Deathsong Discussion

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: SSC and You.

Parhelion

Orael said:

Hey Everyone - 

 We're ready to roll out the first update to SSC. This version contains mostly under the hood changes that shouldn't really change anything on your end, but should make the underlying code faster/less lag prone.

 There are a few minor changes as follows;

    1) Sleep and sprawled are converted to actual afflictions and cured in autocuring.
    2) Sixthsense will no longer fire off cure balance.
    3) Hidden damagedlung is now revealed by symptom.
    4) Chervil clotting was added 


 We'd like to get some players testing this out before loading it into the live server to ensure that the changes do not break anything. If this is something you're interested in doing, please let me know.

I know these sorts of things probably aren't in SSC's purview, but would it be possible to allow us to powerfocus steam truehearing in some way?

As it stands, deathsong is entirely too easy to land lately, especially if someone can keep you off steam balance long enough to keep you from raising truehearing.

Orael

You should be able to prioritize truehearing in the steamqueue when deathsong starts. A powerfocus wouldn't really solve the problem here as that just guarantees you'd get truehearing and truehearing already does that by itself.

Giving someone a way to put up truehearing outside steam balance would make deathsong useless though.

Drastrath

Parhelion said:

Orael said:

Hey Everyone - 

 We're ready to roll out the first update to SSC. This version contains mostly under the hood changes that shouldn't really change anything on your end, but should make the underlying code faster/less lag prone.

 There are a few minor changes as follows;

    1) Sleep and sprawled are converted to actual afflictions and cured in autocuring.
    2) Sixthsense will no longer fire off cure balance.
    3) Hidden damagedlung is now revealed by symptom.
    4) Chervil clotting was added 


 We'd like to get some players testing this out before loading it into the live server to ensure that the changes do not break anything. If this is something you're interested in doing, please let me know.

I know these sorts of things probably aren't in SSC's purview, but would it be possible to allow us to powerfocus steam truehearing in some way?

As it stands, deathsong is entirely too easy to land lately, especially if someone can keep you off steam balance long enough to keep you from raising truehearing.

Truehearing requires steam balance, but you can already move it up the steamqueue in AC. A deathsong is actually quite hard to pull off with a single bard, but if a second bard is there or if someone has wonderhorn then they can strip it while the deathsong bard continues the deathsong. Upkeeping truehearing using AC is a risk in itself because of earache/p5/deathsong. However, if you want to Truehear above everything else you could set it to the top or just above the general affliction entry (aff).

Are you having an issue with earache? You get earache when you are stripped of deaf, so there is a time you cannot truehear again. Earache is RNG, but after some testing here are the ways to hinder deathsong: Blind, Gust(Move them), Pacifism, Deaf/Truehearing, Move, timestop.

Also, do you know how many bards were there? Is blanknote causing the removal of Truehearing or is it wonderhorn?

Parhelion

Drastrath said:

Parhelion said:

Orael said:

Hey Everyone - 

 We're ready to roll out the first update to SSC. This version contains mostly under the hood changes that shouldn't really change anything on your end, but should make the underlying code faster/less lag prone.

 There are a few minor changes as follows;

    1) Sleep and sprawled are converted to actual afflictions and cured in autocuring.
    2) Sixthsense will no longer fire off cure balance.
    3) Hidden damagedlung is now revealed by symptom.
    4) Chervil clotting was added 


 We'd like to get some players testing this out before loading it into the live server to ensure that the changes do not break anything. If this is something you're interested in doing, please let me know.

I know these sorts of things probably aren't in SSC's purview, but would it be possible to allow us to powerfocus steam truehearing in some way?

As it stands, deathsong is entirely too easy to land lately, especially if someone can keep you off steam balance long enough to keep you from raising truehearing.

Truehearing requires steam balance, but you can already move it up the steamqueue in AC. A deathsong is actually quite hard to pull off with a single bard, but if a second bard is there or if someone has wonderhorn then they can strip it while the deathsong bard continues the deathsong. Upkeeping truehearing using AC is a risk in itself because of earache/p5/deathsong. However, if you want to Truehear above everything else you could set it to the top or just above the general affliction entry (aff).

Are you having an issue with earache? You get earache when you are stripped of deaf, so there is a time you cannot truehear again. Earache is RNG, but after some testing here are the ways to hinder deathsong: Blind, Gust(Move them), Pacifism, Deaf/Truehearing, Move, timestop.

