Physical Combat Overhaul (ailments, knights and monks, oh my!)

Estarra

We've been going back and forth for some time on how to approach changing physical afflictions. Obviously, reducing it down to 10 external physical afflictions will impact knights and monks to such a degree that they would be indistinguishable from each other. Therefore, we have decided that we need to have 5 levels of physical afflictions and limit what level can be reached by knight or monk skill (i.e., each knight/monk specialization can only reach level 4-5 in certain categories). We've made google docs of the documents so you can review. Please comment on this thread.

Proposal I would be the most extensive overhaul, removing wounding and replacing it with bruising (blunt damage) and bleeding (cutting damage). Bruising and bleeding would function similarly to wounding. Normal bleeding would be removed, though the effects of bleeding levels per body part would have a similar effect. This proposal also includes how the overhaul would impact skillsets with sample knighthood, bonecrusher, kata and shofangi skillsets.

Proposal II is similar to Proposal I, though the major difference is that wounding would be kept more as it is now (rather than splitting between blunt/cutting wounding), and the affliction effects would be independent to the wounding level. (In Proposal I, the affliction (if any) kicks in when you reach the associated level of bruise/bleed, while in Proposal I, the affliction gets applied independently and can be cured independently of the wound level).

Do you prefer Proposal I or Proposal II? Why? Are there aspects you prefer in both? What would a hybrid of the two proposals look like? Is there another way to approach this? If so, provide details!

Ssaliss

Frankly, one of the main reasons I haven't really delved much into combat is the current wounds system. Having to track different attacks made by a gaggle of different class/skill combos just makes it extremely unwieldy, not to mention that the amount of wounds given by an attack differs a lot based on who deals them (I've had legs go from undamaged to critical in one swing in one instance). Because of that, I'd far prefer proposal I, since it'd change it into five discreet levels instead of having a much wider range of wound-values, making it far easier to anticipate how much wounding is given by any specific attack.

The one thing I didn't like about proposal I is that it'd make bodypart damage cumulative. It would create a rather odd effect in that if you're a physical class, you'd only face a maximum of 20% balance time extension if using one-handed weapons, and (I'd assume) 40% balance time extension if using a two-handed weapon. If you're an EQ-using class, however, the ceiling would suddenly become 140% (assuming all limbs critical; yes, this would probably mean you're dead already, but still). Instead, I'd suggest putting the EQ time on head wounds instead, and keeping arm wounds on balance (and halving the balance penalty if you're using two-handed weapons, so you'd still end up at a 20% max). More general balance consumers could perhaps use an average of all arms and legs, but that might just complicate things.

Ayisdra

So if I'm understanding this, Proposal I doesn't have any affs at all, it just has Bruising and Bleeding levels and Proposal II has affs but they are leveled (ie shattered, broken, etc are all the same 'aff' just different levels)?


With this understanding, I think I would like Proposal I one more because it appears to be easier from my non-combatant viewpoint to only have to deal with two groups and have the cure remove one level from each group (Bruising/bleeding) rather than have to worry about the two leveling affs plus wounding (and its curing)

Raeri

Preference for concept in Proposal 1 - less reliance on RNG, and more accessible for the midbie combatant who doesn't have a ton of cash lying around to drop into wounding runes. Easier to tweak and balance around imo.

EDIT: Also, what's the plan for physical afflictions which are not in the table as warrior/monk specific, but have not been converted as part of the other categories? (i.e. poisons - I can't recall the exact ones, but I have a feeling there are a few that haven't converted across yet x.x)

Ieptix

Raeri said:

EDIT: Also, what's the plan for physical afflictions which are not in the table as warrior/monk specific, but have not been converted as part of the other categories? (i.e. poisons - I can't recall the exact ones, but I have a feeling there are a few that haven't converted across yet x.x)

Any afflictions left afterwards will be handled appropriately; however, note that these proposals don't provide warrior/monk specific afflictions, but will replace all limb/bodypart-based afflictions for all classes. In proposal I, non-knighthood physical afflicting would raise the wound level by some amount to a fixed maximum. In the case of proposal II, wounds are made essentially knight-only, with the afflictions being general (and able to be applied independently of wound levels).

Regarding wound levels and variation in attack strength and such, we'd look into making attacks overall more consistent if we go with proposal II.

Lerad

Just some preliminary thoughts as I mull through things.

For maintaining status quo, proposal 2 is probably the best idea. The biggest change in proposal 1 is actually the roll-together of bleeding into a wounding-like mechanic. This will have a huge effect on non-knight/monk classes. Mostly glomdoring classes, of course. Proposal 2 will see almost every knight/monk class rebalanced, but proposal 1 will need to add in the bleeding reliant classes, and any class with bleeding mechanics into the rebalancing process.

