TempInsanity and Illuminate

Twytch

Yarith tells you, "Eh. You have two passive cleanse cures between your entourage."

Yarith tells you, "There's no reason to keep running out the room when you can stack insanity and mental afflictions."

Yarith tells you, "Especially with my bad nativity." (he has: clumsiness, pacifism, confusion, asthma, aeon)

Yarith tells you, "You're just doing it wrong."

So, @Yarith, how exactly do you propose building up enough tempinsanity for Illuminate? I'll give you a rundown of the math:

3.2 = balance cost for Revelations, which builds 2 insanity

4.0 = homunculus balance for Bite, which builds 1 insanity

~6.0 = greywhisper tick, which builds 1 insanity and a chance for 1-2 mental afflictions

~11 = morrible tick, which afflicts with a random mental affliction and a chance for 1-2 insanity

The greywhisper ticks and the morrible ticks, from what I've tested, can give afflictions that are already on the target.

Badluck gives the effect of an additional 1 insanity per 2 mental afflictions on Revelations (and maybe Bite, it's hard to test).

Eyesnare has a chance to cause insanity at an enemy's action (I -think- it's 1-2 insanity at 20%, but I don't have a big enough sample set to say for sure).

VisionFlux costs 6p and halves my mana/ego while it lasts (around 37 seconds). It ticks every 7 seconds, and on every tick it deals 1 insanity.

~1.6 = eat pennyroyal, focus mind, sip lucidityslush

The first two cure insanity, the last two cure mental afflictions (yes, focus mind does both). Insanity curing is prioritized over all others. Pennyroyal cures 1 insanity, focus mind cures 2.

As it stands, there is no way to build up enough insanity or mental afflictions to work towards an Illuminate. Even as a Hexen, (0.7 seconds to hex/whammy/doublewhammy, 1.0 second to draw), curing outpaces an Illuminatus' output by a good margin. This is further exacerbated by the sheer randomness of Illuminati afflicting (outside of outright insanity building). Beast spellcasting, while nice, also falls under the randomness trap (from what I know, it's 1-4 mental affs per spellcast).

For the forum populace at large, do you have any ideas on how to build up enough tempinsanity for an Illuminate? I've actually done a lot of testing for it, even went Hexes for a bit, but even then it has completely stumped me. 

P.S. Granted, in this specific case, it may have been possible to aeon-lock with asthma, but I've generally avoided going for aeon on an Aeonics user due to MindClock.

EDIT: I forgot about VisionFlux. It's been added.

Yarith

Wait. Let me get this straight. Instead of responding to me in character you said you had to go then came to the forums to point at me like this? I feel like you're making a snide shot at me and trying to hide it under a request to gain guidance on your secondary kill method.

What you were doing was placing an astrology sphere, walking out, abjuring timeslip and repeating until you had enough to meteor. The problem is, with no buildup, I can just facetank it off. That's why you couldn't get the kill. If you're just going to get to x spheres and meteor with no follow up then you won't get very far. My nativity is pretty easy to abuse and if you had stood in the room for maybe 2 or 3 balances to set up the meteor you would have been able to secure the kill. I don't really see why you're calling me out and schooling me on how your secondary kill method is impractical.

Lerad

Aeon is super useful, really no reason not to use it. MindClock is basically TrueTime - helpful, but it won't make you immune. Especially in the current meta, if you can put on asthma on the target, you probably should go for it.

I've never been an Illuminati before, but if I'm not wrong, building TempInsanity is a lost cause - but I could be wrong. You'll need to verify with Shuyin or someone who has tested it before. Aeon will help build TempInsanity (ironically), of course, but you're probably better off just damaging to death if you have a reliable way to give target asthma and keep them under aeon for decent periods of time at a stretch - the rolling momentum of the vitals pressure from missed or delayed sipping will eventually kill them even if you can't perma aeonlock them.

TempInsanity's real power is in blocking off mental affliction curing. Overloading (or even just delaying the cure of) mental afflictions has a number of good side effects, because some of those afflictions are very strong, and some of them hinder as well, to boot. Lack of smart afflicting works against you a little, but that's RNG - if you can make a sort of tracker to compensate and invest your whammies into mental affs your passives don't give, it might help tie them down. An Illuminati's hinder is second to almost none (I say "almost" here only to cover my bases in case I'm wrong.) If you're a hexen and manage to pull off a proper jinx stack, especially with the as-yet not really exhaustively tested overhaul curing system, you could well hinder them to death - it may just take a long while.

