Combat help and advice.

Mardella

http://dumptext.com/MUj05WQd

Hi can someone give me some advice on how to avoid this kill, I was doing a bit of arena today and going over the logs I can understand most things but this one I just couldn't figure out.

As far as I can tell I was curing the timewarp stuff just fine, got hit with aeon, tried to cure aeon, failed due to amnesia, tried to cure aeon again successfully. Got out of aeon and then died to timequake before I had recovered herb balance to attempt to cure it. As far as I can tell I cured aeon as physically quickly as possible

Have I missed something that I was supposed to cure to avoid this?

Shedrin

You and @Ciaran had a good fight there, and you actually avoided the kill a bunch of times before I finally landed it. Institute is one of the better specs for 2v1, and both of you had pretty abuseable nativities that I took advantage of. From the point of where I did the Shatterplex in the log there, there wasn't much you could do actively, but a truetime enchantment might've let you escape. The better method is to proactively stop me from getting to that point. Namely, removing rubies by running/kethering, and hindering me while I set up the combo. You did this a lot throughout the fight, but unfortunately your teams offense wasn't enough to stop me from repeating until it worked. Though, I did notice you didn't upkeep love potion in that fight, and mm doesn't recognize the Astrology ray afflictions.

Mardella

So the only method of avoiding that instant kill is to run from the room when I have too many rubies on me or casting kether to sever them?

Shedrin

Mardella said:

So the only method of avoiding that instant kill is to run from the room when I have too many rubies on me or casting kether to sever them?

No, it's just the easiest. Also looking closer at the log, at the end there, you actually cured out of the aeon before I did the quake. I think smoke steam focus timewarp, or shielding after curing would have saved you.

Mardella

What is the method would I use to avoid it without having to run or stop my own offence?

Mardella

I had cured the aeon before the quake hit me but I didn't have steam balance back to cure the warp.

Mardella

With the shielding then, if I notice you use

"Shedrin presses his palms together and stares at the ring of rubies spinning around your head. The
rubies speed up and you are blinded by the brilliant crimson blaze that rips apart your face and
causes time to slow down, magnifying the agony."

Then once I cure aeon if I instantly shield will that give me the time to avoid the kill?

Shedrin

Mardella said:

I had cured the aeon before the quake hit me but I didn't have steam balance back to cure the warp.

Yeah, I think if you had focused timewarp over the aeon, you would have escaped. That's naturally a risky option, and I don't recommend it generally.

What I do recommend is proactive and layered defenses. First, upkeep love potion, second, get a highlight for the aeonfield timer. It hits every 10s, and if you stun me or otherwise hinder me right before it hits, I can't do the combo. Third, make sure mm is assuming aeon/quicksilver strip on the Aapek ray. Finally, and this is a general thing, know when to press your offense and when to back off and hinder or run. That's pretty contextual, but for example, when I've just used aeonfield, I won't have power for timequake, so you can push, after a few tics of it, I'll have enough and you need to be wary.

Mardella said:

With the shielding then, if I notice you use

"Shedrin presses his palms together and stares at the ring of rubies spinning around your head. The
rubies speed up and you are blinded by the brilliant crimson blaze that rips apart your face and
causes time to slow down, magnifying the agony."

Then once I cure aeon if I instantly shield will that give me the time to avoid the kill?

That's right.

Mardella

That makes sense, so trigger a timer to know when the auras comming and possibly trigger shielding on cure aeon right after the "Shedrin presses his palms together and stares at the ring of rubies spinning around your head. The
rubies speed up and you are blinded by the brilliant crimson blaze that rips apart your face and
causes time to slow down, magnifying the agony."


How often can you do this ability? Whats the effective power cool down on it?

Shedrin

And just to stress this point incase I give the wrong impression. There is no 100% way to avoid Timequake other than running or kethering rubies. Every option you do has a potential counter the Institute can do, or rng that can swing badly for you (like stupidity). So it's all about finding the best line between all the defensive layers, and what options you take at specific points.

Shedrin

Mardella said:

That makes sense, so trigger a timer to know when the auras comming and possibly trigger shielding on cure aeon right after the "Shedrin presses his palms together and stares at the ring of rubies spinning around your head. The
rubies speed up and you are blinded by the brilliant crimson blaze that rips apart your face and
causes time to slow down, magnifying the agony."


How often can you do this ability? Whats the effective power cool down on it?

That's the Shatterplex, it requires 7 rubies on the target, or 5 if they have resonance on them (which is most of the time 1v1) and no power cost. Rubies take 3s per ruby to put up. Aeonfield is 5p and lasts 10 tics.

Shedrin

Not related to this Timequake setup, I'd recommend highlight this line:

^(\w+) closes (his|her) eyes and clenches (his|her) fists, audibly grinding his teeth\. A sparkling sheen briefly runs over (his|her) skin, and (his|her) eyelids flicker open at lightning speed\.$

That's Quickening, which will halve the eq balance of the Guardian for the next 12s. I use it in 90% of my Meteor setups, and a few niche Timequake setups. When you see that, run/shield to avoid being combo'd.

