Alright, a lot of people lately have been asking how to deal with choke, they seem to claim it's impossible but I deal with it on a constant basis against multiple opponents and manage to come out ahead most the time, so some simple tidbits of advice.

First of all, some facts about choke:
--The ability requires that I release shadows into the room, which has about a 2s delay and uses 1 shadow from my cauldron.
--The ability costs 3p
--Choke gives the same effect as aeon to everyone in the room
--Choke cannot be cured, but will fade after 5 minutes along with all other shadow effects.
--All actions in choke are delayed by 1 second.


So ew choke, this nasty nasty ability, how does one deal with it?

Well first off, knowing that choke delays actions by 1s, you have to consider what this all entails. This means that outrifting herbs will take 1s, eating herbs will take 1s, there will be a delay on your commands to attack by 1s.
--Whenever getting into a combat situation, have an alias that will outrift 5-10 of every herb curative. This will save you time on a dramatic scale, should you need to eat any herb in order to cure.

Knowing that choke will delay your actions by one second, learning to "Chase the eq/balance" Will help a lot.
This means that you can send the command to attack while off balance, because it will take one second to go through. So if you learn to send commands 1 second before you regain eq, you effectively lose no time while fighting in choke

--Remember that not all afflictions are deadly. Things such as pox, asthma, worms etc and most warrior afflictions are very weak, and do little to hinder. In choke your curing should be most focused on afflictions that : a) Pose an immediate threat to your life. Slitthroat, succumb, things that will quickly put you in danger. or Hinder your offence/movement--Paralyse, webbing, lack of insomnia, stupidity.

Alias commands for insomnia, writhe, focusing of body and mind, and learn to recognize these afflicts as you gather them, they will severely enchance your ability to fight in choke if you can cure these effectively.

Since 90% of the time you will be fighting a shadowdancer with hexes when having to deal with choke. I'll explain what the fae do now.

Fae--Fae are the main support offence of a wiccan. Moondancer and Shadowdancer fae are almost the exact same, with the exception of three that are different and reflections of Moon/Night Avatar.

--Fae tick every 12 seconds, with the exception of the Sylph.
--Fae die very easily, 1-2 hits will kill most fae, any critical will certainly do it.

Fae perform as follows
--Leprechaun: This little bugger poses no threat to your health, but will take some 50 gold from your inventory everytime it ticks.

--Brownie: This is one of my favorite fae, when it ticks it will steal 1-2s of balance from the target.

--Pigwidgeon: A wonderful fae, it can be ordered to FOLLOW @TARGET, and will on occasions trip that person should they try to walk while followed.

--BARGHEST: The first of the Night fae. Every 12 seconds, he will howl, which will paralyse any personal enemies of the shadowdancer on prime, and anyone off prime that does not have the deafness defence up. This means at inept discipline, you are looking at 4s of paralyse for every 12s of combat -if- you are not deaf. At transcendant discipline, this will lower to only 1 second of paralysis for every 12 you fight. Aliasing focus body and keeping up the deafness (a bit difficult right now since earwort is so rare) Will drastically reduce this creature's power.

--Sylph--This nasty fae will knock enemies from the trees on a 1-2s balance, but in choke it's largely irrelevant, use levitation.

--Pixie: The second most powerful fae in choke, to the unprepared. She will hit with one tick of sleep, stripping insomnia if you have it, and putting you to sleep if you do not. Alias insomnia and make a loud echo whenever she hits so you know to put it back up again, and you'll be much more able to handle her in choke.

--REDCAP: Clearly the most powerful of the fae in choke. This nasty critter will hit you with 300 bleeding every 12 seconds. For most people this is the fae that means their death if they are unable to escape choke for a period of time. I'm currently envoying for it to be reduced down to 225 bleeding, but for now you're best means are ample use of chervil when able or to kill the fae. Clotting in choke is generally not an option.

-Banshee: She drains mana, nothing you can do about her.

-SLAUGH: Another afflicting fae, but largely not worth fearing. She can afflict with pox, dysentery, worms, sunallergy, or rigor mortis.
For the most part, the only one of any worry is rigor mortis, as it will hinder your escape.

--Pooka: A very powerful fae, he'll allow the shadowdancer/moondancer a chance to give you an order every so often. Watch for him to pooka you to relax metawake and things of that nature.