Of course, being hexen means you give up on more reliable ways to kill (like soulless: tarot is love, tarot is life). Hexes is probably more useful in group combat.

Lerad

Also, pennyroyal and lucidity slush double-curing tempinsanity is probably a bug. Should bug it.

Twytch

@Yarith

Partly false. I do have a setup for meteor beyond sphere -> meteor, in case you didn't notice. I use Paradigmatics Reimagination to give you a temporary -4/10 malus (if there's a Papaxi health curse available, use Papaxi instead). This lowers your max health, but your current health remains the same. So I Quicken, Sun ray a few times (yours is psychic, so I also used Polarity on that to get to 9-buff psychic). Quicken again, then start meteor, then sun ray spam + homunculus bite. This is literally the best setup I have at the moment (until I get a beast, and without accessible sensitivity).

Also, yes, there is a snide shot to you in this, because honestly, you seem to be immovably convinced that it's possible to outpace curing (it's not). There's no point continuing that conversation in-game.

Plus, all this is kind of hard to communicate all of this through tells. And this has the added benefit of having others make suggestions or observations on how to achieve an Illuminate at its current (and, perhaps, future) incarnation.

PS The topic is about tempinsanity and Illumination, not meteor.

Lerad

Oh wait, I read it wrong. So pennyroyal cures tempinsanity but lucidity does not.

It's still a nerf from the pre-overhaul status quo, though, since tempinsanity pre-overhaul basically blocked herb mental aff curing if the target's focus couldn't keep up with all of it (which happens at times), so it ends up blocking a few pennyroyal eats from curing afflictions at times.

Looks like tempinsanity has lost a little of the bite it once had. Should probably get them to put it on lucidity to mimic pre-overhaul mechanics until we know for sure what's going to happen to tempinsanity.

Twytch

@Lerad No no, it's pennyroyal and focus mind curing tempinsanity / lucidity slush and focus mind curing mental afflictions

EDIT: Right! Ninja.

Yarith

I don't see how I came across as immovably convinced. I never mentioned temp insanity apart from the quotes you posted above and even those comments were related to setting up meteor, not illuminate. If you aren't using the mechanics available to you through your primary and secondary to achieve your tertiary kill method, all the more power to you. You pulled off your 'setup' incorrectly and yes, I am capable of reading logs, thank you.

Edit: PS My name is in all 5 of the first lines to this topic and you have addressed the entire following body of text to me personally with an unambiguous 'you'. This thread is blatantly personal and if you're trying to switch the context by saying my comments are irrelevant to the topic you're incorrect as you've made me the subject of the thread and added tempinsanity/illuminate as a subtopic.

Edit*2: Also, you're misquoting my tells out of context. They were in regards to the kill you were attempting to pull off: Meteor. 

Twytch

You were pretty dismissive of my hit->run method, plus there was the implication that tempinsanity is king when even I the Illum can't deal enough of it to actually matter. Capping it off with the "You'll never learn combat" comment while calling @Falmiis to tag-team me isn't really my idea of a good, constructive conversation.

In any case, I've managed to streamline my meteor setup thanks to @Enadonella. It still definitely won't do much past a certain artifact threshold, but it may make meteor more viable in group combat.

As for tempinsanity, once pennyroyal and focus mind are phased out, it's probably going to be a tad overpowered depending on how much lucidity slush cures. Is there any indication from the Admin that it'll still cure first over other mental affs?

Yarith

There was no implication that tempinsanity is king. Falmiis was there because you went up to sit on the domoth again to stall it for another hour like you did the first time. I didn't exactly call him at all. I suppose there's no use arguing with someone who doesn't see the point in using a 12 second free bal to deliver a 3p debuff which gives a mental affliction every 5 seconds for 2 minutes. Please don't *speak down to me in public without a compelling argument.

Maligorn

Hexenlluminati can conceivably pull off Illuminate by stacking lucidity (once it's flipped over, of course). Casting Revelations is bad; you'll never see a Researcher aeoncasting Timewarp unless it's a whole group of them. Have you tried Madfly and seeing the numbers on it?

