OK Many people have considered choke a problem with lusternia for a long time, thus many attempts have been made to change it and also it has been complained about a lot. I am not entirely sure if there are any changes in the works for choke at the moment, if so i guess this is all pointless, but ill just give my ideas anyway for now...

To start with the main problem with choke and "fixing" it has suffered the problem of most people not understanding the opposing argument. Many people have cried nerf while others try and defend what they think is a balanced or necessary skill. The problems being..

People that don't use choke do not want to waste time making reflexes or learning to fight in it because it does take a lot of work and effort. It takes recoding your entire system to work in choke, possible but annoying. Why should everyone have to spend so much time so they can fight in this one skill? The answer to be honest they shouldn't have to.

People that do use choke think the opposite, they did waste the time learning and know that it is possible for ANYONE to fight well in it if they try and learn and can't understand why if they learned other people won't.

Now i have already stated i don't think it is viable for everyone to learn to fight in choke, possible yes but not viable. However when faced with this people again cry "nerf" which i have to say is not what is needed. Choke does not need a nerf, it needs to be changed. Some people might think i am being pedantic and that change/nerf is the same thing but i assure you it isn't and this leads us to the problem itself..

Choke is needed for shadowdancers to have a viable killing offense at top tier, they can't kill good combatants without it, thus when everyone just cries for it to be nerfed it isn't viable. What needs to be done is it needs to be replaced with something that has the same killing potential but does not require the basin to recode there entire reflexes and does not allow for one shadowdancer to take down 15 or so people at once.

Now for my actual idea. We do not want a new "wane" for shadowdancers so lets try for something slightly different.

Shadowdance Choke
Will Bind a target in shadows choking there mind and disrupting there mental equilibrium and distorting there perspective of time.
(I don't care about the actual description just felt i had to put something...)

So what does this mean..
The choke effect (as in the current effect) will hit that one person bypassing quicksilver can only be cast in a room in which shadows are released. To cure choke you "Writhe Choke" or just writhe if thats how you choose to. It takes a standard 3 or so seconds to writhe out of, plus the one second to get the command through. Casting choke would cost the user a base of 3-4 seconds equilibrium so as it is if all they do is choke you are out no effect so obviously it requires some setup! The first part being like impale+crucify etc you cannot writhe out of choke while off balance/equilibrium. This would make up for the fact with aeon you can give anorexia, with this instead you keep them off balance, brownie + epilepsy + scabies etc and of course the usual sleeplock comes into play.

This would cost 0 power, or 5 power to hit all enemies in the room, keeping its room attack status for a higher cost. The reason for its 0 power cost is that alone you can writhe it will do nothing to you, but with a cost it would be impossible for the dancer to keep the hexes/toad etc going with a powercost lumped in.

Sorry for the long post ive probably forgotten some points so feel free to ask questions etc or give more ideas! If its already being changed well bah who cares X)

Well, I thought Choke was the same as the retardation vibe in other games. Incurable aeon effect to everyone in the room. If that is so, then this fix would be a massive, massive nerf to the skill. Also, if the point is to prevent the need to recode systems to work within the Choke effect, this change wouldn't change that.

The only manner I can think of to change such a thing without destroying those that use it would to replace the effect to be a room-effect similiar to concussion's effects that hits all enemies. Not sure that would be kind, though.

I don't think this would work. Ignoring the nerf to Shadowdancers for now, it would just be far too easy to stack important writhe cures. You know it would only take an hour for a choke/crucify team to be set up. Less, if everyone's logged in.

That too. I always forget to consider how people could abuse things to suck all the fun out of others' enjoyment.

Balance it for one vs one there are lots of things which can be stacked in groups? And Moiraine what do you mean about the system thing? making yourself writhe instead of fighting for 5 minutes in aeon? VERY BIG difference?

Edit: Also Esano that doesnt make sense changing it would mean you can't be uncurably choke crucified also anyone that comes to help will be choked instead your just suffering from 2 afflictions you can cure..? The same as aeon crucify..

Also it would not be a nerf as the caster ISN'T choked

Choke is close to Retardation, except that it lacks one of the main drawbacks. Retardation not only slows down everyone in the room, it also destroys the mage's passive effects (vibes) over time. Choke does not remove hexes, unsummon fae, or anything like that.

