After looking at Predator's Knifeplay stance flow and running multiple numbers, combinations, and other testing I have a very minor solution that would help with their damage output. While some will claim that Predator bashing is fine, its still extremely minimal damage unless you're rocking the artifact sitara for the extra 20% damage, and even then it's still low. My suggestion is quite simple and it only applies to the Vertical ability in Knifeplay. Below is the current flow and my suggested flow.
What this does is changes the impossible to use stance for Vertical to Gyanis rather than Laesan, as Lateral is also limited by this stance. This will essentially allow a predator to COMBO RIZET VERTICAL LATERAL VERTICAL for minorly increased damage and still end up in Vae-Sant at the end for their normally fast balance recovery.
Not to mention that even if you just used ATTACK, KILL, or KNIFE to be lazy, it would still effectively work regardless - but in this way lets you actually setup a combo to benefit the player for not being as lazy.
Since I can no longer edit the original post, I feel I need to make a few changes after re-reading things and going beyond a few more testing elements. I am now aware that specifying a stance in the combo takes one of the allowed actions which would even still make this suggestion null and void.
I'd still like to keep this suggestion though and also throw out that perhaps let people specify a stance to start in within the combo without forcing them to lose an attack opportunity? Perhaps it could be added upon learning Triplet in Knifeplay as I don't believe the skillset needs another skill added. Beyond helping their hunting potential which other professions seem to match with no issues, this would help their PK ability as well, since they are rather non-existent and have a distinct feeling the limitations of stance flow and choosing a stance hinders options.
I may be of the unfavorable opinion among the playerbase about helping out the profession, but I find it odd that there are no real active Predators that PK, many taking up a different profession entirely for the sake of more fluid and comprehensive styles offered by the other skillsets.
Edit: Sorry, I was going to type up a big long review, but eh. Everyone has heard it a million times. There's so much wrong with the class, it isn't even funny. It hasn't been touched, even with a 10 foot pole since toxins was made a public skill. It was replaced with beastmastery, which is nothing but a worthless skill through and through; I also felt it was a very unfitting skill for predators.
Knifeplay is just ... Yeah.
You're not gonna get all the info you need by fighting or talking to a predator, if you want to suggest helpful things for it, you should probably at least have the profession
Considering I'm working with a predator on how to make suggestions, makes needing the actual profession needless. Also considering I can see every skill they have using AB files, again, why do I have to physically have it when my friend has it.
The stance system is problematic for new players or inexperienced coders, but it's not the problem; players will put up with that if it kills.
The problem is that the profession just can't put down a reasonably tanky target. That's incredibly hard to fix because of how limb damage classes work,though, especially the multi-breakers and feint professions. The gap between "completely toothless" and "guaranteed kill" is so, so, so thin.
"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 won't claim to have more knowledge than players who either A) Put up with it or Make due. What I will claim is a desire to see it become viable or at least a more common profession. Perhaps I can pull the experiences of those players and combine their knowledge with ideas and see if we can't make it work? Even if I have to do it myself I wanna see it happen. I totally understand the fine line you're talking about, a few small tweaks could make them overbearingly strong and in current state its kind of laughable as is. If any are interested, message me here on the forums or find me in game - I really do want to make this happen.
If the class were feasible to fix through classleads, we'd have fixed it already.
The problem is that it's a limb damage class and limb damage classes are very hard to fix, just because of the nature of the class. A limb damage class that can land their breaks reliably and has a viable finisher can very easily end up with an unstoppable kill. This has been monk's biggest problem, historically; it's either been a trivial triple or it's all but impossible.
That aside, if you really want to address predator problems, these are the kinds of things I would look at. I haven't given any serious thought to most of these, I'm just sort of spitballing ideas here.
Reduce the balance on changing stances to roughly 1.5 seconds. Changing stance is giving up a third of your combo and that's enough cost in and of itself without the actual stance change taking 2.9s or whatever crazy length of time it currently is.
Make raze work in any stance. A large part of the reason why toxin-darts are non-viable right now is because razing is so clumsy.
Get a kill method working. I suggest looking into boosting crescentcut in ways that don't stack well with other classes. Tendoncut-esque effect on lowhook breaks or something maybe. Maybe make lateral untargetted and have quarter do a BBT-like effect on torso somehow? Weaken the torso enough and quarter works?