EDIT: You're also forgetting truename.

Synkarin

With hexes, you got to use things like madfly and jinx to build the mental affs to take advantage of bad luck. 

You used to be able to do pseudo lock with anorexia/slickness/asthma/temp insanity (focus would be eaten curing insanity, can't smoke/apply/eat because of other affs). Can't do this anymore because you can't block lucidity, but if you stack jinx with it, you can maybe pull it off.

When you say tempinsanity and mental affs are cured both by focus mind, do you mean in the same balance? because if that's the case that's new.

Not that it's worth spending a lot of time here because it's going to change relatively soon.

Edit: Two passive cleanse cures? Maybe one, and anyone worth their salt isn't going to cleanse it unless they are trying to get away.

CyndarinAscends

Probably an important thread to dispel the myth of the unstoppable illuminati monsters. Shuyin will be crushed.

Based on what I remember from Shuyin v Viynain's testing on Illuminate, the only viable setup up to pull off illuminate with was sleep lock with hexes and a lot of waiting for power. I don't believe there's any way to actually afflict someone enough to get them to an illuminate level while actually having the power to illuminate. 

The issue with meteor is that if you don't have a long stun (like final shadow twist or inquisition) and they can tank the initial burst, you can't kill them. Astrology afflictions aren't even masked, so no matter how bad your nativity is, it's rarely actually an issue to just keep up with astrology afflictions. It's a very dated tertiary. The only time Astrology is dangerous is when skull is stacked.

edit: Tarot or bust!

Tremula

When I was an Illuminatus it was pre-overhaul and I had not even gotten into combat properly - I'd just order my entourage at someone, then use my gloves and a few spells out of Paradigmatics because I was bad. But I don't think you should ever stop talking to someone in-game because it's difficult to communicate through tells or someone might be being a little snide. Don't get spoiled by clans and forums, these are characters in a world, and in any other circumstance they'd be forced to use all their in-game resources to get answers. Yeah, sometimes @Yarith can get a little grumpy, but he taught me how to be a combatant when I was in Mag and he was a Harbinger, and we didn't talk OOC except to share logs, and didn't begin talking OOCly on any scale until he started helping me learn how to do basic coding. Build the RP, bruv.

Shedrin

Just skimmed the thread, might've missed some relevant posts.

Illuminate sucks. It's never been viable as far as I know, except some really gimmicky spar strats + a lot of luck.

Meteor should be fine damagewise to kill most anyone assuming you have enough damage buffs (exceptions being things like numbed warriors, forcefield mages, demi+ kephera). Given that, I recommend using your balances after summoning to hinder instead of damage. Every guardian can do quicken-meteor-web-shieldstun, which if you summon when your opponent is off-balance, has a good chance of going through. As an Illuminati, you don't have a lot of unique active hinder, but you can still experiment with what you do have, such as ecto or dominate shenangins.

Maligorn

I also tend to agree that Illuminate sucks,

but your primary purpose as an Illuminatus is not really to kill in this meta (imho, unless you're damage bombing someone). You're the biggest hindermancer in the game, are reasonably tanky with Fusion, and can use Tarot. You can enable other people to reach their kill conditions fairly easily by keeping the other person pinned down/unable to act.

Malikai

In my several sparring sessions with Ixchilgal who was (not sure if still is) an Illuminatus, the way he killed me every time (even with passive insanity resistance, having had the skillset myself) was to inflict with so many things that you cannot in effect keep up. Granted, I believe he had some artifacts that helped with this, but basically the strategy in any combat situation is to so mess up your opponent that there is no way of keeping up. And it is possible, especially for races with +balance or +eq somewhere in their stats/artis or whatever. Also I think you forgot the lost actions with insanity that occur more often as insanity builds.

That said, it still took a large, large amount of time to pull off the illuminate on me. And I was never a very experienced combatant. To paraphrase the above - "Illuminate sucks."

Your best way to kill is to go for afflictions and then damage. In group fights, just afflict, afflict, afflict.

Shuyin

0. Illuminate is for swag, timequake is probably more viable, but both need some rework.

1. Illuminati have 1 passive cleanse cure, not 2. You don't even need to keep scrubbing it off unless you're getting ready to run.

