So, this happened awhile back but I've been busy with stuff and haven't had a chance to post it
obviously it's not the whole log, but that's not important, the important thing is I went from 0 affs to dead in 3 forms (she was at 5mo) and besides burning power to invoke green (just so she can spam the same powerless forms again later) and sipping allheale (I was off allheale balance here, but again spam same forms)
What can I fix to not die to this.
Comments
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
So very much this.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
Starkick requires wounds to proc its prone. It's not guarantee'd even then, so it's not a 5-mo and then win button. I'm not sure if half of hemiplegy disables all stancing and parry immediately (ala paralysis). But the collapsed lungs was what killed you. I'm not sure if chest regeneration cures are like herb balances where the priority is randomized, but here, it looks like the regeneration cure removed your collapsed lungs before it removed chestpain while you had both affs on you.
This is the exact same problem as the previous shattered ankles stacking: the regeneration aff being applied here is being given at only a 1mo cost, which means the user only needs 1 more form in between to return to 5mo to execute the instakill. What's more, this regen affliction, if it takes priority over chestpain, is also every bit as potent as old shattered ankles spam, in the sense that it would constantly and always block chestpain curing, thereby guaranteeing a 100% insta.
Solutions.
On your own end, you can prioritize head/chest wound curing. You must always do that against tahtetso, in fact, to lower the effectiveness of starkick as much as you can. The exact wound requirements of starkick is in one of the old tahtetso threads out there, so look it up, but I think it's something like a percentage chance to prone after the target hits medium wounds, no chance before that. Keep head/chest wounds at below medium all the time if at all possible. Against a tahtetso, easier said than done, but it's the only real way to counter their no-cost sprawling move.
Malarious has also posted in the past, a list of alternate curing methods you can use to counter the insta. One that I can recall off the top of my head is beastmastery curing. There were others he mentioned, you'll need to dig into the old threads to look them up. Again, easier said than done to do properly, but at least there's that to tide you over with.
On the mechanical end, there are multiple fixes envoys/admin can consider:
1) Up the momentum cost of tahtetso collapsed lungs. This gives considerable more time before the tahtetso can recover to 5mo to execute their insta, not sure if it'll be enough of a window to cure chestpain as well, but since there's no leg regen aff in this strategy line, you can stand after curing hemiplegies, so there's that angle to go for as well. As a comparison, the tahtetso collapsed lung move is 400ka and costs 1 mo. The nekotai collapsed lung move is 500ka and costs 1 mo.
2) Make chestpain always the first in chest regeneration cure priority, ala crotamine in antidote cure priority. This way, collapsed lung cannot be used to block chestpain curing at all, preventing this strategy altogether.
3) Make it possible to stand with only 1 hemiplegy. This strategy also requires the target to be prone, and relies on half a hemiplegy stopping standing up from the first form in the log, coupled with collapsed lungs stopping hemiplegy curing in the first place. This change would affect warriors as well, though, so it may not be a good idea.
4) Make any form that gives chestpain prevent momentum building in that form, but not take any momentum. Similarly to the first solution, this makes it so the tahtetso has to use an additional form in between. This is a weaker fix, however, as collapsed lungs will still always prevent chestpain cure, which means it is still possible to create a situation where it is mechanically impossible to cure chestpain outside of power cures.
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Those are hotfixes, however. For the big-picture fix, we need to take a look at the tahtetso from a macro view. Unlike Ninja/Neko, the tahtetso insta is not a "apply insta and suppress curing", it's "suppress curing and then immediately insta" strategy line. The difference in nuance is minor, and the execution is mostly the same, but tahtetso are given many small tools that are fine on their own, but add up together to be a problem over and over and over when used with this strategy. Everytime we hotfix something tahtetso related, eventually something else crops up that is the same kind of cheese as the previous problem. Here are some of the small problems that crop up over and over in the years of tahtetso cheese:
Tahtetso have an easy, cheap, non-regen prone. Like a shofangi, this prone is wounds based, so it's not guarantee'd by any means, and on top of that, unlike the shofangi, this prone isn't a modifier (it's a kick) so the tahtetso gives up a lot of versatility and affs in return for using it repeatedly (and they have to use it repeatedly, because it is wound based). However, also unlike the shofangi, the tahtetso insta is not luck based or wound based. It's 100% guarantee'd if the conditions are met, and one of the conditions happen to be prone, which brings up the debate about whether or not such a cheap, non-regen prone is fair for such a set up.