Standing DPS. Their flat out bash-combo DPS is terrible, especially when you factor in the fact that almost all of their attacks are parryable. Maybe increase the PvP damage of swiftkick or something? idk
I don't really see Predator becoming really good, honestly; the truth is that limb damage classes have a very hard time getting through good parrying now and this is going to be a problem for the foreseeable future.
"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."
Add an attack to Knifeplay, Puncture, puncture a lung, linseed's thin smoke fails to create rebounding for 30s. There's no reason for them to have to deal with rebounding.
Puncture would never get in due to team considerations, you'd be better off asking for Knifeplay to straight up ignore rebounding.
"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."
Speaking from experience with a limb-damage class in Lusternia - I know it functions differently, but similarly - what worked in many ways was having limb damage be only part of the formula. For warriors, higher limb damage meant different afflictions. In that regard, it was an attrition class. By forcing some degree of attrition onto a limb damage class, you also provide the ability for proper and intelligent defense - even just shielding spam as you autocure - to provide some mild balance. That, or find a way to hinder the class for a long enough time to catch up on healing. Limb damage should be painful but not deadly by itself.
The problem with that is that it's outside of classlead territory and firmly in the land of the class revamp, at a minimum. If they redo limb damage entirely you're looking at rebuilding monk, ranger, and predator as well as looking at things like Outrider icecoat offense and knight tendoncut. Would be a huge change.
"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 think the spectrum being looked at here is too wide. Not necessarily a revamp(new skills/skillsets), but more just, every skill needs to be looked over and possibly made to work differently. Mainly knifeplay. The way stances work, the way the flow of stances works, and some sort of work around for rebounding/shield and parrying. Right now, yes, parry beats knifeplay very easily. At this point, if they're constantly keeping their parry on their left leg, and you want to set up both legs, you will have to go through using feint at the beginning of every combo. Not only does that already take away one third of the combo for something that doesn't last after the combo, but with the way stances are, sometimes you also have to change stance. Then comes in the whole possibility of rebounding, so look now, they're parrying and they have rebounding up, so all of a sudden you can only hit with one(unless you bladesurge activate).
Beastmastery, I've really just never liked. I didn't think it was necessary to make a skill out of basically what started in Predation. The wolf is badass, but the rest of them are just kinda meh. I've always thought it would be way cooler to have it just be Wolfriding, and have a complete skillset around the wolf. Maybe attacks that the wolf can do if you're riding it, or follow up attacks(I guess similar to what outriders can do with their wyrms).
I dunno, I was just rambling about beastmastery there. I had no intention of ever taking it in the direction of Outrider, but obviously I accidentally did.
Oh well.
End
Edit: I lied. Not the end. I think the mask off balance thing should also be brought back. Other people with artie masks can already do more than we can do with predator masks. Also, predators are the only "stealth" class that is so easily found. The magick and demonic(I know they're exactly the same) ones can phase completely out of the plane, not show up on qw, not show up anywhere.
Predator needs both legs to deal any kind of substantial (using the term loosely) damage. This means, due to the insane balance of feint, that you need to also prep both arms (so you can feint/break/break arm, leg/leg/trip or whatever). This means that you have to prep all four primary limbs, which involves massive contention with parry. Basically more than any other class (monk has options through the use of cripple off a head break or whatever to shut down parry momentarily for their kill sequence).
Crescentcut damage is pretty laughable, even if you throw all the artefacts in the world at it (I tested on beta).
Rebounding screws with the killshot (not the case for any other prone/break class).
If they stand up, that's game. There is no follow through because the offenses non prone damage goes from subpar to "I can probably do more if I switch to weaponry".
The class' long prep time has 0 hinder, and the class has no aff active heal. Shrugging is not useful in that capacity for an am prof. Given having to wait on feint cooldowns (multiple times per kill vs anyone with a remote clue), someone has probably killed you 4-5 times before you get to try once.
Cirisosis:
Unartefacted twinshot is terrible.
The razing is clunky and awkward because of stances.
Cirisosis is unpredictable because you don't know if you've missed your window and need to start over, or if you should keep affing, etc.
Each twinshot costs you darts, which you will run out of very quickly in any kind of protracted fight if actually trying to push this offense as a primary choice.
General:
Beastmastery doesn't mesh well with the rest of the offenses.
Stances are weird (but cool).
Comboing is weird (I'm assuming buggy here, if you raze/lowhook or whatever with a toxin applied, it won't envenom because the first attack is a raze).
