I'm not sure where are you coming from with your idea that 1v1 won't be affected. It will be negatively affected if re-choking is delayed. I'm not a fan of this idea at all because it'll negatively affect shadow-affected skills, like nk and lash, that are necessary to gain an edge in choke.

Should just get rid of choke altogether. SD's need choke about as much as Moondancers do... and MDs don't even have choke :P

But they do have Aeon and skills that work with / depend on Aeon, while Shadowdancers are built around Choke instead.

PS: "Delete Choke" +1'd with your post!

Turnus:


I would worry more about them choking a druid, hello invincible melds.

Edit at Vadi: I didn't read your post before adding mine. But that's why I said adding stealing shadows that are consumed as a prereq for choking. Balancing can be done by adding a mechanic similar to how "rub death" works if that's not enough for balancing group combat, 1v1 you can just get the shadowsteal and any "rubs" from the start and not affect when you choke one bit.

Edit2: And I'll stop being a broken record and repeating this now :P

They could make the meld not hit anyone but the choker :)

Still, I guess giving only Glomdoring a way to deactivate melds would be a problem. But choke is a good example of why the IRE MUDs require some 1v1 and small group combat. Getting rid of one of the most unique things in the game, i.e. choke, would be a real shame, but it's impossible to balance it in large fights.

In the other games where choke is called retardation, in Aetolia they took it out (and I find Aetolia boring these days, no coincidence) and in Imperian and Achaea they make it kill your vibes as it's up. Even then, it only became balanced after they gave it to every side or gave every side a skill to destroy vibes. A bit of an anecdote, but I view that as even more evidence that this skill will never be balanced and still keep its appeal in large group fights.

I guess there's one other alternative, disable choke from being used when there's more than a certain number of people in the room. But that would be kind of lame.

Honestly, I don't think a healer should be as viable in a 1v1 situation. They have better -healing-, and thus should have a sub par offense.

I think it's pretty clear that a healer shouldn't be as good as a nonhealer, and quite frankly, I've no problem saying that they need to be "viable" 1v1 at all. It's quite, quite possible to avoid 1v1 situations, and if it is a big deal to be viable 1v1, there are other options.

Honestly, I don't think a healer should be as viable in a 1v1 situation. They have better -healing-, and thus should have a sub par offense.

I think it's pretty clear that a healer shouldn't be as good as a nonhealer, and quite frankly, I've no problem saying that they need to be "viable" 1v1 at all. It's quite, quite possible to avoid 1v1 situations, and if it is a big deal to be viable 1v1, there are other options.


Tell that to Researchers

Jello:

... In the other games where choke is called retardation, in Aetolia they took it out (and I find Aetolia boring these days, no coincidence) ...

Retardation still exists in Aetolia. The way aeon effects work in Aetolia is entirely changed, of course, but retardation and its room-wide, incurable aeon effect continues to exist. I'm personally a favour of doing away with mechanics that enforce ping wars or force fancy coding skills (thus instilling a barrier to entry for newbie combatants) and aeon (time-delay) afflictions are part of these. I am thus in full favour of eventually changing lusternia's aeon the way aetolia has done. However, as has been pointed out in this thread, that's beyond the scope of this report, and besides, Lusternian combat is not ready for such a change. At the very least a great deal of other things will have to be changed alongside such a move. It's not going to happen anywhere in the near future, unfortunately.

Also, unrelated to this thread, but Aetolia has recently released 2 new classes and barely 2 weeks ago, an entirely new conflict system. I really have to take what you say with a measure of incredulity when you claim to be "bored" of a game which has a new system that hasn't even been fully explored by all the players in that game yet. Either you haven't played it in a while, or you just didn't bother trying out the new system in any detail (and thus it has "bored" you), both of which damages the credibility of the examples that you're bringing up to support your arguments, I'm afraid.

An SD Healer is somewhat viable in 1v1 because of Choke, and you think it's okay to have a class that is completely not? I'm baffled at this logic, especially from a monk, who is the 1v1 fighting machine. Have some respect for others.

Besides, as Sidd pointed out, Researchers who can go Healers won't fare too bad, nor would MDs with Aeon.

These suggested changes to choke are not 'delete choke' so I'm not sure why you suddenly will be unable to use aeon or choke. The majority of them look to be methods of making choke slower to drop, which means you just can't START with choke and go from there. Including a delay is the same, you have to work at it a bit to hold them still long enough to choke them.

I also do contest the argument that a tertiary whose big offensive strategy is to make sure you are staying in a room, and who is capable of very good and fast healing combined with a skill that is cured solely on leaving the room at the cost of hampering your normal curing is as much of a problem as you are making it out to be. Healers in general have trouble 1v1 offensively, that's how it is, that's probably how it will always be.

Cleanse curing isn't that bad (you can move more easily then cleanse, as it turns out), though point cleanse would be nasty, as would hyperhidrosis. Some sort of Focus Spirit based cure would be okay, I guess.

To echo earlier posts, focusing on toning down or removing choke for big group battling but leaving it close to intact for very small group or 1v1. I vote for a significant scaling mechanism!

Cleanse curing would be an improvement in groups where gusting/tackling/etc don't always work due to summon resistances/distort/etc.

