Warrior stuff

Melville

Hi!

Most of you prolly don't know me. I was pretty active a number of years back. Just thought I'd do a little writeup on what I knew back then. Some of it might be a outdated as I don't know how much has changed since then and lack the staying power to get my bearings. I think the basics remain the same though. Also not sure how many people would be interested in reading this but this is for those that do. What this topic will cover is how to build wounds. What it doesn't is how to run/stop others from running/chasing.

A lot of the information below is fairly simple. You may or may not agree with the line of reasoning I took when learning. Feel free to disagree.

1 versus 1 Wound development

Going to use unruned weapons as an example here because that's what I worked with most of the time except for a brief stint. Warriors 2-3 years ago generally went for wounding 2 different ways. A speedy-ish wounder to hit faster than the cure balances or a precision focused weapon to wound more than a single application of health can handle. Health applications are on a 4 second balance. Speedy weapons will have to be stabbing the enemy on a balance lower than that to be of any use.

We'll make a few assumptions here for simplicity's sake.

1) Each application of health completely cures the wounds of a single strike/swing that connects.

2) You attack the instant you regain balance and they apply healing the instant they regain cure balance.

3) There's only strikes/swings and cure balance. For now, ignore afflictions, attacks from the opponent, rebounding, power attacks, raze/cleaves, etc.

I won't suggest any numbers for precision now as formulas have prolly changed since but if memory serves, the average speed wounder would hit for roughly 3 seconds of balance. Great, everything works out so far! You're hitting faster than cure balance. After 16 seconds of combat, you should be 1 hit ahead of your target in wounding.

Now, rebounding goes in.  Rebounding takes 8 seconds to go up after smoking faeleaf. Two handers get cleaves which combine razing rebounding and the strike to deliver wounds at the same time at the cost of increased balance speed. One handers have to raze rebounding before striking to apply wounds. We shall assume that razing + attacking and cleaving take 4 seconds (again, simplified). You're still ahead in wounds in a drawn out fight but it'll take a while longer as they'll add a second to your balance recovery every 8 seconds.

Now, power attacks. Two handers get 40% more wounds on their power attacks. One handers get 60% more wounds. These attacks ignore rebounding. 10 power sitting on your prompt is not doing you any good. It was designed to get you ahead and power should always be shifting from your reserves to your prompt to fully utilize this resource. I'm not saying that you should blow through all 10 power and sit on zero. Sometimes, you may want to have 7-8 power to deliver 2 extremely crippling hits in a row (An amputate and a slit throat, etc.). Just don't sit on 10.

Now, afflictions. Study your class. You need to know every affliction you can deliver and the prerequisites of your kill requirement. You apply poisons to your weapon or weapons which may deliver an additional affliction to your opponent. Afflictions are supposed to hinder an opponent's attack against you, making it harder for them to launch their offense and build towards their kill requirements. The warrior's advantage is that you can build towards both hindering and attacking at the same time. Most other classes rely on passive hindering and actively build towards their kill conditions. Study your opponent's class. What do they need to achieve in order to kill you? What do you have that stops/hinders their ability to build towards that. A simple example, a pureblade may apply poisoned blindness which stops all active offense and severnerve which stops most active offense on the target. These are both cured on the same balance (herb) and require curing one before the other, possibly throwing off your target's attempt to achieve his kill requirement.

I'll use two of the classes I've played in this example. A telekinetic mage builds towards a kill by sticking burst blood vessels on you. TKs stick 2 vessels every 4 seconds on average. These are cured with a sip of health every 4 seconds and eating a sparkleberry every 6 seconds. Over 12 seconds of battle, a TK would be ahead by 1 burst blood vessel. Definitely simplified but the idea of getting ahead eventually still stands. Now, a warrior could do something like prone the TK with tendon/knockdown 2-3 seconds after the attack, drawing out the battle and possibly nullifying the TK's attempt to get ahead. He/She could sip love to force the TK to reject if he wants to keep maintaining passive demesne hindering on the target at the expense of his active attacks, etc. There are a number of possibilities and these are just the few I have listed.

It's a little late so I'll stop here for now. Sure I've missed a lot of factors that will definitely come into play here (shrugging, tertiaries, etc.) but this has been the gist of what combat is in Lusternia for me and the approach I take towards it. Feel free to post questions/answers to those questions. If people are interested, I'll write a little on parrying/stancing next time round!

Shaddus

Welcome back!