In proposal 1, warriors and monks in general become harder to differentiate. Not necessarily a bad thing, of course. But basically, every physical class gets access to all levels of bleed/bruise, and while there is space to differentiate classes based on how fast they can get which bodyparts to which levels.. we have 10 physical classes. Related to this, if non physical classes can give bleeding, they can stack bleed levels to overwhelming numbers very quickly. And another huge problem will be its rolling of afflictions into aff-like effects within the wounding system, basically deleting all the physical afflictions... and while there's no problem with this looking at warriors and monks and their physical attacks alone, there is a huge problem on what to do with poisons. It'll probably be better to keep affs and the wound system separate.

Thirdly, I dislike balance/equilibrium modifiers. They create a fluctuating number that confounds balancing efforts, and makes outliers possible. Anyone in combat knows that differences of 1s or 2s can make a huge difference, and either allowing speeding up or slowing down of abilities by that much will open the way to really egregious cases of shut-down or outlier OPness. Please don't have balance slow-down as any kind of cumulative effect on wounds of any sort or bruising or bleeding levels of any sort.

----------

Personally, I'm leaning towards proposal 2 myself, because it has little to no effect on non-physical classes. Most specifically, bleeding remains separate and the same as it is now. It certainly is more difficult to understand, and there's one thing from proposal 2 that I think is very relevant to this discussion. And that is wound level thresholds. I agree with Ssaliss in that numeric wounding levels make things very difficult for newcomers. I also agree that it'll be easier to balance if attacks just straight out increased levels by one and curing just straight out decreased them by one.

Another thing I'm taking away from looking at the two proposals is that: both actually have the same amount of afflictions. Proposal 1 has "affliction" like effects on levels 3, 4 5 for each body part and for blunt/cutting as well. That's 6 "afflictions" per bodypart. Which is the same for proposal 2. In that respect, both are pretty much the same.

Given all of the above, here's a preliminary suggestion I'd like to make: a hybrid of proposal 1 and 2 seems the best option to me, with the following important points:

• Keep bleeding mechanics as they are, do not roll them into a wound-like mechanic for warriors. Do not put balance modifiers as effects for wounding.
• Use proposal TWO's separation of wounds and afflictions - do not roll them together.

Using these, here's my suggested table of afflictions:
(These are just afflictions I plopped in based off proposal two's list)
(Formatting on the blunt table screwed up, and I can't be bothered trying to fix it. But you get the idea with the cutting table below)

Cutting Afflictions

	Head	Chest	Gut	Leg	Arm
Negligible
Light	Afflicts with sliced tongue	Afflicts with punctured chest	Afflicts with opened gut	Afflicts with sliced thigh	Afflicts with sliced bicep
Moderate
Heavy	Afflicts with slit-throat	Afflicts with open chest	Afflicts with severed spine	Afflicts with broken leg	Afflicts with broken arm
Critical	Afflicts with severed nose	Afflicts with collapsed lungs	Afflicts with disembowel	Afflicts with amputated leg	Afflicts with amputated arm

On top of that, I also suggest that curing wise:

• Use proposal ONE's wound-curing system: Each warrior hit gives 1 level to either blunt wound or cutting wound, and each ice apply removes 1 level from both. (Power attacks and special attacks to give additional levels of burst wounds etc)
  
• Each ice apply also cures an affliction if possible (see below):
  
• Use a hybrid of proposal TWO and ONE's affliction-curing system: an affliction is only cured WHEN the wound level is below the level it is given.
  

So if you have level 2 cutting wounds (light) on your head, you will have sliced tongue (applied when the warrior hit your head and reached level 2). You apply ice to head. The game checks your highest level head affliction with your current wound level. If the wound level is lower than what is needed to give the affliction (in this case, it has to be level 1, negligible) then the affliction is cured. If not, no affliction is cured. Wound levels drop 1 level after that check.

My suggestion has the following motivations (I'm a monk after all):

• Monks can be made to give no wounding, and only afflictions, allowing ANY of their afflictions to be cured immediately in exchange for not having wounding requirements, and for hitting more bodyparts (giving more afflictions).
• OR monks can be tied to the same wounding-afflicting system, up to the admin to choose which is better. Note that this means tahtetso will be locked out of ALL cutting afflictions, though.
  

In conclusion, by removing the numerical system for wounds, and changing it to levels, we can drastically lower the confusion of learning wounds. By keeping bleeding separate, we do not need to touch non-physical classes, and by keeping afflictions separate, we also prevent poisons giving physical afflictions from being entirely deleted. We also allow monk differentiation (or not, depending on admin decision). Simplification + keeping the status quo as much as we can.

