Out of curiosity, what's the problem with Serenguard?

Primarily defensive abilities and very nice ones but their choke equivalent is wane which gives aeon but aeon isn't that great and way harder to stick. They have no instakill in Moon and whilst Stag does have an instakill I don't think I've ever seen a knight pull it off. Same for Crow there, instakill but a pretty ridiculous one for a Knight 1v1 although quite nice for a druid.

The other thing I suppose I was trying to say is this, there are perfect combinations of weapon spec and tert for each guild, BC is best for pulling off a Sac, BM just edges BC (i think) for pulling off an Illuminate, BC, BM and PB are all good in choke when used correctly. Don't try and make each knight spec work for each guild just focus on making one great combination for each guild that allows top tier fighting (in the right hands). Take Vathael for example, he was a damn good example of a top tier ur'Guard who could pull off sacs, yes he had weapon runes but I bet he'd have been able to pull off those same kills without the runes. Top tier is less about the skills available and more about the person using them knowing exactly when to use them and in what combination.

Vathael was using pre-nerf wind chains, FYI. Good post though, sac has little to do with weapon runes, and I'm interested to hear your take so far on illuminations as warrior. Logs would be interesting to watch (from the target's POV)

Gore is okay for stealing kills in groups, but if somebody's at the state where they can get killed, they'll be damage-killed in one round of attacks anyways.

Really, the SG terts are decent enough defensively (DMP and green+ in moon. Medicinebag in stag), but beyond moon's weaponaura and stag's swiftstripes fairly useless offensively. Also the skills are horribly boring compared to the cool effects all the new terts have.

Serenguard are a mixed bag.

Moon: Mostly defensive as stated, waning has seen some fun use after locks because of raze but is otherwise not the end all. You take moon for totems (which is AMAZINGLY nice) and not dying.

Stag: I really have no idea why more do not take this set. I mean true you will be on totem duties here and there but come on, +1 balance from a facepaint means lvl 3 if you go as aslaran with no drawback (+1 and -1 eq cancel). Active lust, active stun (if you have any value in it), pacing, ringwalk, lots of fun things. It is not moon, but it has alot going for it.

Ur'Guard I like but necromancy isnt the most synergystic skillset, which is partly for the best. Most of the skills are outright devastating anyway.

Paladins.....you know I do not have much to say, with the holy light stuff they got alot of perks and they have the divinus damage option now. Numen, inqui, judge, and such are all rather nice still.

Templar is very nice. I think paradigmatics still needs some nerfs, I mean reimagination for -4 con? Wtf. Can use with binah? Badluck is still OP as all Nil, so I do not think you will have problems there. A softlock with badluck firing on cleanse is always fun.

Sentinels have some nice things still, alacrity, aeonfield (if you can maintain it), foresight is still op, yada yada.

Ebonguard

Crow: Still rather meh, although they have alot of fun skills, and the only tracking that wont ping aethersight.

Night: Like moon, great skillset. More of the skills are specific instance skills but they do their jobs well when they can be used.

EDIT: @Turnus. This would be called "power creep" when new things are always stronger than old ones. Good luck getting guilds to nerf that though.

Oh, I'm well aware of powercreep and pretty well accepting that stag/moon will always stay "boring" compared to the shiny newer alternatives.

Log of me testing insanity build with Draylor from his POV. Should add that I was not doing well here all things considered, I was outputing good affs (21 at max) but I wasn't building insanity because I wasn't timing things correctly. You can also see in the log where I get his Truename and because of the long equi time he manages to cure out of a considerable amount of insanity with me unable to do anything (no ents for passive affs, unlike Illuminati).

http://pastebin.com/pUPf0WYr

EDIT: Actually ignore my last comment, I have him at massive quite quickly, but I think this is a log of the time his system broke rather than me testing insanity build. You can see quite clearly where I fail to capitalise because I have him exactly where I need him for an instakill but don't use it and he manages to cure out - think I was waiting on power regen at the time as it's very costly to set up and the insta requires 8p. You're also failing to see the setup work that went into this, it's from when his system stops curing effectively and I start to overtake his healing.

Malarious:


Stag: I really have no idea why more do not take this set. I mean true you will be on totem duties here and there but come on, +1 balance from a facepaint means lvl 3 if you go as aslaran with no drawback (+1 and -1 eq cancel). Active lust, active stun (if you have any value in it), pacing, ringwalk, lots of fun things. It is not moon, but it has alot going for it.

