I've been thinking today about what might help me improve my combat skills, apart from the obvious "fight moar." I've got most of the ingredients, but I lack the free time required to really come up with the great tactics. The bits of feedback I've gotten from the better fighters I've fought has been amazing, and I'd like more of that, if at all possible. Or, if you want to just insult me in creative ways...

A big part of my problem is not reacting well to certain situations and forgetting the multitude of items and abilities I have at my disposal or just forgetting to put up a few key defenses before fighting a certain archetype.

Artifacts: 103, including several smaller toy things, but pretty much everything a warrior could need or want.
Skills: Poisons, Stag, Bonecrusher. Everything is transcendent, of course.
Level: just got Demigod yesterday.
Bonus: custom beast with 1850 trains worth of abilities (buying more when I get the chance).

Fight more is the only way really. Now you've got Demi, just spend the vast majority of your online time arena sparring people. I know I'll happy spar you lots, I need the practice myself.

Ask people to help you tighten up healing queues and stuff in Treant, since I assume you use it yourself.

Parry/Stancing could do with a little bit of work. Melville and Gregori developed an awesome parry/stance system which you could speak to them about.

I made Treant very flexible and customizable, but I do wish I would get more feedback on stuff like that. I think people are afraid of their changes becoming mainstream and then everyone has awesome curing. I understand, so feel free to suggest things and ask that they not be made part of the core system. I'll even pay for them, if they're good.

Whore your best move. No matter what people say or call you, if they die and you don't, you win. Plus I mean technically, to score kills, everyone has to whore something to get it.

Practice really makes perfect though. If you want to get better 1v1, spar more, if you want to get better in group combat, jump into the brawls.

I'd also like to think it comes down partly to your own mentality when it comes to offense vs. defense, if you feel that an awesome offense is the way to win, then you'll probably want to make the appropriate race/weapon/skill combo to make the most of that. Moon BC, or something. If you value defense a lot more, just tighten up your curing a ton so you have the time to develop a strategy and/or see how the enemy cures/reacts and then appropriately deal with that.

But yeah, just getting a feel for things really helps out a ton. I sparred Lyco tons of times in the past and Chade a bunch of times yesterday and sparring both helped improve my mangle/amputate/choke curing, heh.

Practice! Practice! Practice! The funny thing about combat is that there's a long stretch where you're just absolutely positive that either you suck and that it's impossible (combat is too hard!), or that it must be that your skills are crap and everyone else's needs a nerf (combat is imbalanced!), but then one day something "clicks" and you find yourself winning more and more battles (the sweetest thing is when you begin winning against those who have traditionally trounced you). You know you've reached that point where you find a rhythm in combat and it almost feels like your keyboard is a musical instrument that you're playing. (Yes, I know from experience.) And don't be afraid to think out of the box--I've seen over and over again how everyone thinks some guild is awful but then someone begins using skills that no one else does in original ways and suddenly the guild is considered overpowered. Also, whatever system you use, you should at least be familiar enough with the scripts to understand them to be able to edit them and write you're own. Oh, and the best combatants rarely are off balance/equilibrium (at least in the heat of battle).

I'm sure you meant ON balance/equilibrium!

All good, general advice. Thanks for the encouragement so far.

I should hope I'm familiar enough with my combat system, since I built the entire thing myself! Building offensive macros on top of it has proven to be a little more challenging than I thought it would, simply because I'm trying to account for the various states of myself and my target.

Anything more specific would be great, too. For example, I was considering adding Stagstomp after a knockdown, unless they've stood up, of course. It's not an ability I see warriors using (partially because there are only like two Stag warriors), and I though it'd be worth a try.

I'm not to worried about my parry/stance system becoming part of mainstream Treant. It requires a minimum level of skills in Combat to use and so wouldn't be for the very new people. I typically charge for it since Melville and I spent a number of hours/days getting it just right with advice from people like Ceren. The few people I have sold it to (and yes I am picky about who I do sell it to) have all come back with positive feedback though.

If you want a look at it send me a message on google, Zarquan. I've happily sent you other things I work on so don't mind showing this to you as well.

Well if you're talking about actual strategies, dropping ancestralcurse wherever you've decided to stand your ground is always a good idea. Drop a totem too if you really want. Stagstomp is definitely underappreciated when it comes to warriors, so is gore.