Secondly, the tahtetso hemiplegy has been brought up over and over, not just in conjunction with the insta, but as a general cheese. And hemiplegy is a huge culprit in continually causing such cheese strategies to be enabled. The strength of hemiplegy itself cannot be underestimated, as even one of them can prevent standing, attacking and a plethora of other effects. Hemiplegy can also be part of a soft lock on its own, a strategy that the tahtetso haven't bothered capitalizing on much in recent times, but I forsee it being a problem eventually. The logical conclusion would be to nerf hemiplegy and nip the problem in the bud, before we discover if a tahtetso can indeed use the hemiplegy soft lock to cheese. However, hemiplegy is, again, an aff shared with warriors, who may or may not require the strong and specific effects of the aff to be as they are in order to be effective. Whether or not that's true is out of the scope of my knowledge, but if so, then that explains why hemiplegy has never been successfully nerfed. If tahtetso need a hemiplegy-like aff, give them one, but seperate it from the warrior hemiplegy so it can be tailored to suit the tahtetso's kit instead of giving them such a potent aff that they can spam and which synergizes so unreasonably with their insta.
The tahtetso insta not being channeled or delayed is a huge advantage over the Neko/Ninja versions, both of which are delayed, and the shofangi version, which is luck based. This is by no means a bad thing. I hate delayed instas just as much as I hate luck based instas, and I'm of the opinion that all monk guilds should have an insta that works like the tahtetso one. There is, however, one problem with the tahtetso insta - the conditions required for its execution. The conditions are all high priority and expensive affs, (the prone requirement basically needs a regen-cured prone, which is always expensive for monks, tahtetso included). Except that in this specific case, we see that creative usage allows a tahtetso to come up with a strategy where he can apply high priority and cheap affs to replace the required conditions. Creativity and versatility is one of the main draws of the kata skillset for some, and a very unique part of Lusternia's combat scene that is not seen elsewhere in the IRE universe. Rewarding creativity is a great idea, but the problem is that it creates unfair strategies where an insta-kill that should be high difficulty and high reward becomes an insta-kill that is way too low difficulty and high reward.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to fix the big-picture problem with the tahtetso, but they are often in the limelight because the creativity and expertise of the skillset's current users are showing us just how egregrious an advantage the different elements of the skillset design can combine to create.
Collapsed lungs is currently acting like old shattered ankles, a 1mo regen-cured prone, because it prevents hemiplegy from being cured, which prevents standing ... therefore it's a regen-cured prone (you have to regen cure the collapsed lungs before you can stand).
Given the previous precedence set with the shattered ankles problem, there should be no arguments as to the most viable hotfix for this situation: tahtetso-specific collapsed lungs should (must) be given a 2mo cost, to bring it in line with all regen-cured prones. (The alternative would be to nerf hemiplegy, of course.)
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
Your best bet is to reduce the chances of success for the sequence of forms as much as possible.
Prioritizing wound curing for the chest no matter what is the most important thing here (for this combo particularly). Keep the chest clear of wounds, after that the head.
If those body parts are clear of wounds, the monk will not be able to start a form with a starkick and successfully prone you, so they will have to (like in this case) precede the kick with a tahto hit to the same bodypart to build some wounds first.
The way the combo used here works means that that bodypart will have to be the chest, since a starkick to the head could not be paired with any tahto attacks that would contribute to the kill setup.
If the first hit in the sequence is a tahto hit, parry and stance together should make fairly sure it won't succeed.
Now the monk has two options: Use beast spit for paralysis or use a power attack.
If they use a power attack, they use the same amount of power for the attack that you need (via green/gedulah) to nullify its effect. So they gain nothing.
If they do it via beast spit, they can only try it every 12 seconds and it won't always work (poison gets resisted, beast might be out of the room after forced movement, they might have disloyalty). It will, in any case, increase the cycle time to repeat the same combo over and over.
I would personally recommend keeping allheale balance against a tahtetso exclusively for an attempt to cure the regen affs cured by allheale. Not sure if this is currently possible with m&m, but if you can configure what and what not to cure with allheale, blackout should never be cured with allheale when fighting a tahtetso. Only have the system use it when you actually need it (prone and chestpain + regen aff that prevents standing directly or indirectly like in this case), and only have the system do a power cure AFTER allheale has been used and has failed to cure a relevant aff.
All those things together might still mean that you expend power to stay alive where the monk doesn't necessarily need to, but I can say from experience as a tahtetso that they work pretty well to delay or prevent a kill (Crown has been doing this for a long time: use all available instant cures/allheale to cure things that prevent standing and/or chestpain, then fire a power cure if that fails). Of course, it gets more tricky in a group situation where you might be loaded with lots of other affs and so your chance to cure the right ones is much lower.
Pre-applying regen to chest helps a lot, too.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!