Yeah, I'd love to see toning down for choke and everything else that scales a lot with groups - TKS, warriors...

Warriors are being looked at, TK's everyone agrees are problems on their own, take a gander at the Druids/Druids vs. Mages threads for more on that.

Vadi:

Yeah, I'd love to see toning down for choke and everything else that scales a lot with groups - TKS, warriors...

Tramplesac.

Oh wait, that has already been looked at, and ruined 1v1 Sacrifice for all Warriors, and made most of Necromancy useless for Warriors in 1v1. So I don't see the big issue with one guild losing their offensive capability because they choose a primarily defensive tertiary skill.

TKs aren't in this Special Report, and the main issue with warriors is not their group power in ths round, and there's loads of bitterness around already.

It kind of is a big problem with warriors being brought up. A lot of the proposed solutions are hitting the wall of warrior group stacking. TK's versus anything druids have to offer is up in this report. Who knows, could result in TK changes.

Unless it becomes a concrete theme, my opinion is unchanged.

I'm wary of, like what similarly happened with ecology, a solution being in half-effect for 6+ plus.

Vadi: Do you not see Choke as a problem at all, not a problem comparatively, or a problem that you don't like any proposed solutions to?

Choke is a problem for me because it has mythical "scare" factor. Good combatants are either campaining against it because they don't have it, or because their midbie fighters don't deal with it well in group fights. Midbie compatants are scared to death about it (who was it - Wobou? some time ago thought that it actually completely locked you down and made you unable to do anything. I was shocked to find out how wrong he was, but I told him and he fared much better against it since then) either via inexperience with it even though they have superiod skills in 1v1 to fight in it, or via just myths from people yapping away.

In practice, people get gusted out, it can easily backfire if the group retargets to you, and in 1v1's there are some types which you wouldn't want to choke at all (a geo meld with it's stun+prone+hidden crippled leg can take a fair bit of time to recover from, or a high-momentum monk will give you a bazillion affs right away, and so on). I was fighting Prav (good combatant from Achaea, and he was here as well - best one Hallifax has had in terms of strategies and leading, even today) some time ago 1v1 and Choke or not - we tied, and flipped a coin to end it. So the myth of the obviously superior Choke is, just that, a myth, and that is why I've said several times that whatever changes happen, the skill has to be renamed. That is the only way to stop the issues with it.

I'm fine with bringing mechanical changes in though, and I've been agreeing with certain proposed combinations. I don't feel like writing it all out again (some have been in this thread, or on Envoys, or other means), but when Shuyin will put something concrete up I'll give my opinion on it. I'm also being very cautious not to gimp SDs for ages to come - the skill is essential to them, the class has been built around it, and for some terts, there is no other way to fight 1v1 without using it (and applying skill while using it, which to be honest, anyone can train for by getting aeon, setting their system not to cure aeon specifically, and fighting in it). Skills have even been deleted from SDs because of Choke - like succumb. Just pulling it out will leave a gaping hole of negative effects that were put in to counter Choke.

tl:dr; if you want my opinion, read it. watch youtube between each sentence if you can't handle it

Yes. 1v1 I have very few real issues with choke. It's avoidable and manageable if you have a setup that allows you to still fight in it, which most people have some sort of strategy for doing so. It's still a very nasty and powerful skill in combination with say... hexes, but it's not insurmountable, it's just terribly annoying. I personally have never shied away from making this as clear as I can. In small, near-equally matched groups, it still comes down to strategy and choke is still very powerful but still not too much of a problem. On that note, I love that every one of your arguments for choke in this post focus on fighting people in these two situations, where I and others have agreed the problem is not substantial or terribly OP.

That said, many of these solutions will not cripple the use of it in these situations, and people have come out with reasons why this is so, which you seem to be ignoring. For instance, having choke be cleanse cured (let's say for now that it's RUB CLEANSE only, not POINT CLEANSE , hopefully that will change across the board with a sap change), I've pointed out that it is indeed more easy to move out of the room then rub cleanse in the majority of cases. It would, however, give you some recourse against combinations such as barrier/choke or perfectfifth/choke, silencing some of those complains (hopefully). That is desirable, and not harmful to the Shadowdancer 1v1 combat. Please do not lump ALL attempts to change choke into the same group as those who are arguing for its deletion.

Vadi:

tl:dr; if you want my opinion, read it. watch youtube between each sentence if you can't handle it

This is childish, and unneeded. If people wanted your opinion, things like this make them more likely to no longer care what your opinion is, on this and other matters.

No - it actually makes them read instead of skipping posts and joining the argument later on, causing a loop in the thread discussion. Or, it discourages from doing that and posting anything at all. Just pointing out the reality of things going on here.

I haven't been ignoring things, if that happened then I must've communicated it elsewhere and someone didn't see. Discussion on this topic is unfortunately going on at several mediums. Let me see my posts in this thread and what I said in regards to cleanse cure...

Oh wait! I found it!

"So my position is that it's okay to introduce either an area-wide yell, or allow others to cleanse a person under the Choke effect, but cleanse on yourself shouldn't do it, and Chokes costs will need to be reviewed for this as well (Shuyins position). "

Have I ignored it? I haven't, I stated my positive opinion on it. Have you ignored my reply? Unfortunately yes.