A couple of loose ends remain, since some monk affs currently DO have wound requirements we might want to keep and monk damage also scales with wounds, which will neccesitate looking at monk damage. Furthermore, the choice of afflictions in the above table will need to be combed through carefully to enable warrior strategies while weeding out non-useful afflictions. Warrior stacking comes back in force with this system as well, since it removes diminishing returns on wounds, so we will need to look at that as well.

Lerad

Also, because this is relevant as well:

Changing apply health to cure wounds to apply ice to cure wounds AND afflictions at the same time has a couple of implications to think about:

First of all, warriors lose their implicit attrition pressure. In the old system this happened:

As wounds build, health potions are diverted to curing. Health dips, and because health is so important, wounds are forced to be put on lower priority, diverting health potions back to healing. As wounds build even higher, the priority changes again, forcing potions to cure wounds, and as that happens, health dips again etc. Rinse repeat until both health and wound pressure are at such high levels curing simply cannot keep up.

Now, this is no longer possible if health potions are not used to cure wounds. There is no longer a decision to be made regarding health potions and wounds - just apply ice appropriately everytime, and sip health whenever possible.

At the same time, however, if we go with proposal 1's wound level building (1 level per hit, 5 levels per bodypart) then we have shortened the amount of hits a warrior needs to reach high levels as compared to pre-overhaul. They no longer need to apply health pressure in order to reach higher wound levels, is the take away. (Theoretically, anyway) If this is the design we're going to go with, then the abilities of knighthood skillsets will need to be tweaked to make such a theory possible: knights need to be able to reach higher wound levels without the need to pressure health. The balance time for knighthood abilities and applying ice become very delicate - all the more reason to NOT have any kind of balance lengthening or shortening effects.

Note that this also nerfs bleeding as an effect for knights - in the past, they could use it to supplement their wound building a LOT, since bleeding pressures health AND mana, and thus makes it even harder to choose whether to drink health or apply health for wounds. BM is the bleed-aff class for knighthood, iirc, so tweaking BM abilities will need to be looked into as well, if we're going with the ice applies cure wounds route.

Qistrel

I haven't read most of this thread yet, and I'm not a very good fighter yet....but I totally want proposal one so I can beat my enemies black and blue with my chain.

Rivius

I’ll preface this post by stating my thoughts on current warrior mechanics and balance. As of now, I think certain warrior specializations are in a great state of balance. In fact, of all the archetypes in the game, I feel warriors are very close to being the most balanced at the moment. The only thing that hinders them is the existence of outliers both from an offensive and defensive point of view. This is mostly due to the great variation in armour statistics on the defensive end, as well as variation in weapon statistics (due in large part to expensive artefact runes) and racial statistics and bonuses on the offensive end. If there were greater equalization across the game on these factors, warriors could easily be the most balanced class in the game.

One thing I will state as far as my biases is, that I do not feel simpler is better. Right now, warrior combat is quite nuanced and a good fight allows for the exploration of varying strategies depending on your opponent’s class and curing/defensive strategies. There exists a large skill gap between novice warriors and practiced warriors, and this is owed to the current level of complexity within the system. I believe this is a good thing for the health of combat in the game, and is rewarding to long-term, practiced players. It creates a constant incentive to improve oneself, adding to the longevity of combat enjoyment.

Looking over the proposals, I have a few questions in regards to proposal I. Would we still have wounds-based instakills? Can you explain the roadmap of how a warrior achieves a kill in this system? I’m having difficulty grasping at the general game plan for this proposed system. In addition, I’m worried about the proposed changes to bleeding and the extra layer of curing complexity that it adds. It makes it more work for us to balance across the classes that use bleeding, and I’m afraid of it ever getting too overwhelming too fast.

I’ll state that for warriors, bleeding is fairly ineffective at the moment and virtually never reaches high enough to pressure vitals. Perhaps if we do keep the current system, the doled out values to bleeding can be revisited on a case-by-case basis.

The mechanic where bruising increases balance and equilibrium times is not attractive to me. We had recently called for the improvement of a similar mechanic from numbs given by ninjakari. I’d rather we did not recreate such an unpopular mechanic.

 

Right now, my leanings are towards proposal II since they are closest to what we have now, and as I’ve already stated, I think our current system is very good. I like certain elements of it, but personally prefer to stick as close to what we have now as possible.

 

Curing wounds with healing vs Ice

At this moment, I’m not convinced we should make ice the cure for wounds instead of healing. I believe that the current status where one must choose between healing health, mana, ego or wounds is a good mechanic and should be preserved.

 In making ice the cure for both afflictions and wounds, we’ll be making it such that more body parts may be wounded at a time than we have now, which would make wound building much, much faster. If wound-based instakills are to remain, they would be much easier to achieve in my eyes. Perhaps under the new system, wound thresholds and afflictions could be newly adjusted to account for this, but we’d need to spend a lot of time re-balancing each specialization.