Mardella

Thats partially what im trying to figure out, how to maintain an offense without having to stop too much to do non wounding activities. As a bonecrusher my only instant kill is brain bash, my damage doesnt seem high enough to kill most people with decent sized health pool as basic sipping will outpace my damage. If I build up brusing I can do some good damage but I have no reliable way of stopping people with good mana from clotting it all away instantly.

So the wounding instant kill seems the most realistic way of killing someone. I can't lock anyone to prevent their healing so I need to do sustained wounding to get a kill so from my theory crafting I really need to find solutions that wont stop me attacking and building wounds or else I cant feasibly see me ever killing anyone. I may be wrong and any advice would be great if I've missed an obvious method of offence.

I'm finding warrior combat to be quite difficult in aiming for kills. An unhindered enemy can heal 150 wounds per min, I can in a ideal situation do aprox 171.42 wounds per min.

I calculated that in this idea world it will take me aprox 108 seconds of continual striking the head to bring it to critical wounds, assuming that I do no affliction based strikes and only use crushes(as often as power allows) and wounding strikes sans any affliction modifiers to speed the wounding to the fastest levels. If an enemy can hinder me for 14 seconds every 60 seconds, any hindering so me shielding, parrying me, or me kethering will count towards it, then their basic apply ice will simply outpace my pure wounding strikes.

Also I will have to sacrifice my wound building in order to do basic afflictions to hinder enemies to prevent them killing me every now and then. Such as slowing monks offence.

I can do 17.14 strikes a min, two of which can be crushes. So 15 normal strikes, If I do more than 7 afflictions strikes per minute (assuming no afflictions are ice cures like arm breaks) then I will be doing 155 wounds per min, just enough to outpace healing. So I can strike seven times for afflictions assuming I never get hindered every minute. Although this will mean that I will take 15 mins to get a single limb to critical.

So if I have to cure an aeon effect lets say two or three times a minute and I have to shield or run for 4 seconds to avoid a potential instant kill then thats as effective as 7ish seconds of hindering, assuming no other delays to healing aeon like amnesia or stupidiy. If I throw in a kether as well its nearing the 12 second ultimate mark meaning that even if I never ever afflict you I'll still never actually build any wounding even if im only striking with pure wounding strikes or a few arm or leg breaks.

I can't quite figure out a way around this at the moment. Not just in relation to timequake itself things but most other classes basic offensive tatics against me seem to be hindering me more than 12 seconds a min so even when I'm surviving by escaping instant kills I'm never making any progress on building wounds.

Shedrin

Unfortunately, I'm really not an expert on the current state of Warriors, so I can't help you too much with your offense. Maybe someone like @Demartel can help you there. Though from my experience, Warrior is in a pretty poor state for 1v1. The recent change to reduce wounds cured by ice to 4 should help a bit, but probably not enough. I'm sure there will be more tweaks and reports to adjust things in the future as well.

Mardella

A reduction of ice to 4 per application would effectively increase my wounding per min in an idea situation from 41 wounds per min to 71 wounds per min. So it'd change the ideal world time to get a crit limb down from 108 seconds down to 63 seconds of perfect striking.

With ice healing being weakened to four per application then assuming the hindering situation of being hindered 12 seconds of every 60 seconds as a basic part of most enemies standard offence and doing no affliction strikes that don't require ice to cure then it will take aprox 4.7 minutes of striking to get the head to critical.

Or if we get lucky and only get hindered 6 seconds ever min then it'll take aprox 2.28 mins to get one wound to critical.

As an experiment with ice at 4 it would require an enemy class to hinder for 17.5 seconds every min to completely neutralize a warriors wound build up if they were striking purely for wounds.

It seems tricky even with buffing ice in a good practical situation its going to take 2-3 mins to get one limb to critical, and even then the enemy can counter this by increasing hindering to 17ish seconds a min or by simply running away for 37.5 seconds. The build up time to get to that level means that an enemy will beable to do a strong offence for at least two mins before having to switch to a more hindering approach.

Mardella

Also even at critical the enemy still isnt dead, I have to somehow prevent them from curing the other affliction elements but at the moment figuring out a way to actually wound someone seems more important so I'll cross the affliction bridge when i get there.

Demartel

I don't know what tertiary you are and that makes a difference. I can say that without an investment into beastmastery for spit, a damage breath, or amnesia breath you will be reducing your effectiveness greatly and unable to compete against the upper players.

One thing I see a lot of BC's doing is spam strike head. Don't do that. Force them to focus curing wounds elsewhere as you slowly build head for bashbrains.

Everybody has to break offence and dip out of the room at some point. If you think you are going to survive toe to toe then you will learn quickly that isnt going to work.