Kind of derailing here, but I'd like to point out that the active stun and ringwalk are both essentially trash abilities... The speed is the biggest draw to Stag.

Given how often people will headslam the idea of a longer stun from stag sounds useful. Ringwalk isnt a huge % but its better than nothing, specially if you add in they already get engage which has a small % as well.

I still like stag, and think its undervalued.

As to draylor, Chaosauras proc rate is wayyyyyy too high, similar effects penalize the weapon and have a low % to fire. Pretty sure righteous arms is lower (does taht still do affs?), I know deathweapons lower, and the fact you get it 50% instead of 50% divided by number of weapons is huge.

The stun from Stag isn't longer, unless you also have a bard in the room hitting the target. The problem with ringwalk has nothing to do with its %. It's trash because it will stop and break your own group up, unlike carcer (?) because it will check on each person individually. It's also fairly easy to cancel, unlike carcer.

Bein able to cancel is a good thing.

Carcer hits your group, including if your group walks out (read as, you might lose 4 people if you move).

Stag is still one of the better options if used to support warrior instead of replacing warrior.

Sorry, should have clarified: you can't cancel it except for moving. So it works the same as carcer except someone can gust you to stop it and it's only in your room. I agree, out of Moon/Stag/Tracking, Stag is quite a viable option, but not for the reasons you've put forward (trying to avoid potential hyping of skills that aren't really that fantastic). The speed increase, dex boost, forced command rejection and increased healing from medicinebag are what makes it a good skillset, not bellow and ringwalk...

Yeah why would a warrior use bellow when they have headslam? Even if you want to strip truehearing, you'd just strike with ibululu and get wounds while you're at it.

Malarious:

Given how often people will headslam the idea of a longer stun from stag sounds useful. Ringwalk isnt a huge % but its better than nothing, specially if you add in they already get engage which has a small % as well.

I still like stag, and think its undervalued.

As to draylor, Chaosauras proc rate is wayyyyyy too high, similar effects penalize the weapon and have a low % to fire. Pretty sure righteous arms is lower (does taht still do affs?), I know deathweapons lower, and the fact you get it 50% instead of 50% divided by number of weapons is huge.

ChaosAura has about the right proc rate, as I've said already, Draylor wasn't curing well at all in that log and against decent curing it takes a very long time to build insanity plus a decent run on the RNG. ChaosAura may proc 50% of the time but the amount of insanity it gives is halved on 1h weapons compared to 2h weapons. 2h weapons give 1 focus mind worth of insanity whilst 1h weapon give 1 pennyroyal worth of insanity (2 pennyroyal = 1 focus mind). Even at massively insane Draylor is able to quite quickly cure down to moderately insane in that log.

EDIT: The other thing to remember is we're not in a race to the bottom. ChaosAura 1v1 is pretty much bang on as far as I'm concerned, it's not easy to pull off but it is viable when used with the perfect race combination (Aslaran best followed by Faeling - equi recovery time on Aslaran really helps to keep Badluck/Greywhispers up). Rather than saying we're better off than other Knights (which atm I think we are because we have a viable insta) instead bring other Knights up to a level where they have a viable insta. DeathWeapon report going through now is quite good in this respect as it'll give a nice boost to prec and remove the malus on the weapon, bringing it more inline with ChaosAura.

Slightly off-topic, but allow me to state that I hate the fact that we have to choose between min-maxing for combat, or having the roleplay we want.

What, with the weapons having different base statlines? I agree.... Why are weapons not the same now?

From report 651, which asked to have the floors of the different weapon types made equal.

:
... Making all weapon stats equal would be problematic. Has to do with how they work behind the scenes, something I don't like but we're stuck with. So... I think we need to make unappealing weapons more appealing. The weapons that lean towards damage, perhaps they could have a higher max damage stat? Perhaps special abilities could be added to some, like reduced chance of being parried? Etc.

Yeah we really need to brainstorm some ideas and get those out there.

Thanks for the clarification Ushaara, think there may be a similar problem with the unstanced miss rate for warrior attacks being a holdover from Achaea's base code, although that's from some long distant corner of my mind and I may be completely wrong.

I think its funny they cant make weapons all similar, but making a weapon change the % you parry is totally doable. I do not mean that in a sarcastic way, that sounds like WTF. We cant paint the inside of your car, but we can get you a new body frame? O_o

I approve damage weapons having higher max so long as the precision is lowish as a result. No 500 damage swings with high wounds!