 

Decreased Affliction Pool

One of the proposals of the overhaul has been to consolidate afflictions that do similar things and remove afflictions that were seen as ‘filler’ and useless. Given that we have virtually one curing balance to handle most warrior afflictions, removing a number of afflictions will not slow down our ability to outpace curing, but may actually tip it in the other direction. With that in mind, all warrior afflictions in this new system will be assumed to be of some value to the dealer. This creates a problem in a system with much reduced RNG.

The only problem with RNG in the current system is that some of the lower-level afflictions are fairly worthless to the warrior and it could become frustrating under some circumstances to have high wounds and repeatedly roll worthless afflictions. In this new system, if all afflictions retain some value, it is best to keep the RNG very similar to how it is right now.

 

Taking pureblade as an example, this is how I’d design the wound levels:

Jab Afflictions:

Part	Light	Medium	Heavy	Critical
Head	BleedingAff	BleedingAff	BleedingAff	BleedingAff
Chest	BleedingAff	BleedingAff	CollapseLung
Gut	BleedingAff	OpenGut		Disembowel
Arm	BleedingAff	BleedingAff	CollapseNerve
Leg	BleedingAff		LegTendon

Swing Afflictions:

Part	Light	Medium	Heavy	Critical
Head	BleedingAff	BleedingAff	SlitThroat	Behead
Chest	BleedingAff	OpenChest
Gut	BleedingAff	OpenGut		Disembowel
Arm	BleedingAff	BleedingAff	Collapsenerve	AmputateArm
Leg	BleedingAff		LegTendon	AmputateLeg

 

As you can see, the tables are very similar to what we have now, but the less used affs have been replaced with bleeding, which is alright. Each warrior spec retains what currently makes it unique in terms of how it deals afflictions. This keeps things in line with the current system we have now, but affs have been removed which were considered largely irrelevant to begin with. As far as my proposal of blunt and cutting affs to keep, here is a rough draft:

 

Cutting:

Head:  BleedingAff, SlitThroat, Behead (Not an aff)

Chest: BleedingAff, OpenChest (May be replaced by BleedingAff), CollapseLung

Gut: BleedingAff, OpenGut (unique to BleedingAff in that it causes sprawling), Disembowel

Arm: BleedingAff, CollapseNerve, AmputateArm

Leg: BleedingAff, LegTendon, AmputatedLeg

 

Blunt:

Head: Concussion, CrushWindpipe, Brainbash (Not an aff)

Chest: CrushedChest

Gut: SeveredSpine, BurstOrgans

Arms: BrokenArm, MangledArm**

Leg: BrokenLeg, MangledLeg**

 

*BleedingAff in this proposal replaces affictions like leg/arm arteries and lacerations, slicedforehead
etc. Essentially it can be considered an aff on its own that adds periodic bleeding as long as it remains uncured. Perhaps depending on which spec gave it
or how wounded a part is, the bleeding may increased. So for instance, on diagnose it can look like “bleeding from a laceration on your (head|chest|gut|arm|leg).”

Similarly for blunt-type specs you could have BruiseAff which replaces affs such as BrokenNose and BrokenJaw, which serves only to increase bleeding while present. For instance "bleeding from a bruise on your (head|chest|gut|arm|leg)."

 

**As there are no regeneration afflictions in this system, mangled limbs would essentially only matter in that they instantly sprawl and when cured will always cure into broken limbs. In this way, their status as an aff that has longer-lasting effects is maintained.

 

I know this currently would go above the slated 10 affs per cure, but I think it’s highly worth it to make this exception. Reducing affs in this way would not make warriors any less unique than they already are.

 

In summary:

Reducing the affliction pool to keep only powerful afflictions, thus also keeping the RNG to maintain balance. Dealing out afflictions would work in the exact same way based on wounds as it does now. Wound levels will be adjusted, and many factors regarding how they are sustained and dealt should be standardized.

Healing will be kept as the cure for wounds. Ice will be the sole cure for all physical afflictions and will always cure the highest level affliction on that limb.

These are just my two cents as someone’s who has played nothing but warrior for the past few years and holds it very dear to my heart.

Lerad

Rivius said:

I’ll state that for warriors, bleeding is fairly ineffective at the moment and virtually never reaches high enough to pressure vitals. Perhaps if we do keep the current system, the doled out values to bleeding can be revisited on a case-by-case basis.

This is a fairly interesting comment for me. I've always thought that bleed was more effective for warriors than for monks, since monks do not rely on wounds for their afflictions. In fact, when I looked through all the warrior specs, I've always seen BM as the most similar to the nekotai's style, stacking on the bleeding by giving minor bleeding affs that are available at low wounds to pry open wound curing so the weaker onehanded jabs/swings of BMs can hit the higher wound levels for tendons and pins.

