I'm going to be a ferrous cranium here and say: solution to choke - learn to cure in it. Simple.

I'm glad someone finally understands my frustration with the idea behind this skill.
Ah... there ya go, I'm not agreeing with you about this. :\\ I think there should be -less- catch all exception skills, not more.
I think that shows one of the major flaws in the envoy system that has frustrated myself, and others for so long; and no, I don't think this part of the issue is choke-only, or glom-only.

Making choke 2 seconds is just dumb. Some of us can actually aeonchase choke. It would make it even harder to fight in for those of us who know how to.

Except that you left out the major point of that post: Which is that there is no consensus on what to do with it. If there was, a veto wouldn't matter.

I'm not sure why you decided to leave that part out in order to make an argument unrelated to the discussion at hand, especially when that argument is already addressed by the line you left out, but there y'have it.

I'm not sure I follow this. One person says it will make it too easy, one person says it will make it too hard. :S

Why would it be harder to fight in?

Edit: I'm choosing to ignore the typical 'learn to deal with it'/'I don't have a problem with it, therefore its fine'/'you haven't fought as much as me, therefore I'm right' responses that are so symbolic of the usual envoy process.

Maybe because you do everything twice as slowly?

...yes, but its only a delay. It's not 1 command per 2 seconds. It's every command delayed by 2 seconds. I'd find it much easier to fight in (especially without a top-notch system) than the current version of choke. Don't you have a good system?

I still don't understand your position.

Oh!

Never mind!

It would make it much easier to fight in.

The suggestion was actually: Every action you do is added to a queue when you do it, with a 2s delay. Thus, if you type CLOT;CLOT;CLOT;CLOT;CLOT;POINT STAFF SHAMARAH;CLOT;CLOT;CLOT, it would spam you with the thick shadows message 9 times.

2 seconds later, all 9 of them would go through.

So no, it wouldn't be harder, just... pretty much ineffective.

Why would it be ineffective?

I think my 9-command example right up there kind of shows why. You just have a 2-second delay on actions, but you can easily still ride balance/herb queues just as you can now.

For example, point staff avaer;clot;clot;outr yarrow;eat yarrow;sip health. <-- All one one line, goes through 2 seconds later.
2 seconds later, when this stuff starts going through: eat another herb, because you just got herb balance again.
2 seconds later, use your attack / sip health again. Your attack went through 2s ago, so you'll get balances again in 2s.
2 seconds later: You've just done a full round of all your curing/attacking! Total delay: 2 seconds.

Alternatively, for hexists: Draw, wait 1s, Draw again, wait 1s. First draw finishes, draw another. Second draw finishes, draw another, etc. Again, you're queuing up the actions, so it only slows down your first bit. After that, you're going through your chain unaffected.

So all it really does is slow your start down by 2 seconds, and after that...

Well, you have Forren's post just up above about chaining actions as an example.

That shows why your offense isn't going to be as effectively nullified, particularly if you rely on multiple command attacks. I totally agree, and that's intentional - you'd have to rely on active hindering to prevent them effectively.

I'm not sure why it would in ineffective in hindering curing though. It won't be as amazingly effective as it is now, that's obvious. I don't think it would be useless though. I'd like to see it tested to see what's possible with it.

Out of curiousity, by how long does ectoplasm increase balance time?

Except that it doesn't just give the ability for full offense-- it gives the ability for full defense as well if you are chasing balances, as I showed.

Full offense, full defense... hm.

It's not quite full offense. You don't know when you're going to be hindered, or when you're going to hit shield, or when rebounding is going to go up. If stupidity fires, you can't try again for two seconds.

It'd make combat more unpredictable. Good, bad, indifferent? Couldn't say.

dunno how much ectoplasm slows down balance but mostly it's used for the 3 sec eq it takes to scrub it off

You have much to learn about ectoplasm, then.

Ectoplasm is used for the 3 second eq because if you don't cure it you get utterly annihilated. That's why.

That's why you try to use it when they can't cure it right away?

Choke in group combat is a funny thing.

In a lot of senses, it is imbalanced. In that it drastically alters the dynamics of combat for everyone.

The single largest imbalance choke possesses is that it forces essentially everyone to fight completely different than they are comfortable with/experienced at/used to. Because of the constant uncurable aeon, most systems typically crash under choke, thus rendering the fighter down to manual action, which, due to an over reliance on systems, hinders even some of the most experienced fighters in the game.

This is compounded with the idea that Shadowdancers benefit greatly in choke, due to the (to quote an earlier poster) "hordes of passive afflictions", which consist of

-A tick of sleep
-1-2 seconds of balance loss
-possible, though unlikely paralysis
-one random affliction of pox, worms, dysentery, sunallergy, or, rigor mortis
-some minor mana loss
-200 bleeding
-50 gold being stolen.

Affliction wise, at least in the passive sense, you are only given 1 affliction every 12 seconds. Two if for some odd reason you don't have earwort defence.

The simple fact comes down to, warriors lose out in choke, full stop. However, druids, mages benefit. (A good mage of either guild is essentially impossible to choke against, due to the sheer ridiculous number of passives) Moondancers suffer for want of redcap and barghest, though the barghest is relatively easily negated, and largely in choke the fight boils down to hexes, which both guilds have access to. Moondancers in essence, when fighting a shadowdancer, are essentially on a level playing field, since they know choke will be present, and don't even particularly have to work with aeon, instead just focusing on hexes. Krellan is the only Moondancer who has grasped this concept in recent memory, and oddly enough Krellan is probably the single most capable adversary I have found in choke, apart from mages, because of his familiarity with Manual curing and use of hexes, which is basically, at least in my case, exactly why I perform well in choke. Bards also do quite well, with maelstroms and songs being especially aggravating in choke, and guardians can do well, though unfortunately the nymph does a number on them. My suggestion? Douche the nymph to only work on non-ent mobiles.

I have often been heard to say I would take aeon over choke most days, and yeah, probably would still. What you do end up with is moondancers with two slightly more offensive fae. I think people lack the creativity with aeon that was the keystone of Nasrim's and Tuek's days as moondancers, but eh, I'm willing to drudge up their old strategies, even apply a few of my own I have come up with.

But the admin won't do this, that much is clear.

So how to balance choke?

At least by rule of general opinion, choke is a skill that needs changing. Now to be honest in my opinion I largely think that is because of the sheer inability of the majority of the playerbase to develop manual-based skill and timing, which, considering that most people buy systems for that reason, isn't really a fault of anyone and is a viable arguement against choke.

To be honest, I've largely exhausted my ideas for choke, it is difficult these days to come up with something, particularly in the manner of balancing it.

To give the moondancers an ability to remove/prevent choke doesn't work, as that does nothing for city folk, and also gives the moondancers some limited control on the pinnacle of guardian/wiccan combat, in that without choke/aeon, it is next to impossible to overcome a decent system's curing capabilities. So we can count this suggestion out entirely.

The single most effective suggestion I can think of, is to half the delay time on choke, reducing it much like Sap was. Shifting the delay to .5s makes for an inhibitor that is, by default, 50% weaker, enabling healing to go at 200% it's previous speed. This change , in some eyes, crippled sap, but in most people made it manageable. I see it as the simple most solution, if anything it is definately worth testing as a balance, without falling into the severe nerf/severe buff/severe nerf/severe buff see-saw that sometimes happens with skills.

Suggested, vetoed, and tossed aside already. I think I was the only one who liked that solution.