Also, do you know how many bards were there? Is blanknote causing the removal of Truehearing or is it wonderhorn?

I'm quite familiar with how earache and bards work, thanks a bunch

My point is that it's not hard to keep a person from being able to raise truedeaf. Yes, people -can- set their steamqueues to put truedeaf at the top when they're deathsonged, and then remove it once it's over. No, it's not at all intuitive.


Someone sent me a log yesterday whereas two bards deathsonged one person. A single blanknote at the very beginning of the log, before deathsong was initiated, and the other bard just kept the target down with p5/hangedman/hidden afflictions. Between the time Bard1 initiated Dsong and Bard2 hit with P5 was about a second. The target regains steam balance once during the deathsong, which is immediately taken up by smoking steam for an unknown necroscream affliction. Target's earache dropped a literal half-second before deathsong ended. 


So yes, prioritizing truedeaf over other steam afflictions might have saved them, but a half second window is pretty stiff.

Malayn

Can the same aff be in a queue twice? If so you could ac insert truehearing as item 1, and when you have truehearing up or die or whatnot, remove item 1. So you only need manipulate first item. Agreed it isn't super intuitive, but I feel like adding a powerfocus isn't a sensical thing. It'd make more sense to make "deathsong" an aff in the queue or something, if such a pseudo condition is viable. 

Drastrath

Parhelion said:

I'm quite familiar with how earache and bards work, thanks a bunch

Let me clarify my intent, I was attempting to open up a conversation about ways this could have been avoided.

Rooting was just nerfed, did this person beast gust and gust the deathsonging bard before the deathsong happened? Also, what class was the person if they have access to blind or pacify then it isn't much different than Judgement, Soulless, Decapitate, etc.. The major difference is instead of webbing you can Truehear. 

Drastrath

Malarious said:

Can the same aff be in a queue twice? If so you could ac insert truehearing as item 1, and when you have truehearing up or die or whatnot, remove item 1. So you only need manipulate first item. Agreed it isn't super intuitive, but I feel like adding a powerfocus isn't a sensical thing. It'd make more sense to make "deathsong" an aff in the queue or something, if such a pseudo condition is viable. 

There is a swap function that would do this. "Ac m steamqueue swap 1 2". Of course you would use the positions in your queue. 

Parhelion

Drastrath said:

Parhelion said:

I'm quite familiar with how earache and bards work, thanks a bunch

Let me clarify my intent, I was attempting to open up a conversation about ways this could have been avoided.

Rooting was just nerfed, did this person beast gust and gust the deathsonging bard before the deathsong happened? Also, what class was the person if they have access to blind or pacify then it isn't much different than Judgement, Soulless, Decapitate, etc.. The major difference is instead of webbing you can Truehear. 

Psymet Tahtetso, I think. Beast was out of room, and the person was constantly hangedman'd/couldn't react to deathsong beyond trying to escape. P5 from the second bard kept them from tumbling out, dispersal failed because entangled and p5. Mantra wind wouldn't bypass p5. Earache cleared up literally a half second before dsong ended, so even if she had managed to raise truedeaf and tumble, dsong would have finished and killed her.

Sapphira

i strongly recommend not keeping deafness up against bards. The easiest and most annoying thing someone can do is a) waste my balance blanknoting which does nothing to you, and b) pop it up after dsong or even perfect fifth and just walk on out. Nothing your friendly neighbourhood bard can do unless they have lots of friends also hindering, which makes anything more dangerous.

Kali

Coordinated strategies can, and should do well. If you're fighting against a group and don't have support, you may not be left with many options for escape, but just like the enemy can coordinate their offenses/hindering, you can also coordinate with people on your side to save you when you're in a pickle.

Silvanus

The log that Parhelion was talking about so there is no confusion:

https://ada-young.com/pastebin/vSjyAL_U

It was easily preventable

Drastrath

Double Baito'ruk with niricol would have a high likelihood of stopping the Deathsong, and adding smite for 3 power would have an almost certain chance at stopping. Even with the entangled, I would think there would have been at least one attack attempt, but I could be wrong. 

I am not sure why they trueheard before, but some of the better combatants I know (I am not including myself in this) hold truehearing to be able to truehear+tumble to avoid getting locked down. However, that makes it harder to stand on Octave. 