Rivius said:

The mechanic where bruising increases balance and equilibrium times is not attractive to me. We had recently called for the improvement of a similar mechanic from numbs given by ninjakari. I’d rather we did not recreate such an unpopular mechanic.

Just quoting this to add emphasis. No bal/eq lengthening in the new system, please.

Rivius said:

Curing wounds with healing vs Ice

At this moment, I’m not convinced we should make ice the cure for wounds instead of healing. I believe that the current status where one must choose between healing health, mana, ego or wounds is a good mechanic and should be preserved.

 In making ice the cure for both afflictions and wounds, we’ll be making it such that more body parts may be wounded at a time than we have now, which would make wound building much, much faster. If wound-based instakills are to remain, they would be much easier to achieve in my eyes. Perhaps under the new system, wound thresholds and afflictions could be newly adjusted to account for this, but we’d need to spend a lot of time re-balancing each specialization.

This is a comment I'm confused about. How will making ice the cure increase the amount of body parts that can be wounded at a time?

Rivius said:

Decreased Affliction Pool...

Cutting:

Head:  BleedingAff, SlitThroat, Behead (Not an aff)

Chest: BleedingAff, OpenChest (May be replaced by BleedingAff), CollapseLung

Gut: BleedingAff, OpenGut (unique to BleedingAff in that it causes sprawling), Disembowel

Arm: BleedingAff, CollapseNerve, AmputateArm

Leg: BleedingAff, LegTendon, AmputatedLeg

 

Blunt:

Head: Concussion, CrushWindpipe, Brainbash (Not an aff)

Chest: CrushedChest

Gut: SeveredSpine, BurstOrgans

Arms: BrokenArm, MangledArm**

Leg: BrokenLeg, MangledLeg**

 

*BleedingAff in this proposal replaces affictions like leg/arm arteries and lacerations, slicedforehead
etc. Essentially it can be considered an aff on its own that adds periodic bleeding as long as it remains uncured. Perhaps depending on which spec gave it
or how wounded a part is, the bleeding may increased. So for instance, on diagnose it can look like “bleeding from a laceration on your (head|chest|gut|arm|leg).”

 

**As there are no regeneration afflictions in this system, mangled limbs would essentially only matter in that they instantly sprawl and when cured will always cure into broken limbs. In this way, their status as an aff that has longer-lasting effects is maintained.

 

I know this currently would go above the slated 10 affs per cure, but I think it’s highly worth it to make this exception. Reducing affs in this way would not make warriors any less unique than they already are.

Some of these afflictions I don't think is a good idea to keep. Some are just a matter or rolling them together and/or renaming them (like mangled and amputated, for example, which can be rolled together since they do the same thing, and make both the blunt and cutting critical give that aff) but there are things like collapsedlungs (and its endurance hitting effect) which is unfun and (hopefully, they will remove endurance, and therefore make it) unnecessary, or collapsednerves, which was only really good for hindering because it was a regen-cured affliction. Such afflictions are only really needed because in our current wounds system, a warrior needs a way to be able to give a salve-cured asthma, or a salve-cured balance throw so they can stack them after they climbed a mountain with their hands tied behind their back, finally hitting the required wound levels... that are RNG dependent anyway.

In this regard, I am in favour of drastically cutting down this list even more, and I also think that it would be better to remove the chore that is warrior wounds building and change it into a levels-based system with less hits required to hit important thresholds. I do agree that it simplifies the system a lot, and risks removing the layer of complexity that might have made warrior combat fun. And since I'm not a warrior, I'm also not in a position to say things will be more or less fun with or without the old system of wound building. As it is, though, there are people who are turned off by the complexity of the system, and I think it might be a better idea to make it inclusive for all, and to add strategy and complexity within that limit, than to prioritize complexity over the inclusion of prospective players.

If we must insist on a numeric wound based system, proposal two's system for wound building is actually very similar to the current wound building, and we might want to consider going with proposal two entirely, instead, then. Cutting down on the afflictions to six per bodypart (three for cutting and three for blunt), though, is a fairly good idea, in my opinion. I really don't see why we need so many physical afflictions.

Rivius said:

Healing will be kept as the cure for wounds. Ice will be the sole cure for all physical afflictions and will always cure the highest level affliction on that limb.

I think this might work as well, keeping the healing potion's current heal-health-or-cure-wounds choice is not a bad idea.

Rivius

In regards to the ice comment, I figured that since we would need to make choices between curing afflictions and curing wounds on difference body parts, there's more opportunity to distract ice curing and build wounds easily. Maybe I'm wrong about that though. It depends on a lot of things that I'm guessing we'd need to see in action.

