactical choice.

#3. Your wisps and roots need a big time revisit because we're all getting tired of the everything combo.

-Choke is still bad. I should not have writhe or take 90 asphixation damage a round. You should know better.

-Choke/noctec is a 2 year old classlead. We need to stop making these mistakes.

-Wisp/Roots should be a choice on which attacks a round. Outrider is balanced around not surging every animal every combo. Druid gets to surge both. Same with defiler. You can take a lot of defiler classleads and apply them to Druid.  Again, this addresses the 'everything combo' and forces good decision making on abilities

#4. Oppression is dumb. I'm impressed you balanced the class around reclaim. Then you ruined it with oppression.

#5. Druid barrier --> becomes a free shield tattoo. There's no reason the juggernaut class needs on demand access to a 500c artifact.

#6. We need to undo the classlead that "preparation for pk is hard." You should not be able to cast a druid spell with a combo to set up a pk room. If you want to do this, then rites, gravehands, blackvines, whirlpool, traps, wormholes, all need to be put on the same 'first hit turn everything on system.' Consitency, it's awesome

Skye

You mean all this time all I've had to do was go Druid and push buttons on Risca's system? Why wasn't I informed of this earlier?!

Khizan

Don't even start with that. I spent AGES telling you to go druid because Sturdy Mage was goddamn garbage tier and you refused 100% of the time and then went out with your 12 int staffcasts.

Menoch

You don't even have to push buttons on risca's system. Make one linear spam alias that does this

evoke poisonwisp

evoke metallicwisp

empower rockfall

stab target

root circle

root choke

root shred

You can spam this exact thing, every single time, and damage kill the vast majority of the game, no matter statpack or naturebinding specialization. Guess what? You can do your strength earthsong when you enter the room, and that linear alias will become 10% more effective at killing people, for as long as you are alive to hit.

Druid can push, as Ahkan said, everything in one combo.

Druid -

fitness

might

vitality

barkskin

protection

abs/cath lite, 40% instead of 50% but that's okay because if you can't be bothered to trueassess to make sure it will insta, it will just channel on a super short timer. So it's like cleave and absolve had a baby, then gave it anabolic steroids.

Did someone say you can just run right, like let's pretend a druid actually needed to use overwhelm ever for any reason, and you can just leave the room like fighting another OP class with their time bomb wide open kill window strategies, say, priest?
Except you'll never escape a druid. 

They have double opium with empower and stab. 

They have root entrap, for some reason seems in testing to be a higher rate of holding than piety/gravehands.

You'll also be writhing during normal burst combos (haha why does choke even exist in the druid toolkit)

What's that, omni exit rubble? Why not, someone might spam their way past root entrap right?

You can't run. You can't tank it, it being either health or mana, your choice, you still can't handle it. You have to kill it through fitness, and an active heal a la bloodboil but without any sort of gating resource usage or prioritization. Maybe you'll just damage it to death then right, it's only wearing scale. Oh hey, barkskin, hey protection, hey vitality, is that a weathering I see?

They are super tanky, there's no thought involved, and every action (even supremely suboptimal ones) you take progresses you toward a kill that is already super easy to achieve. It's not that people play them and then turn against them, I was classleading against the insanity that was druid under Garrius development from the moment I checked the AB's as demonic. It's just a small but vocal minority on that particular charge of hypocrisy that is guilty, and psure we all know who. It also wouldn't bother me in the least to tone down the more over the top druid mechanics even as a druid because again, and this is the important part, THEY ARE DEFINITIVELY SUPERFLUOUS. You don't need to know what you have in the toolkit or any niche combos as druid. You can spam two macros and either reclaim or damage kill past any level of artifact regeneration, as was just seen demonstrated a la Iniar and Kryss. You can spam a linear macro that I just gave and damage kill past anything that isn't full turtle mode, and if you implement a breach, maybe even then!

tl;dr - druid is stupid because it's over the top OP by being the super best at every aspect of playerkilling, and because you don't need any of that over the top bullshit to still easily score a kill as a druid.

Skye

Kryss