BC has a lot of potential for breaking your opponents offense and yes it takes time to build wounds. I will be testing the various warrior specs over the next few weeks. Maybe like PB bleeding we need to look at BC bruising, or bruising in general.

Make sure you are not only using poisons, but using the right poisons for the right class and right attacks. Lots of warriors just go mantakaya/niricol and leave it at that. There are all sorts of combos they leave out or don't consider the fact that the wound aff they are giving is paralysis and still poison with mantakaya.

Mardella

I'm night currently if that helps.

For poisons I've been using a combination of Anatine, Dulak, Escozul, Hadrudin on certain classes and Mantakaya. I think I've got most envenoms set to a good order so I'm not doubling up on any affliction at any time.

I've not tried using Blindness/Niricol, are you using that as a defensive poison or is there something there I'm missing?

I'm currently working on the beast but some advice on that would be great. Everyone is saying get one with spit, how about the hypno gaze, do you get any use out of that or are there any other "must have" beast abilities?

I find I can do excellent hindering when i focus on that but when I attempt to build wounds I never get anywhere, I think I've got the hindering down fairly well but against any enemy even when focusing on wounds I simply cant seem to build any what so ever.

Would you agree with my assessment that the wounding brain bash in the only way to get effective kills? The Damage and bruising kills only seem effective on people with low health pools and half the people I see have at least a min of 6 or 7k health.

Demartel

Bashbrains is the insta you want to build towards, but certainly not the only viable kill. Damage kills are still a thing, they just take a lot more work against anyone with a smidgen of cutting/blunt resistance and wearing Plate armour Read: anyone in the game because for some reason the overhaul gave plate armour to everyone.

Blindness halts offense due to if they can't see you they can't hit you. Aside from the myrtle curing it, which is being envoyed right now actually, it is on wafer balance, so combined with mantakaya which is also wafer balance it makes for a good combination.

Trample is good on a beast. Your mileage will vary on it though. You want Gust and Focusing as well. I have never used Hypnogaze as a warrior and not sure that the cost of using it is better than knowing exactly what my beast is doing with beast spit, or a damage breath, or amnesiacloud.

Make sure you have your maces enhanced as well. I would go with speed and damage if you do not have elite weapon runes.

Until some fights go on with the new wound curing at 4 instead of 5 I can't really comment on how effective strategies will be, but like I said I will be working on it and I am more than willing to envoy needed changes.

Mardella

If I understand you right does that mean that that the blindness venom is a bit less useful until its changed off of the faeleaf or myrtle balance to the wafer balance?

For the beast if im right I can train it 600 times, spit is 200, focusing is 200, gust is 60, and trample is 200 plus for convience, flying is 100 so it can follow you everwhere. 760 in total so Ideally find one with a few of these abilities.

I've no weapon runes yet but they may be something I'll get, I'm guessing two speed two damage and weighting/bruise boosting?



Thanks for the info for all the stuff.

Shedrin

I know some people really like the beast focus, but I don't think it's worth it.

Mardella

Im not entirely sure I understand what it does. It seems similar to just regularly focusing cures right?

Shedrin

Same, except it takes beast balance over increased cure balance or power. It's nice sometimes, but imo you'll get more out of using your beast offensively or for gusting.

Demartel

I like to have it as a backup, but I also have a custom mount so my trains are higher.

Ciaran

Might as well use it if you're in aeon and have beast balance for example. (Since you most likely won't be attacking soon)

Mardella

Ciaran said:

Might as well use it if you're in aeon and have beast balance for example. (Since you most likely won't be attacking soon)

Do you mean for curing stuff in aeon like asthma? Because it seems like you don't need to focus to actually cure aeon, unless im getting that wrong?

Rolsand

Oops

Twytch

@Mardella yup! Aeon cures first out of all steam affs, but for things like asthma vs paralysis on dust curing, there's no prioritization. Under aeon, of course, you'd definitely want asthma focused off first.

Mardella

Ok for warrior combat I think I may be misreading how crushes work.

I thought I could do a crush and afflict someone at the same time but I cant seem to make them work. After testing it it seems crushes simply do no wounding afflictions. Am I correct is saying that crushes/lunges can not do warrior afflictions at the same time??

So my crush attacks are simply for building wounding and will not do any afflictions like smashchest or knockdown?

Rolsand

It won't do any afflictions to another person.

Demartel

Mardella said:

Ok for warrior combat I think I may be misreading how crushes work.

I thought I could do a crush and afflict someone at the same time but I cant seem to make them work. After testing it it seems crushes simply do no wounding afflictions. Am I correct is saying that crushes/lunges can not do warrior afflictions at the same time??

So my crush attacks are simply for building wounding and will not do any afflictions like smashchest or knockdown?

Crush/Assault/Sweep/Lunge are just your power moves to build up wounds. They bypass parry and deal double the wounds. They are the modifier, you don't apply a modifier to them.