As far as collapsedlung goes, I figured maybe keeping it for its effect on smoking and periodic blackout could be beneficial, though not necessary. Collapsenerve could be useful still because it still would hinder arms and potentially give periodic epilepsy, but because ice would be the sole cure for all physical affs, you can potentially keep it on your opponent for a longer time depending on how you distribute your attacks. I admit the translation of regen affs into this new system might be a little awkward, but given that all affs are under one cure now, we might be able to adjust their effects according to the rate at which they're typically given and cured.

Bleeding for warriors isn't very good, no. Lacerates, arteries and all similar bleeding affs are cured too quickly under the current system to have much of an effect. You're right that impales and rending provide much better bleeding, but with good parry and stance, you can put a stop to it before it gets too bad.

I'd say all monk guilds certainly do a better job at raising dangerously high levels of bleeding, much faster than a warrior ever can. The only exceptional bleeding I can think of from a warrior is crushaorta. Not that this is too bad of a thing, anyway, since most warriors have done alright under this system with what bleeding they have. But if we ever wanted to make bleeding more significant, we could make it scale with wounds or be a little higher in certain situations.

Maligorn

At first glance, like literally a glance and not looking at anything besides the abstracts of both proposals,

I don't see why we can't have regular bleeding stay and have warrior bleeding too.

Enyalida

In general, the overhaul is not friendly towards pushing defenders to make curing choices, so that may not be the best tack to take. 

I support simplifying the existing system and removing outliers, as @Rivius mentioned. Without the ability to simply overwhelm your target with brute force, because you've hit all the (expensive) min/maxing buttons or have stumbled into a perfect scenario, warriors have the most interesting and tactical combat in Lusternia. The need to prioritize curing and react to how the enemy has prioritized their curing (which is lacking in most other areas of the overhaul) means that a (non-outlier) warrior is less of an exercize in button mashing or rigging timers than other classes. 

Changes to dmp and armor will help enormously, as will reworking the warrior artifacts to be less onerous to purchase and less outlier-causing. I also think that removing some of the layers of rng associated with warriors will help prevent kills due to pure luck (which DO happen) and the opposite, a well prepped and outmaneuvered enemy getting away because of luck with the rng. 

Estarra

FYI, if we keep warriors as-is and go forward with the ailment overhaul for physical afflictions, we would be looking at something similar to below.

New Ailment	Effect	Replaces
Blunt Trauma, Arms	Broken Arm	Amputated Arm, Cracked Elbow, Twisted Arm, Dislocated Arm, Broken Wrist, Fractured Arm, Mangled Arm, Pinched Nerve, Numbness, Collapsed Arm Nerve
Blunt Trauma, Legs	Broken Leg	Amputated Leg, Cracked Kneecap, Twisted Leg, Dislocated Leg, Crushedfoot, Shatteredankle, Mangled Leg, Pinched Nerve, Numbness, Collapsed Leg Nerve
Blunt Trauma, Head	Concussion	Shattered Jaw, Broken Jaw, Broken Nose, Broken Skull, Pinched Nerve, Numbness, Scrambled Brain
Blunt Trauma, Torso	Crushed Chest	Severphrenic, Crushed Chest, Broken Chest, Snapped Rib, Pinched Nerve, Numbness, Short Breath, Chest Pain
Blunt Trauma, Gut	Ruptured Stomach	Pinched Nerve, Numbness
Open Wound, Arms	Severed Artery, Arms	Sliced Bicep, Pierced Arm, Severed Artery, Lacerated Arm, Clotted Arm
Open Wound, Legs	Severed Artery, Legs	Sliced Thigh, Pierced Leg, Cut Tendon, Severed Artery, Lacerated Leg, Clotted Leg
Open Wound, Head	Slit Throat	Sliced Tongue, Bleeding Forehead, Scalped, Crushed Windpipe, Gashed Cheek, Furrowed Brow, Eye Pecked
Open Wound, Torso	Opened Chest	Punctured Lung, Punctured Chest, Missing Ear , Collapsed Lung, Sever Spine
Open Wound, Gut	Open Gut	Disembowel, Burst Organs

Lerad

Hrm, one aff per bodypart per type of attack does cut down the afflictions a lot, but I dunno, will cutting it down that much make things difficult? I'd prefer proposal one or two's 3 per bodypart per type of attack... but maybe that's just me.

Rivius

At the very least I think there's some value to keeping a blunt affliction similar to slit throat, and a leg affliction in each type that prevents standing...I'd rather legtendon and severnerve to severartery on the legs and arms respectively.

There's some weirdness in the way you're proposing to convert some of them too. For example, will a pureblade's amputateleg now count as blunt trauma? Everything points to cutting.

