Hmm. Choke sounds like Lusternia's version of the aeon vibe in Achaea.

For warriors, it shouldn't be too difficult to fight it in. Target a limb with strikes, and begin to hack into it. Even doing it one blade at a time, it shouldn't be too hard to eventually get it to the point where poisons hit 100%, as they won't be able to parry/cure it if you're also using something like the stupidity poison (forgive me, I don't know the poison names yet). Sure, you're sacrificing the ability to do good wounding afflictions for the time being, but in the end it should prove good for you (especially if you're doing something sinister like mantakaya/stupidity).

Edited-

Actually it's one of the hardest things in Lusternia for warriors to deal with, especially BM/BC. Let me put things in perspective for you, I could wield no weapons (no parry) and you would never be able to do any damage to me with your best weapons because I could simply cure out of it. Also realize that in choke wiccans can output afflictions at mind blazing rates compared to the unreliable warrior afflictions by both wounds and venoms. In fact there is only one or two situations where fighting in choke is wise to do, being, you're absolutely sure one or two more hits will kill the opponent by some measure or you're very confident you can get a slitthroat or a slitlock in the very next hit (which in itself is a flawed battle plan).

Hm, I was always wondering what choke was...and now it turns out that I've already experienced it!

I think the problem with choke is how AMAZINGLY succumb works with it.. Drop choke, drop succumb, gg.

On the other hand, it's quite easy to escape it when they first drop it. Now they have a choked room that you can turn back on them, without their fae... *hint hint*

The bit you're forgetting is that some people play for reasons other than "to win". There's this weird thing called "having fun" some people cite, for instance (and even more surprisingly it's not exclusively the same thing). Admittedly, that odd motivation comes up more in other places than here.

I play to have fun, and that doesn't always mean winning the fight. When I die in choke, however, I don't feel like I'm having as much fun. I'm sure it's just me, and I DO plan to work on my choke curing (eventually). Thanks for the informative post, Diamante. Apparently, I had you all wrong!

Uh... except that warriors can't really stop tumble.

Hmm.

I guess I can see that for BM/BC. I don't think there is as big a problem as you think for AL/PB. Assuming I were trans, I don't think I'd have too much of a problem. I pretty much always get an affliction I'm gunning for if I hit the limb that I want. Also, I <3 cleave.

Though, I will take your word for it, but still develop strategies for fighting in choke.

I do have one question: Does choke afflict the caster?

Yes.

Goodie.

If it didn't, then fighting in choke would be a lost cause.

I suppose my post came off as a bit callous, but I don't feel it warranted the acid tinge in your post. Yes I'm aware some play to win. I am not one of those people. I play to enjoy the fight, many will attest that I will go out of my way to make the challenge much more difficult for myself in order to make it more interesting. Fighting multiple groups of people in choke is one such way, going back undeffed and often dying wholly so the other side can get the satisfaction of driving off a raider.

I also enjoy lusternia for the roleplay, though not nearly as immersive as some other games I play, I feel Lusternia has a lot of potential and I work to help enrich the environment of those I interact with. While sometimes there's not much to see when you're on the unfriendly side of my hexes, I truly have a sense of fairness and try to encourage a fun game for everyone. (Hence partially the originating of this post, I know for a lot of people choke is a lost cause because they are largely unable to attain a shadowdancer to practice with due to largely IC restrictions on sparring enemies.)

Choke is a very powerful weapon, no doubt, but it does have it's drawbacks. As far as the arguement of which is more powerful, single target aeon or choke, in 1v1 combat I would be far deadlier with choke, though I would be unable to fight the large groups that I do now. However in the same vein for someone who enjoys fighting alone, combat would become largely unfun for me because of the ever present "zerging" Not just in serenwilde, but in every nation. The power of single target aeon is expounded incredibly in fights vs non-Night users, because 1-2 people can keep the group target constantly aeoned while everyone else is able to continue at full speed. So while yes, I'm scary in choke, but 1v1 I'd be far more afraid of me if I had single target aeon, because there would be nothing slowing me down.