Changing stance takes way too long.
Feint balance takes way too long (but the entire feint interaction for this class is just kind of unworkable).
Their damage pressure outside the kill window is nonexistent. Noone will play a class like that anymore who actively fights.
I have to disagree re: mask < phase. Phase is better infiltration/spying, but mask overall is more powerful. You can do things with a mask someone with phase just can't, and those things tend to be significant. I wouldn't mind predator getting some bonus to being able to use them better, but I disagree that phase is a superior option in most cases.
- the interaction between razing (stance change) and needing Vae-Sant for optimal twinshot speed has made it a cumbersome task to manage
- in the initial classlead request, the preference was for overall twinshot speed (particularly artifacted) to be slowed down
- with the removal of Fast, twinshot speed will be made even more sub-optimal (aka terrible)
- I feel that, barring discussions around Cirisosis effectiveness in groups, as a skill in and of itself, twinshot should really:
(a) have the razing requirement removed
(b) have the artifact bonus removed
(c) have the baseline twinshot speed be brought back into viable territory
(d) offer the artifact sheaths as larger containers for darts (this is needed)
The requirements for both crescentcut finishing and quarter is a little absurd; reflecting on how relatively easy Ranger Incendiary and Vivisect were to pull off, Predator finishing is appalling.
That said, I feel like there is significant scope here in planning out the next revamp for a dedicated anti-caster class; I understand Monk is 1/2 classes slated for a revamp, and Predator's Beastmastery (while considered done) is pretty mortifying. More specifically, a dedicated anti-caster class would need the player to have predictive skills to enhance the offense of the class; in and of itself not necessary (looking at kill-windows of 45 seconds), but enhanced with successful prediction (maximally reduced kill-windows to 20-25s).
Some combination of
primary attack | anticipate affliction numbness
primary attack | anticipate damage magickal flash
primary attack | anticipate affliction choked by root
And patterned combinations of
increased metric used for enhance offense, or
passive offensive boosts, acknowledging the need to be successfully predictive in the first instance
partial or complete nullification of predicted effects
Of course, design caveats
(a) it will be designed to work strongly against high-octane magick attacks
(b) it will be designed to work weakly against generic inputs, keeping the class naturally weaker against basic classes like knights
While this is significant in terms of design work, and ongoing balance requirements, the benefits may be worth considering
- a well designed predictive class will provide both users and enemies a constantly shifting meta-game
- this in turn will create an ongoing, perpetual impetus to improving and changing combat tactics
- it will also show up those classes that are heavily reliant on a single avenue of attack - this may lead to an expansion of tactics in deficient classes
- it will strongly type the role-play of the class, being a profession specifically designed to 'negate' magickal-ish type attacks (in the broadest sense of the word)
In summary, a strongly-typed predictive class that is carefully balanced in terms of individual predictions can provide both short and sustained interest in combat for both users and enemies of the class by keeping a fluid meta-game against a select pool of professions that traditionally have had very limited counters. The opportunity to create such a class effectively is presenting itself, and it would be a shame not to capitalize on it.
First, it's horribly unfriendly to new players and bad coders. Second, it puts other classes in a trap situation where they'll end up feeling like they can't use key abilities/afflictions. Third, we have predictive defense already and it's called parry and everybody hates it. Fourth, a specifically anti-caster class is awful because it needs to be viable as a main profession and not just as a side-prof for when Septus wants to trash a Diabolist.
"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."
Comments
Impossible: ---- Flow of stance changes
Laesan ---- Rizet -> Ein-Fasit -> Vae-Sant -. Laesan, Gyanis -> Laesan
Gyanis ---- Rizet -> Ein-Fasit -> Laesan -> Vae-Sant -> Gyanis
What this does is changes the impossible to use stance for Vertical to Gyanis rather than Laesan, as Lateral is also limited by this stance. This will essentially allow a predator to COMBO RIZET VERTICAL LATERAL VERTICAL for minorly increased damage and still end up in Vae-Sant at the end for their normally fast balance recovery.
Rizet Vertical -> Ein-Fasit Lateral -> Laesan Vertical = Vae-Sant end
Not to mention that even if you just used ATTACK, KILL, or KNIFE to be lazy, it would still effectively work regardless - but in this way lets you actually setup a combo to benefit the player for not being as lazy.