2. Hexes is about the only way you're going to illuminate anyone who can actually cure, but even that relies on a fair bit amount of jinx-luck. Good luck if they have some sort of passive curing/easy access to prismatic though.

3. Be tarot. Keep aeoning, even timeclockers. You'll get them eventually. If you're tarot, don't bother illuminating though, just throw soulless. It's way easier under the affliction spam from being OP + aeon.

4. You're not supposed to kill people in groups, just hinder them, they'll never get away if you're tarot.

Twytch

Tested a few more things:

Madfly, 5p, does 1 tempinsanity every 12 seconds. It ticks six times before fading.

Theoretically, I can just Quicken (3p, 4s balance or 2s balance if refreshing quicken while already under quicken) and cast Revelations on a 1.5-second balance, beating out pennyroyal/focus mind and potentially makes Illuminate viable with a concentrated hexen mental aff offense. The only problem might be the power usage - yes, I could use homunculus to cast greywhispers and bad luck, but the former uses up 12s of homunculus balance and the latter uses 8s. I can't test the Quicken route myself, though, as I'm no longer hexen.

Synkarin

You should use homunculus for greywhispers and badluck each and everytime

Shuyin

If you really want to go for the illuminate, your homunculus generally should never be on balance. Track whispers/badluck and keep it on the victim (I envoyed lines just for this purpose). If they're already suffering from those, keep biting every balance. Next, be sure to keep your passives up, including eyesnare and other room passives. Lastly, madfly really is nice, visionflux not so much just because the effect:power cost:time ratio isn't worth it (plus it cuts your vitals). 

Siam

-takes notes for my Illuminatus-

Saz

Shuyin said:

3. Be tarot. Keep aeoning, even timeclockers. You'll get them eventually. If you're tarot, don't bother illuminating though, just throw soulless. It's way easier under the affliction spam from being OP + aeon.

4. You're not supposed to kill people in groups, just hinder them, they'll never get away if you're tarot.

#Necro
From my experiences, you don't even need to get hit by anyone else or the aeon to lose your entire offense(or even some defensive actions such as invoking shields)+movement ability passively to the entourage in 3 seconds or so. It's awfully nasty. What I'm wondering is, since it's that potent, is there actually a method to get behind/counter at least some of  that hinder?

Enyalida

The counter is to kill the entourage. 

Saz

I don't think there's a window for that (3 secs most, from my experiences again). Perhaps we can find an illu to help us check it?

Enyalida

Yeah, well.

Shuyin

I don't understand. if you're getting hindered alone, you should be able to keep up the dust Balance necessary to not get transfixed outside of someone really dedicating their offense to that.


You're not supposed to cleanse everytime you get mucus either. just do it before you bail.

Sol on OP 1s longer Balance on hekoszkeri however. I would just work on spamming ugliness . 

Saz

Rubbing cleanse is the only thing that throws the target off-equilibrium? That's a good advice thanks! But even after curing mud and trying to move with equilibrium, I found it impossible. Unfortunately. I can provide logs though from the target's PoV, if I can find a spar-partner for that purpose

Danquik

Illuminati have Carcer which can keep you from leaving, Enthrall/Lust has a chance to keep you from leaving, Flux has a small chance to keep you from leaving, Tentacles act like block, Block itself (from beast or crampons), Tarot Fall can make leaving slower.

Without logs it is hard to say what 'locked you down'.

I can say though I have never locked someone down in 3 seconds and only bad curing, group mechanics, or Madfly combos has got me to Truename levels on opponents.

Saz

http://hastebin.com/pucadeqamu.erl

@Shuyin

Alright, I couldn't find anyone to spar with. But here, we've this log instead. So you can see it approximately took 8 seconds for me to get transfixed despite, it was 1v1. The fight was in a fully set up HS meld, (my meld had a fused paralysis rune too) and Danquik was sapped for 7 seconds while I was counter-productively sending vines. Because of all those hinders, Danquik could do no action either at that time.

And looking at the log I didn't even rub cleanse as adviced, until I was transfixed so it didn't really matter.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not here to all out attack your favorite skillset. And I play with both melds and sap myself, which is why I fully understand the hate people have towards them. So, let's be honest and not downplay that Illuminati entourage needs a looking at. Just like sap, just like melds.

Breandryn

You weren't blind.