I'm more than willing to listen for -reasonable- suggestions on changes to choke, bar increasing it's power cost, due to the functionality of a wiccan choke is already very costly in many cases, and aeon is absolutely necessary to overcome curing as a wiccan.

--In regards to succumb, after extensive testing it is more than likely a design flaw which is making it very powerful against some opponents, and terribly weak against others.

This design flaw is that succumb does not care what your maximum mana is, it will drain the same on opponents depending on their skill in Magic. So while 800 a tick to me, when I have 7000 mana is paltry and covered largely by sprite, 800 a tick to someone like Geb who hovers around 3200 is devastating. I hope to address this in the future, but as envoys only have 2 slots a month to work with, and these two are taken up by bug fixes/downgrades already, It'll have to wait until next.

Not to knock your sense of fair play, but was it fair to kill me (with the help of Narsrim) in the Higher Planar Fulcrux completely unexpectedly and unprovoked? Nope, it wasn't, and hence it was most definitely not fun for me.

Good observation on the Succumb functionality, and I hope that one of the Envoys manages to get that formula adjusted soon. I've got less mana than Geb, and I lost mana very fast the last time Succumb hit me. Three ticks and I'm out. Ouch.

We were there for krellan at the time, he had come in shortly before you, I just assumed you came to defend him as the difference between him and you entering was roughly 10-15s, if that was not your intent, then I apologize.

Just hard to discern when a champion walks in a relatively less-travelled area that he's not there to help the Seren we were attacking

Pin leg stun, getting a pin leg streak going in choke is fun though.

Fair enough; it was unwarranted.

By way of explanation, I've tried to make this point many times before. "It's balanced" is not sufficient reason to say something should be added to the combat game. For instance, early versions of Knighthood might have been balanced, but were still unfun because everything was too random. Some abilities make combat less fun because they remove tactical options, or add frustrations. Abilities that make people reluctant to meet each other, so fights end up people staying in their nests refusing to close until someone else forces them to, make combat less fun. Etc. (And we're not even talking about whether abilities are RP-supporting here -- I'm only talking about how they contribute to the combat game.)

Choke makes combat less fun for a lot of people for various reasons -- for some, the pacing of combat in it is dull, for some it's the spamminess, for some it's the fact that it's almost a whole different game and they don't want to have to start over, for some it's the fact that they have no opportunities to practice in it, and there are other reasons. It's certainly not the only thing that makes combat less fun, but it's one of the more egregious ones.

None of this has anything to do with whether one can learn how to do it. I am sure I could have learned to fight in choke if I'd stayed around to do it. I'm sure I could even make my system able to prioritize and automatically handle curing in choke if I wanted to. I had been thinking about how to do that when Shadowdancers first came out, and I remember once after I retired Gwylifar thinking "oh good, I don't have to deal which choke after all".

Obviously to play in Lusternia you have to put up with things in the game's design you don't like. So if we have to deal with choke we have to deal with it. And in that case, it's great that you offered the information you did. But that doesn't mean we have to be happy about it being there. And I think we need to remember that "it's balanced" simply isn't a complete answer to "that shouldn't be there" since conversations do tend to veer into assuming that it is.

By the same token, it makes combat more fun for some people. I'm doing very poorly in choke right now, but after the first couple of spars I acquired a taste for the novel experience and am looking forward to learning to fight in it. I suppose it's a question of how you approach a new challenge.

I dislike choke, obviously since I'm a warrior, but it sure was fun to wreck a larger group who dropped it over a demesne. Ha!

Its doubtful that its as broad a question of how a person responds to challenges so much as it is an issue of personal taste. You can overcome particular challenges and still not enjoy having had to deal with them.

I dislike dealing with anyone at mugwump speed using aeon constantly while another fights, but it happens as often if not more often than I cast choke. Makes the fight hard, especially since my opponents are not slowed down in the least.

Oh, aeon whoring is ridiculous, I agree.. *eye Krellan*

But I'm guilty of team sapping, which is even worse (but costs power and has some req's) so maybe not worse...

Some things are just going to be more powerful, the thing is that you can do a whole group with choke. Yes, it can be a disadvantage, but choking someone into a demesne sure almost assured group death.