Bleeding as an Affliction

Lycidas

https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/3599/the-snowball-effect/p5

A lot of the discussion leading to this poll being made is on that page, as well as other threads where changing how bleed works. The goal of this is to gauge how people feel about the affliction itself and how we can bring it in line with other such synergies. Poll is anon, but please keep the discussion only about how bleeding works or could be changed. This is not about any other afflictions, unless specifically to draw a parallel or use of example for a change.

EDIT: Suggestions

a) Make chervil reduce more bleeding when eaten
b) Clot's mana cost is reduced by a percentage (Let's say 50% as a trial number)
c) Chervil/clot remain same healing and cost, but ingesting chervil makes any incoming bleeding only effect you half as much.

So while classes do have active mana drains to pursue that kill method, it is weighted towards those that also have passive mana draining (a la bleeding or song powers etc). I'm going to make up a skillname and apply a value to what it does so that we all have something to work with to continue this discussion:

Syntax:    SANGUINESWIPE <target>

Damage type: 100% Cutting

Applies an amount of bleeding to the target equal to the amount of damage it would apply normally.

So, since it is a cutting attack, let's just saying it does 500 bleeding after all resistances and damage reduction, which is reasonable to assume that someone with a 13/13 cutting buff would do at least 500 damage with a weapon attack. How does this get handled? Well, by itself, it isn't going to do much or really cause any threat as now the attacker is off balance and that amount can be clotted and chervil'd safely. Now if we have two people doing this on balance, now we're up to 1000 bleeding every 2 seconds and things become dicey. My proposition for how to change bleed is diminishing returns on how much can be applied. These are just theory values and are open for discussion:

100 bleeding - reduce incoming bleeding by 10%
250 bleeding - reduce incoming bleeding by 25%
500 bleeding - reduce incoming bleeding by 50%

Eating chervil applies a short, non-strippable, buff that keeps your highest bleeding resistance for ten seconds. Now we're looking at a way to cope with lots of bleeding. Back to my example, you get smashed with SanguineSwipe and hit the 50% reduction, you eat a chervil to heal some of the bleeding, and now as they continue to swipe at you, are effectively applying 250 bleed instead of 500. It doesn't really take away from the actual attacks meant to cause huge amounts of bleeding, but truly counters the small passive bleeds as that number is dwindled.

Synl

I wasn't here for the combat overhaul, and I'm sure there are reasons for keeping it as is. Not the least of which is how it is tied into so many other abilities. That said, it seems odd to me to have this one affliction that just has its own curative/command. And works in its own odd way. Bring it in line with other afflictions (we can call them the Org affs), and things will make more sense as a whole. Though again, I'm sure there are many reasons for why we shouldn't do it that way.

edit: at this point, I don't even care about balance. I like looking at game design as a whole, as a personal hobby, and the more I look at it the more it bugs me that bleeding is in its own personal design space.

Kalnid

Bleeding is better than other synergies because:

a: It hits vitals on its own. No matter how much timewarp you stack, your target ain't dying from it. They could sit at cap for ten minutes and be fine. Bleeding doesn't have a cap, and moreover you don't need a given skill to take advantage of it. M/H/Ga need a necro/aeonicist/paradigmaticist? to actually take advantage of it, although I thiiink new hallibards might have a way to kill off it too?

b: It stacks. Obviously this is shared with TW/TI/DM, but here I'm comparing it to the dust stack mag is supposed to like or the slush stack MD/celest(i think?) like. Curing overhaul meant a: hidden non-ice affs lost a ton of value and b: you can't track what a target cures. If you're stacking dust and hit with pox/paralysis, you can't make an educated choice about what to throw next if they eat dust. If you throw paralysis again and they didn't cure it, you just wasted a balance. On the other hand, with stacking affs you can't waste balance: if you do bleeding, it always works.

Anaklusmos

I put my vote in for Leave bleed alone because, let's be honest, the admins won't dare inconvenience Glom   

Might as well just petition to get bleed as a synergy for your org, too. That'll also be an uphill battle, but overall it's more doable than the alternative.

Lycidas

I honest regret putting leave bleed alone, because of trolls and comments like you just made. It skews the results for the worst and does nothing productive. If all you're going to do is complain, please feel free to ignore the thread. I want to actually GET SOMEWHERE with this attempt.

Anaklusmos

Complain is pretty much all we can do. We're not admins, we can't change the code or the mechanics behind things. Really, complaining is our only option. You might be tempted to say, "But you can suggest things!" but then again, Sol 4 exists. Literally all of the balls are in the admins' court.

Shango

Bleed is fine...issue is when it can be spawned en masse from multiple sources, which then lean on each other to add even more, ramping it up higher and higher. Same reason PB Twist no longer can generate Bleed based on its own damage....even if unfortunate BC Pulp got the same treatment for Bruising despite costing Power but for the same reasoning.

So to 'fix' it? Make it so that if someone is already bleeding a certain amount, and an additional source is applied, diminishing returns for calculating the new bleed level, rather than treating the new bleed application as though they were freshly hit and it was a standalone bleed. I bleed for 500, get hit for another 400, diminish that 400 to 300 or whatever suits (actual calculations will need some tweaking to fit, I do not want this to be a nerf, only a scaled slope to keep things fair with an entire org basing its synergy on a vitals aff while remaining viable) Thoughts on that method for dealing with Bleed? Diminishing returns applied.

Synl

I actually want to move away from the idea that bleeding is overpowered or needs changing because of excessive synergy. Instead, bleeding seems to be fundamentally different from how affs work in the game post-overhaul and exists in its own weird design space that... shouldn't be. Bleeding should be changed because it needs to work along the same lines as every other affliction in the game - ie. be cured by dust/ice/slush/steam. Have a specific number of levels. Not have an alternative cure at cost of mana (clot). At the very least, this is where it should begin.

Why does this one affliction just exist by itself????

Shango

Because it and bruising is a physical based 'aff' calculated based on a % of the physical damage that caused it, while Chervil works a bit like you describe @Synl. And the reason it is called out as OP, is due to the fact that as it builds, you can spam CLOT <number> to remove it, but that drains your mana incredibly fast, particularly with multiple sources applying it, which leaves you open to mana kills, but if you DON'T clot it, it will just kill you on its own. It's not an affliction like other affs, so hard to bring it in-line with other affs as they exist post-curing overhaul.

Lycidas

It's not just this one affliction...there are tons that are still using either the old system or aren't even listed in the affs list. Love potion is still cured a purgative, despite those being removed and other such examples. To follow the rules of my own thread, those are examples, back to bleeding. Making it act like a nonstacking affliction, means a ton of changes to skills would have to be made, making it act like a stacking affliction (timewarp/hemorrhaging/temp insaity) means you might as well just turn skills that cause bleeding to cause hemorrhaging instead, merging the two into one.

Shango

Plus if it was changed as described by that suggestion...PBs and BC warriors that rely on it for a kill-route faster than their Warrior system would allow.

Maligorn

The problem, I think, is that bleed levels like the ones we see now were only ever achievable by chainyank spam in Ninjakari, before the overhaul. Somewhere along the line bleeding got into numbers that were never meant to be possible, but clot's mana cost was never lowered.

Yes, I have brought this up before on Envoys (never on the forums tho).

No, I didn't get much traction. The main objection to reducing clot mana cost has been "well, mana pools are higher than they were pre-overhaul too". Which I feel is still a questionable defense.

Lycidas

Ideas were discussed in the thread I linked too, but I'll go ahead and edit my main post with some of the gathered suggestions not already covered here.