I'm just going to say.. I think one big benefit to Decapitate here over other realms is that there are so many ways to summon easily.

Wiccans, Tarot Guardians, Mages.

Terenas starts Decapitate, Narsrim waits and wisps, Aeons, dead Murphy.

Daevos starts Decapitate, Revan waits and demesne summons (timed to hit with demesne effects as well), dead Narsrim.

It seems to have more potential than sacrifice, at least.

Yes, Shiri, I meant that change for Pureblade only.

Fair enough then.

I'd like to see what would happen if they just made pureblade/axelord damage types, and blademaster/bonecrusher speed types. Doubt it will happen, but it'd definitely differentiate the two more, and play to their strengths.

Given the level of wounding pureblades are doing, I think most of this is unnecessary. In particular, reducing the time on Decapitate is entirely unnecessary; it is not supposed to be something you can get off easily, or even often. Eviscerate also seems to be asking an awful lot when you compare it to Disembowelment, its blademaster equivalent. If these changes were made in full, there would be no reason to have any other weapons specialization.

Frankly, at this point the only thing I think Pureblade needs is to have the bonuses from forging runes, drawdown, etc. be doubled for it, and for existing bugs to be worked out in it.

At present, relatively inexperienced pureblades with lowish skill levels are able, with almost no practice and no offense but strike strike strike, to outpace healing against tanky well-armored knights with good curing, which is something even fully buffed tritrans blademasters and bonecrushers are hard-pressed to do without some more sophisticated offense. And this isn't because of missing triggers; it's because even without a masterwork, they're simply doing more health and deepwounds per blow than anyone's healing balance can match. Gone (for now) are the days when two skilled tanky knights can pound on each other until one passes out from exhaustion with both of them staying near full health. I think that, right there, is already enough. Pureblade isn't as good at some of the more finesse-laden things bonecrushers and blademasters do, but they pile on the damage beyond what anyone else can do (save perhaps axelords) and faster than anyone can heal. That's their shtick. The lack of other shticks is not a flaw given how effective that one is with even minimal strategy.

I am not sure about Pureblades, but I am doing ALOT less damage and wounds with my waraxe than with my flails, and slower too. Right now, there isn't much sense in being an Axelord, except that I like wielding a big axe.

I'm suspecting that if we gathered enough data, we'd find that Pureblade is far more effective at lower skill levels than other specs at the same skill levels, but loses that advantage and maybe even turns into a disadvantage at higher skill levels. Either that, or it'll turn out it all depends on which kind of weapon you choose. Because I know a pureblade and an axelord that are like 0% of my might but are doing far more damage and wounding than they were before changing.

But I'm not going to dig for the data. Call it a cop-out if you like, retract my input for what little difference that makes, but I really don't care enough to argue, let alone research, at this point.

Test Dummy - Me
Relevant Skills:
Transcendent Pureblade
Transcendent Resilience

Stats:
Strength - 18
Dexterity - 12

Armor:
Field Plate - Cutting Defense: 83 Blunt Defense: 86

Weapons:
Claymore - Damage: 340 Precision: 325 Speed: 165

Test Dummy 2 - Alger
Relevant Skills:
Transcendent Blademaster
Transcendent Resilience

Stats:
Strength - 16
Dexterity - 16

Armor:
Field Plate - Cutting Defense: 83 Blunt Defense: 86

Weapons:
Rapier - Damage: 60 Precision: 200 Speed: 251
Rapier - Damage: 59 Precision: 189 Speed: 250

Blademaster Test

With a focused look, Alger strikes at you with a baleful rapier of darkened steel. The blade bounces off your sternum, delivering only a shallow puncture.
4672h, 3121m, 3122e, 10p elrx-
You bleed 14 health.
4851h, 3121m, 3122e, 10p elrx-
With a focused look, Alger strikes at you with a baleful rapier of darkened steel. The blade bounces off your sternum, delivering only a shallow puncture.

Wound Damage: 12

Pureblade Test

Focusing on his chest, you strike at Alger with a dragon-hilted claymore. Your blade bounces off his sternum, delivering only a shallow puncture.

Wound Damage: 15

Conclusion: I am not sure how great a effect my superior strength had on the results of the test. But I am willing to cede the point that two handed weapons deal out a bit more wound damage than one handed weapons. Because of the vast difference in the precision "score" between the rapiers and the claymore. My claymore has a score of 147, where as both the rapiers are above that. And would have the precision of 440 and 419 respectively if they were two handed. That does not mean I agree with the rest of your evaluation though, Gwylifar. Since its seems that you are unable to grasp the fact that two handed weapons have half the affliction capabilities of their one handed counterparts. And most of the afflictions in both Pureblade and Axelord are worthless to us because they are easily cured and can not be stacked with our one attack. I also find it hard to believe your anecdote about unskilled Purebladers beating tritrans and decently equiped warriors. On the subject of my skill suggestions though, I consider Eviscerate to be perfectly reasonable for a critical wound, and think you shouldn't compare it to the weak critical gut affliction in both Blademaster and Bonecrusher. Disembowel and Burstorgans have been complained about amongst the warriors for a long time, but it was never a really important issue to us. Solely because we didn't need either of them to kill, since we had other useful skills like Rend, Pinleg, Impale, and Heartpierce(of course Bonecrusher didn't have those options so I can understand why Murphy wants Burstorgans changed).