I'd still like to keep this suggestion though and also throw out that perhaps let people specify a stance to start in within the combo without forcing them to lose an attack opportunity? Perhaps it could be added upon learning Triplet in Knifeplay as I don't believe the skillset needs another skill added. Beyond helping their hunting potential which other professions seem to match with no issues, this would help their PK ability as well, since they are rather non-existent and have a distinct feeling the limitations of stance flow and choosing a stance hinders options.
I may be of the unfavorable opinion among the playerbase about helping out the profession, but I find it odd that there are no real active Predators that PK, many taking up a different profession entirely for the sake of more fluid and comprehensive styles offered by the other skillsets.
The stance system is problematic for new players or inexperienced coders, but it's not the problem; players will put up with that if it kills.
The problem is that the profession just can't put down a reasonably tanky target. That's incredibly hard to fix because of how limb damage classes work,though, especially the multi-breakers and feint professions. The gap between "completely toothless" and "guaranteed kill" is so, so, so thin.
"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 is that it's a limb damage class and limb damage classes are very hard to fix, just because of the nature of the class. A limb damage class that can land their breaks reliably and has a viable finisher can very easily end up with an unstoppable kill. This has been monk's biggest problem, historically; it's either been a trivial triple or it's all but impossible.
That aside, if you really want to address predator problems, these are the kinds of things I would look at. I haven't given any serious thought to most of these, I'm just sort of spitballing ideas here.
I don't really see Predator becoming really good, honestly; the truth is that limb damage classes have a very hard time getting through good parrying now and this is going to be a problem for the foreseeable future.
"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."
The problem with that is that it's outside of classlead territory and firmly in the land of the class revamp, at a minimum. If they redo limb damage entirely you're looking at rebuilding monk, ranger, and predator as well as looking at things like Outrider icecoat offense and knight tendoncut. Would be a huge change.
"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."
My predator thoughts.
Limb route:
Predator needs both legs to deal any kind of substantial (using the term loosely) damage. This means, due to the insane balance of feint, that you need to also prep both arms (so you can feint/break/break arm, leg/leg/trip or whatever). This means that you have to prep all four primary limbs, which involves massive contention with parry. Basically more than any other class (monk has options through the use of cripple off a head break or whatever to shut down parry momentarily for their kill sequence).
Crescentcut damage is pretty laughable, even if you throw all the artefacts in the world at it (I tested on beta).
Rebounding screws with the killshot (not the case for any other prone/break class).
If they stand up, that's game. There is no follow through because the offenses non prone damage goes from subpar to "I can probably do more if I switch to weaponry".
The class' long prep time has 0 hinder, and the class has no aff active heal. Shrugging is not useful in that capacity for an am prof. Given having to wait on feint cooldowns (multiple times per kill vs anyone with a remote clue), someone has probably killed you 4-5 times before you get to try once.
Cirisosis:
Unartefacted twinshot is terrible.
The razing is clunky and awkward because of stances.
Cirisosis is unpredictable because you don't know if you've missed your window and need to start over, or if you should keep affing, etc.
Each twinshot costs you darts, which you will run out of very quickly in any kind of protracted fight if actually trying to push this offense as a primary choice.
General:
Beastmastery doesn't mesh well with the rest of the offenses.
Stances are weird (but cool).
Comboing is weird (I'm assuming buggy here, if you raze/lowhook or whatever with a toxin applied, it won't envenom because the first attack is a raze).
Changing stance takes way too long.
Feint balance takes way too long (but the entire feint interaction for this class is just kind of unworkable).
Their damage pressure outside the kill window is nonexistent. Noone will play a class like that anymore who actively fights.
I have to disagree re: mask < phase. Phase is better infiltration/spying, but mask overall is more powerful. You can do things with a mask someone with phase just can't, and those things tend to be significant. I wouldn't mind predator getting some bonus to being able to use them better, but I disagree that phase is a superior option in most cases.
That's an awful idea.
First, it's horribly unfriendly to new players and bad coders. Second, it puts other classes in a trap situation where they'll end up feeling like they can't use key abilities/afflictions. Third, we have predictive defense already and it's called parry and everybody hates it. Fourth, a specifically anti-caster class is awful because it needs to be viable as a main profession and not just as a side-prof for when Septus wants to trash a Diabolist.
"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."
Pff. Diabolists are easy.
You just have to not run out of kelp.
Ftfy.