So total, every 12s you will recieve: 1 hit of sleep, 1-2s of balance loss, 300 bleeding, some mana loss, possibly paralyse, and one of 5 afflictions from slaugh. Outside of choke this is not so terrible, but inside of choke it can be difficult if you are unprepared to deal with choke.

Metawake will help you in choke considerably. While it can be relaxed, when it is up you will not be able to be put to sleep for any length of time, which is normally the main tactic of a shadowdancer.

Tumble--This ability is one of the best in any situation, but it definately helps in choke specifically, especialy when used in conjunction with metawake.

Of course the best option in fighting is simply to avoid choke, but when such is inevitable, hopefully the tips above will help.

Some other things, regarding hexes, that will help considerably.

When you see--

%1 grabs some glowing glyphs and throws them at you.

Assume -always- that one of them is sleep. Even if it is not, assume it was. Trigger it or use an alias to put insomnia back up in the event it was.

Other things to note that when fighting in choke, it is always best to afflict things that take staged healing to cure.

Such as Paralyse/Impatience, Anorexia/Asthma/ Regeneration afflictions and things of that nature. Keep an eye out on what you're being hit with, and make sure to heal the things that hinder your movement/attack or pose a serious threat first.

When vapors is cast at you, most are oft to heal it. One thing to consider is that vapors hits once every 20s, so if you simply cure the blackout, but not the affliction, you will be essentially immune to further cases of blackout for at least 15s or so, instead of the caster being able to simply throw it at you once more.

Hope some of this helps you all.

Thanks for all the great information! One quick question: the 1s delay on all actions - is this just like aeon in the sense that, if I (say) typed in many different actions every 1/2 s, it would keep resetting the 1s-delay timer and nothing would ever get done?

Yes, it is exactly like that.

(Diamante: it's discipline that affects focus body speed, not discernment. You probably know that and just typoed it, but it's worth correcting anyway.)

Ooops, yeah I knew that just got the words confused, it's like 3am here. Been fixed

Good show for posting this.

Reminds me, I need to finish coding my choke curing >.>

I'm surprised no ones thought to actually code a choke/retardation curing system considering how long its been around.

Very nice of of you to post for those who are unaware. Good form.

A few things are slightly mistaken but I won't nitpick you.

Today is my "be nice" day, so I won't comment on the combat ability of those who complained about Choke to you...

I'll just say that I hope this thread will teach them how to deal with this skill better.

There are reasons to complain about choke that are not dependent on combat ability, in or out of it.

Yes, if, and only if, you are a warrior. No one else can really make much complaint about choke, aside from it being hard to deal with due to their own inability to cure effectively.

Thanks Dia, meant to reply earlier but the forums decided it hated me.

Ahem..

Thank you, really. It's hard to come across ways to deal with it unless you can practice in it and few Shadowdancers would be willing to do so for a Seren in my case.

This helps, a lot.

Shouldn't Two-Handers actually have it ok? Since they aren't effected by having their swings thrown completely out of whack?

Actually, I'd think you'd most definitely have an advantage over most non-Guardian/Wiccan classes, unless you're in a mage's demesne to begin with.

Which, when combat is 1v1, you can generally expect to fight the mage/druid in their demense. I've no problem choking against a mage fully in their demense, there are ways to deal with the afflicting that they give even in choke.

That said, two handers have it better than one handers, but warriors in general suffer due to lack of any passive offence, other than say dart traps, which are really f**cking annoying if you drop choke and one fires.

I may code one up, it's just that you can't code auto tumbling, so you'd have to turn it on and off easily, and manually leave.

I applaud you for making this.

Actually I think choke does deserve to be complained about TBH. Shadowdancer is the only Lusternian class I've played so far that I'll freely admit is overpowered. I don't think choke is the issue so much as some of the things shadowdancers can do in it, but eh.

Absolutely not. Choke is one of the most, if not the most, effective skill against warriors.

Though as you touch on, two handers feel the effects slightly less if said warrior chooses to fight in the choke.

True. You still retain the advantage of being the one deciding when and where to choke though, and being prepped for it. It's one thing to know how to fight in it, and another to know when it's coming down and have a plan for that moment.