Test Dummy - Me
Relevant Skills:
Transcendent Axelord
Transcendent Resilience

Stats:
Strength - 18
Dexterity - 12

Weapon:
Axelord - Damage: 296 Precision: 411 Speed: 125

Test Dummy 2 - Alger
Relevant Skills:
Transcendent Blademaster
Transcendent Resilience

Stats:
Strength - 16
Dexterity - 16

Armor:
Field Plate - Cutting Defense: 90 Blunt Defense: 93

Axelord Test
Focusing on his chest, you strike at Alger with a huge waraxe of polished gold.
You viciously strike his ribs, forcing him to grimace in pain. (I struck 5 times)

Wound Damage: 16, 16, 16, 16, 16
Health Damage: 661, 661, 1100, 1002, 1035



Looking at Daevos test results, it seems that 325 vs 411 precision only contributes to 1 extra point of wounding damage. Is this intentional? Or the formula being used is only calibrated for 1-h weapon and therefore 2-h weapons with high stat are capped at a certain point?

All I know is, I have 13 STR, Expert PureBlade and a
Damage: 314 Precision: 353 Speed: 153
Masterwork claymore, and I can't kill a normal rat in a single swing.

Makes me so sad that even with a Masterwork weapon that I do less than half the damage a Novice Aquamancer with Adept Elementalism and 12 INT does.

daevos...

first you call me a dummy then you say you're superior!!! DIE!

heres an example of your 2 handed sword vs my rapier!

With a heavy overhand stroke, YOU slam a baleful rapier of darkened steel down
upon Kharvik, who partially parries the blow with a dragon-hilted claymore. You
hack through his neck like it's butter, and his head goes flying through the
air.
Kharvik's severed head lands on the ground with a thud and rolls around like a
top.
You have slain Kharvik.

I think you need to perform some more tests Gwylifar, because your experiences are extremely skewed. Every test I've done so far tells me two handers are doing a lot less damage and wounds than one handers, I don't know how the formulas work, but they're not scaled. Even bashing is far slower.

Daevos' suggestions would be the first step in balance, I really hope they get implemented, otherwise it's gonna be frustrating being a pureblade or axelord. There is just no way to kill anyone as a speed knight using either.

If you are comparing a low quality normal war axe to a high quality masterwork flail then that's why. On average, they should have the same speed. If the speed on the axe is lower than the flail then you probably have a garbage quality axe.

Since unless a pureblade is doing obscene amounts of damage against a soft target, we have no way of killing our target. Give us:

IMPALE
Bodypart: Gut
Wound State: Medium
Maneuver: Thrust-Cut
This maneuver will drive a blade completely through your opponent's gut and impale him or her into the ground.

Then we need REND to make use of it, at least a speed pureblade has some way of killing someone now.

If this isn't an option and the admin don't want pureblades to have impale, at least give us HeartPierce, I really can't see any options to work with at the moment.

All I can do is randomly slash around onto my target, but it's not achieving anything at all, there's nothing to work towards, can't stack bleeding, can't stack damage. At least as a blademaster I could keep my opponent still with pinleg and stack some form of bleeding with rend, or try finishing off with heartpierce damage.

Even if I, with some miracle, manage to get my opponent's limbs complete messed up, and chop off both arms and both legs, I still cannot kill them, there is nothing that'd be deadly, the bleeding from amputated limbs is the same as severed arteries: 50. I mean, it's only your arms and legs being chopped off right? They can still tumble away if I'd go for decapitation after reducing them to a torso with a head.

Add to that the fact that you can:

- stand up while having your legtendons sliced through..
- attack while having your arms crippled..
- wield weapons without having arms..
- and remain standing without having legs.

Then CrackElbow, is supposed to prevent parrying, except it only prevents it on one arm, the other arm can still freely parry, the cure is instant, how am I supposed to deliver two cracked elbows if it's instantly cured and I only get one slash per round?

Heh, I took around 1100 damage to my head with a 87 cutting helm from a claymore. Can't kill? I sip for 500!

Bull, you sip for 900-1000, you sparkle for 650 and you regen 400, that's almost 2K worth of healing.

I can slash into Xenthos for 25 minutes without him doing anything, and I will not kill him, there is nothing I can do to him. I can put all his limbs to -300, and it won't bloody budge him, there's not a single tactic a pureblade can use to harm anyone.

Gah, should have stayed blademaster, the concept of pureblade is nice, but there's just no way you're ever going to harm anyone. Unless some drastic changes are going to be made, the pureblade skillset will remain completely and utterly useless.

Err.. 900? Surged, sure, but then I've got like NO mana and can't puer off wounds and hold a decent attack. I can't get both here, Thorgal! Even still, the attacks come faster than my sip balance recovery. I will run out of something, sometime. Perhaps Pureblade is no good for you because of that katana? ;) Try a claymore.

Guess, I'll just hafta ignore you!

Anyway, we found one way to kill someone, if you manage to chop off both arms before the first arm is cured, they're severely hindered in their healing and curing. Too bad the limb has to be far below 0 wounds before amputate starts happening.

Another suggestion:

* let having one or both legs chopped off prevent tumble, so decapitate becomes a possibility.