Parhelion

Silvanus said:

The log that Parhelion was talking about so there is no confusion:

https://ada-young.com/pastebin/vSjyAL_U

It was easily preventable

Well, I guess if we're just naming names:

https://ada-young.com/pastebin/57I9Zt-C

You sent message #7292 at 08/17 21:19:

   // ok, here's what happened. You were hit by Sobbingdread in Necroscream, which I -think- either

randomly stops you from leaving the room, or makes you slow to leave. Before you could leave, 

Silvanus p5'd you, which canceled your walking out of the room. You were off steam balance for a 

while because your reflexes tried to cure an unknown affliction by smoking steam, but "earwort" 

balance goes on steam balance. Dispersal was stopped by entangled (Hangedman from Silvanus), I don't 

think you had your mantra set right (not sure about this), and by the time your earache AND steam 

balance was up so you could put up truehearing, Lisuarte finished deathsong.



So yeah. Maybe we should start a thread on this.

Orael

I went ahead and split this from the other discussion

Luce

Kali said:

Coordinated strategies can, and should do well. If you're fighting against a group and don't have support, you may not be left with many options for escape, but just like the enemy can coordinate their offenses/hindering, you can also coordinate with people on your side to save you when you're in a pickle.

Typically I assume "coordinated strategies" to be 3 people at least, but we can and have had 3-person-chunk strategies get shut down before (Preserve, as an example. Used to be possible for 3 Aquamancers to preserve the same target at the same time and kill them, no matter who they were or what defenses or resistances they had, for, like, 11-15 power between the 3.)

Aeldra

As this is turning into a whole thread from something that I asked @Parhelion about, I am genuinely trying to get a better grasp as to what to do in that kind of situation and I hadn't gotten a lot of information about it, though I have some things to now. Genuinely I feel though, that a 2 second escape window isn't very big for someone who, on a bad day, has 500 ms ping ( of course, that is, if you're drawing the short straw on earache).

So if anyone is willing to share further, genuine ideas as to how to better cope with such a setup, I'd be very thankful (can be in private, no need to spam the thread needlessly ) .

Drastrath

@Aeldra I would setup a kata for double blind with niricol, and I would also have the option to use smite. Smite will bypass their stancing, but it will waste 3 power. It would be a gamble on how lucky or good their stancing, but that means I will now switch my stancing to stance head right before I deathsong, now. I noticed in the log that it seems your target never changed even though your system picked up the deathsong. Have you thought about a trigger that has a secondary target system for instakills? You may already have this, but basically if you pull the deathsonger and set it as a instakillertarget then your blind alias or script would automatically target the deathsonger. 

This is my plan for triple pacifism with dramaturgy (two pacifies and beast). The secondary target is how I plan to handle instakills with double/triple pacify instead of blind. Basically, I will have an offensive and defensive target variable. 

I know you were alone, but in a group there is always the option for the group just to try to damage kill the instakiller because they will have their AC off. They will likely have the ability to turn it back on once they hit a certain threshold. 

Orael

One other thing I'd like to point out is that at 22:54:50ish - they attempt truehearing while having earache. This strips steam balance too.

Aeldra

Orael said:

One other thing I'd like to point out is that at 22:54:50ish - they attempt truehearing while having earache. This strips steam balance too.

But only if it were actually going through to be blocked by earache, right? In this case it was blocked by steam balance, but ... yeah, I didn't think of that.

Yeah, I have something like that, @Drastrath and likely, if I hadn't panicked I might've remembered to just attack them with a form that has blind in them. Panic definitely didn't make things easier for me there.

Drastrath

I always panic in instakill situations, and it is why I want to make a smart button/override script that takes over for me in those situations. 

Parhelion

Orael said:

One other thing I'd like to point out is that at 22:54:50ish - they attempt truehearing while having earache. This strips steam balance too.

Ok, so here's a question.

If you don't have steam balance, and you attempt truehearing, will it extend your steam balance?

And if so, and let's say you spam truehearing because you're panicking, will it keep you off steam balance until earache is down?

Orael

No, if you don't have steam balance, it just returns that line. It doesn't extend it.

Parhelion

Orael said:

No, if you don't have steam balance, it just returns that line. It doesn't extend it.

So while you have earache, if you try to truehearing, it knocks you off steam balance. Got it!

Maligorn

For me, sometimes the best way of countering dsong is to get your friends to move you, rather than trying to counter the enemy bard(s) in the room. Focusing on rescuing one person is has less room for error than trying to defeat a coordinated group of peeps.