You can try doing knockdown with mantakaya/calcise then if you're fast enough, stag stomp and just chain/repeat it to build for lock/brainbash/whatever. I'm not sure if that's possible with your race choice though (Igasho right?).

Actually, I'm a changeling, currently Krokani for the Bonecrusher bonus. I was Human for a good while to get the XP bonus.

The totem helps when I'm standing my ground, as you say, but I find myself chasing people much more often. The curse just never seems worth the power cost, especially not against just one or two people.

1vs1 the totem probably doesn't help much if they are runners, but in a zerg I noticed that both curse and totem (when I was still HS) could sometimes mean the difference in a fight. Passive healing for every ally and passive afflictions for every enemy.

How would elfen lord stag fair? Elfen lord moon is pretty crazy for stats.

Oh there you go, abuse the double tap then since you're krokani.

If you're fast enough, bonecrusher is more than enough to kill people so long as you keep knocking down and abusing calcise/mantakaya. The cool thing with Bonecrusher is that you can score mangles early if you use calcise, and that keeps people down longer so you can start building up the head wounds. You can also try winding them while they're on the ground to keep them prone too.

And yeah, people run, but what can you do. Chase them with scent and repeat.

P.S. Elfen lord is pretty OP, should use that too, but krokani is more than enough.

First. Drop stag. Don't be a Xenthos.

Second. Spar. Spar to win. Don't pause if something goes haywire, adapt midfight and keep going.

Third. Use delay-causing actions. The things to look for are things that eat up the other person's time or screw up their systems. This means paralysis, stun, and stupidity. The first two are guaranteed delays which are extended by latency and system. The third can deny certain commands and case .5-1s delays. Some systems handle stupidity so poorly it can get even more. Stacking between the three means you beat wounding and their offense.

Fourth. Use wounds. Damage knights are bad, especially now that weapons have returned to normal. Sure you can beef up to be a big heavy-hitting knight but why? You can instagib newbies and do f-all to people who can tank damage.

Five. Use power constantly. You should rarely, if ever, have more power on your bar than it takes to double lunge/crush or sweep/assault. If you're going for wane/stun etc (drop stag), keep power for that. Open with crushes.

Six. Abuse your spec. Windpipes with knockdown, use the five hit hero-maker, puissance throat crushes, use the calcise/mangle junk, and wind with mactans.

Seven. Develop a twitch-based control mechanic. Knights are too diverse to be completely alias driven, you need a solid set of macros/accelerators. I recommend the numpad. It's shaped like a body. You can use ctrl/alt/shift toggles for more options. Myself, I use add to toggle swing/jab, control-num is crush maneuver, and various other keys do certain things regardless of the mod. Point being it's fast.

I really need to do 7

Crow Eyepeck Desitrus.

Krokani is good for bonecrusher, but the best way you can improve your system is the parry. I've seen it in action (downloaded it the other day to have a look) and you could really stance to do your parry a lot better. I can help you with that if you wanna sit down and i'll show you my parry system which is pretty hot.

Also, you just need to get your maneuvers down, and work out what you want. Ideally you get yourself some 220+ wounding with 200+ speed hammers, rune them for 10% wounding, and go nuts. Use paralysis with knockdown to keep them prone a little longer, set up double mangles and also use stupidity with fractureskull windpipe slickness and concussion with crush head.

I'm sure I could find some old logs around the place if you wanna have a look at some of them.

EDIT: DROP STAG FOR MOON

You can aeon with moon right? I always wanted an aeon ability with bonecrusher. Aeon with concussion stupidity fractureskull windpipe and slickness requires like 3 cures before they can sip aeon, and during that time they are slowed and have a high failrate on actions. If you stack that up, you should be set up easily for a kill.

If it's any consolation, I personally think you hit like a truck. There's a few people that I absolutely hate to be around when I raid Serenwilde. Those being Iasmos and Akui. Akui for her traps, and Iasmos for the fact that he stuns and hits like an absolute truck despite splendours/nightkiss among other defenses. If you dropped Stag for Moon, you'd probably be even deadlier.

I gather that most people have a vendetta against Stag.

I'm afraid I may end up switching Stag for Moon, but I love my medicine bag so.

I have a partially twitch-based macro setup already, but I need to expand on that with more maneuvers and macros. I've got a decent head combo and a pretty good leg setup. I'll work more on the chest and gut. Is there anything especially useful you can do to a person's arms?

Thanks, Nienla! That is a consolation.