And IMO that is the big problem with it. Choke + passives are impossible to survive. See: chokemesme.

Personally, I'd say that if choke is dropped in a room all passive effects should "hibernate", as in not trigger anymore until choke is gone. That can go two ways then. On the one hand it will prevent a chokemesme, but on the other if the SD finds him/herself in an enemy demesne they could "remove" those negative effects like that and possibly increase their chances to win.

This would remove it from being a room effect, make it curable, make it different from wane, allow shadowdancers to continue using balance hindering tactics + sleep locks while allowing viable curing and defence against it in which you don't need to revamp your system.

AKA Shadowdancers can still fight, you dont have to learn to fight in choke just have to add another thing like aeon to your system except you writhe instead of sip phlegmatic..how is this not better..

If it helps you any.. nothing is going to happen to choke to begin with. Either solution would take some massive recoding and if someone requires massive recoding it isn't done. Period. Problem solved.

Buuut It is still a fairer balanced solution to the problem of choke! Fixes it so SD can still kill 1 vs 1 without having the big group impact on the game..

It is a big difference, yes, but not to a system. If your system is properly set to handle a curable aeon affliction, it'll handle the incurable affliction just as well. No, it isn't handled the same way, but both afflictions require the same effort in coding. I've fixed enough systems to do both, since both afflictions occur in the other IRE games. Is that not so here?

No...Because only about 0.1% of people in lusternia can fight in choke, but about 90% can cure and fight properly vs aeon + sap... curing an affliction, and fighting in it and curing in it indefinitely are VERY different things

I'm kinda ignoring the original suggestion here as I strongly feel we don't need Choke to be another form of entanglement. If it's going to change, this isn't the change.



You really need to lighten up on the attitude and stop letting it cloud your judgment. In case you haven't noticed, things have been massively recoded on more than one occasion to address issues. Or maybe you missed the whole monk momentum thing...

Zarguan the entanglement theme was just to make it different from wane/aeon also allowing it to be based off shadows rather then quicksilver. It also stops anorexia/asthma etc blocking the curing of it which is the tactic moondancers use but gives you the balance lock option instead, which although harder is balanced by the fact that writhing takes longer then instant sip/focus cure.....If you think there should be a different way to cure then shout it out!

No, not 'properly'. Ninety percent of the time, people design a system that shuts down completely except for attempts to cure the aeon. That is a bad thing to do. Anyone willing to do it properly is half a dozen lines away from also having a system that handles retardation/choke as well.

I'm sorry but i completely disagree with you on this one, having a system that knows when to allow you to utilize your offense and when to cure what etc and keep up in choke as well as sipping scrolling sparkling...well its insane and even if you can do it, why? when instead you could have an affliction you can work to cure by writhing and get on with a normal fight?

edit: Didnt even mention parrying stancing curing wounds etc...

Why wouldn't you want your system to do all that with a standard aeon, too? As one who's been afflicted with pretty much everything under the sun while aeoned, including ye olde vodun concussion and other time-honoured favorites, having a simple shutdown+cure reaction to the aeon effect is a bad idea. Not always, but since when do high-tier fighters just assume that everything will be peachy?

Because even when your afflicted with lots of other things, it is still 95% of the time quicker to just cure the aeon and then cure everything else instantly without having to wait for the 0.5-1 second ticks...Plus as soon as the aeon is gone you can fight back at the same time which in the end is the point...

But let me make one thing clear quickly..I totaly agree with you it can be done should be. I argued this for a long time when people moaned that i used choke. And yes everyone can and could learn but the point is they won't, they haven't and the refuse to. Fact. And since the consensus is that yes we could but don't want to it needs to be changed...Also it does have such an unfair hit on groups (who haven't bothered to learn!)

A system that cures Aeon well has NOTHING to do with a system that can cure in Choke. Those are two VERY unrelated matters. The first targets the curing of a single, specific affliction; the second requires the entire system to deal with that affliction. It's like the difference of building a system that expects a 0.2 latency and one that expects 1.0 seconds AND will not send anything until those 1.0 seconds are over. Different architecture really.



I thought I had made it clear by now that 99% of my posts on the forums are meant ironic, sarcastic or full of black black humor. There's hardly any thread here that requires a serious, thought-through response. Additionally, arguing on forums almost never leads to anything constructive. That too makes it all so troll-worthy.