Tarkenton

I'm assuming those effects are somewhat different to what they are currently?  'Cause...wow.   very underwhelming affs list for that table.

Estarra

If we decide to keep the same knight/monk mechanics (because attrition, cure choices, etc.), then we would basically cut the knight specialization skills in half (at least). Monks would be impacted too but not as much as knights. We would need to work on how to make it feasible and there's no question that some knight specs will be very similar to each other, but it's something we can do.

However, the overarching question is comes down to what our goal is. While people may like the current mechanics, it undoubtedly is more complicated and harder to get into for the average newbie. Do we want to try to open physical classes to be more accessible or keep the status quo?

Estarra

BTW, if we go with bruising for blunt damage, it's not written in stone that it'd be a equil/balance malus. It could certainly be something else (like damage on movement or aggressive actions). Feel free to offer alternatives.

Also, it is especially not written in stone for either proposal on what the effects are for the different levels (broken legs, amputation, etc.). Feel free to offer suggestions.

Finally, note the proposals are also aiming at removing RNG.

Ssaliss

If it's a question of making it easier to get into versus keeping it (to me, needlessly) complex, the answer is pretty simple. Proposal one would keep the wound-levels without keeping the underlying numerical values which makes them hard to keep track of. I don't care much if the wound levels are cured by healing potions or ice, but I'd definitely be up for simplifying it, for three reasons:

• It makes combat easier to get into. You don't need to try to keep track of how much wounds are inflicted and how much wounds is cured; it's all in five discreet levels.
• It makes it easier to balance. No wounding runes, no weapon stats affecting wounding, no stats affecting wounding (if they currently do? I'm unsure). All knights would be able to build wounds at roughly the same speeds, adjusted by racial and weapon speeds, and it'd be easy to adjust healing/ice balance to keep it in line.
• Runes will no longer be a must-have for knights, since wounding runes would go the way of the dodo and the stat runes would only affect speed when it comes to wounds. Yes, they will still affect the damage that the weapons deal, so they'll have some use, but not to the same extent that they do now. Frankly, I'd rather see weapon runes reworked completely with this to be more in line with the magic damage rune (if that one's even staying?), in that it'd apply a damage buff to blunt/cutting, depending on the weapon they're attached to. Or simply make them their own artifacts that don't need to be attached at all.
  

Rivius

I might be biased in saying this, but I don't think making it simpler is a good idea. Right now, it's not overly complicated. It certainly has a learning curve, but that's a good thing. It has depth, and depth is good. I wouldn't want to see it ruined by making it overly simple. That's just my own opinion though.

Enyalida

Removing layers of rng and flattening out some of the outliers would make for a good amount of simplification. 

Lerad

The huge amount of afflictions will still remain, and continue to be daunting to newbies though. That was the motivation for cutting down all the caster afflictions, was my impression: reduce afflictions and therefore the staggering amount of work needed to learn the ins-and-outs of combat.

Removing layers of RNG is good because it helps make combat actually fun, and not frustrating, in certain situations for the knights. Not exactly the top priority of the overhaul, but a worthwhile one to pursue if it is at all possible. I don't see any reason not to jump at this chance to do so.

Changing all physical afflictions to "effects" tied to wound levels will make it harder to differentiate between knight and monk classes, which is definitely a valid concern, though. I think there definitely is merit in keeping them separate.

Ssaliss

To clarify, my support for proposal I was simply because of how wounds are done. If afflictions based on wounds are done in some other way doesn't make that much of a difference; it'd still be easy to see which afflictions are given and so on, and that transparency is what's important (at least to me).

Camberre

So, if we remove wounds as they are (Proposal I) how are strength and dexterity going to play into things at that point? I know Str would obviously dictate damage from any physical source, but Dex is a dictator in wounding for monks and likelihood of afflicting for knights. I've not been following The Overhaul as closely as most, so I'm not sure how It will change races by the end of things anywho.

Edit: This also brings into question weapon stats.

Lerad

Dexterity actually doesn't affect monk wounding that much, at least, not from my own testing. I've never noticed a noticeable difference between PKing as a high dex race, and otherwise. I could be wrong, of course, since I'm going by anecdotal experience. As far as I know, though, dexterity only affects monk PVE bashing damage, but nothing much else. Which is why strength is the better stat to prioritize for monks, and which is why dwarf is a great race for monking. it just gets outclassed by aslaran because speed > everything else. (Please remove bal/eq modifiers from races during the racial part of the overhaul)

Removing the RNG layers will probably mean removing dexterity effect on warrior PVP affliction landing. I have no complaints about making dexterity only relevant for monk bashing.

Edit: A rework of weapon stats, and weapon runes, will probably be an awesome idea. Maybe finally we can have pureblades who don't carry around Katanas.

Cyndarin

I'm not a fan of replacing bleeding to be warrior specific a la proposal 1. It affects far too many other guilds to do so. Every mage that uses TK, the entirety of Glomdoring, some druid skills, and half a dozen other random skills here and there are suddenly going to need to be reworked just to accomodate a new mechanic for warriors. I think it's one thing to eliminate excess that impacts 1 or 2 guilds (i.e. ectoplasm) but to eliminate or change a mechanic like bleeding that is so pervasive in Lusternian PK, and crucial to a lot of guilds functionality, is too big of a change. 

My solution is this: 

I'm more of a fan of working within the existing system and eliminating some of the RNG/counters as well as the extraneous afflictions like arteries, numbed limbs, dislocations etc etc etc (the list Estarra posted). As it stands, the complexity of warriors comes more from coding around shield/rebounding/stance/parry then having a couple layers of RNG between wounding variation, random miss rates, probability of hitting the correct body part with swings, and affliction probability. 

Keep parry (and make parry 100% effective) and rebounding, eliminate stance and the wounding/affliction RNG, and random miss rate. 

Eliminate weapon stats or make them flat across the board. Give perks for the type of weapon to differentiate between them. Rapiers reduce shrugging a la that tracking skill. Scimitars give a flat 10% wounding increase. Broadswords give...I don't know...10% chance for a .5 second stun on hit. Things like that. This will make weapon speeds the same across the board, which is easier to balance, and players can choose what weapons they want based on style and what perk fits their playstyle. 

Rework dex to play a role in wound reduction. Higher dex decreases wounds inflicted by x amount per point. Alternatively, more dex on the warrior/monk means more wounds per y point of dex. I would like to see wounding become a visible formula and weapon stats removed from the equation. Wounds could be DEX + % increase from wounding rune/weapon aura - opponent DEX. This would also align warrior artifacts with caster artifacts. 15% magic damage rune would be comparable to 15% wounding rune. 

I also have a pipe dream to make it so wounds are more escapable rather than fight for 3 minutes then run for 3 minutes while you cure accrued wounds, though whether or not this falls within the boundaries of the overhaul is debateable. 

Monks are far less complex and random, and as a result are far less impacted by any changes. They'll have to be nerfed, I think, and hard, but when has that not been true. 

Malayn

I need to read the whole thing but anytime this comes up, please reconsider immediately:

Negligible bruising: extends equil/balance recovery by 2%

Light bruising: extends equil/balance recovery by 5%

Moderate bruising: extends equil/balance recovery by 10%

Heavy bruising: extends equil/balance recovery by 15%

Critical bruising: extends equil/balance recovery by 20%

Creating higher eq/bal times as a side effect of something is very bad. The afflictions that do these are considerably weaker/reduced and can't be compounded on. Once you hit heavy I should assume I wont be able to get back down, and depending on coding, if you get me to heavy in 3 places do I now have 45% slower eq/bal?

Never strip or hinder the ability of a person to fight back or it stops being a fight and more of a gank.

Will read the whole things later

EDIT: Oh boy, this is a crazy lot of work. Everything has redeeming qualities but there are things to resolve as well in portions. I won't be able to write up a lot till next week or the weekend or so, lots to do this one.

Tau

Celina said:

Eliminate weapon stats or make them flat across the board. Give perks for the type of weapon to differentiate between them. Rapiers reduce shrugging a la that tracking skill. Scimitars give a flat 10% wounding increase. Broadswords give...I don't know...10% chance for a .5 second stun on hit. Things like that. This will make weapon speeds the same across the board, which is easier to balance, and players can choose what weapons they want based on style and what perk fits their playstyle. 

I feel like this is sort of irrelevant to the discussion at the moment, but @Celina, just curious where monk weapons fall into this? We have stats too - and speed is the only one that matters, but we don't have a choice between scimitars and broadswords. I get nekai and thats it. What would be the thought there?

Cyndarin

Well because monks of the same guild all use the same weapons, I don't think there's a point in trying to differentiate them from each other with weapon perks. 

Tau

Estarra said:

However, the overarching question is comes down to what our goal is. While people may like the current mechanics, it undoubtedly is more complicated and harder to get into for the average newbie. Do we want to try to open physical classes to be more accessible or keep the status quo?

I think this is probably the most important question to answer. What IS the goal? (EDIT: Should have re-read @Estarra's initial post more carefully)
We also need to not get lost in individual skills - We can work that stuff out through the Overhaul avatars and Envoys if there's some outlier in a skillset or two, or all of them. I think its more important, for the Overhaul, to have a vision of how it works and bring the skills in line, rather than trying to make sure the Overhaul solution fits whats already there. Unless the goal really is to keep the status quo 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