Enyalida:

Yes, but as much as one person can stack commands (though they have to know that there is someone in a room adjacent to the one they are planning to move to who is planning on using chainyank, which is part of the reason I don't find this defense 'reasonable'), the chainyanker can stack commands just as much, or even just code a constant flood of chainyank, gagged on their end. I'd rather not balance around having to execute commands within miliseconds of eachother, to be honest and I have had that strategy fail me before.

All of that said, do you have a different solution that solves the problem? A delay before movement was suggested, but I don't like that, personally. Too many problems generated. The issue is that you can hold down the enter key to auto-move someone before they have any reasonable window of time to defend themselves against it, in the course of normal group battles. Making it so that you can't write a supershort timer or just tie a small rock to your enter key to automatically do what amounts to killing someone in group combat is a good change. The easiest way to do that would be to penalize you for repeated use. I don't particularly like slapping a high endurance cost on it either, though. I know how much that sucks, I've got some dreamweaver things that take upwards of 3k willpower when they fail to go off.

I can tell you that there's a very real chance that someone having a constant stream of commands doing through would lag the server. That strategy backfires more than anything with one of two possibilites: lagging clientside or lagging serverside (and I think a person doing it would hopefully face some severe punishments).

Beckon isn't the only one. Illumanti have one, I think (yes, it takes insanity, but even with that req, it's WORSE than chainyank).

Also, why not balance around stacking commands? It's called an alias, and something as simple as mw is very simple to come up with. Doesn't take any bit of coding to do that one, either. mw * * as the alias, and then have it send to world "%1" followed by "point icewall at %2". Aliases are the standard. I think it's ridiculous not to balance around them. There's not a single competent combatant that doesn't rely on those.

@Dreamweaving: That seems to be the exception: if you look, there's quite a bit of support for failed skills not costing anything. Read all the bug fixes in the past year, and perhaps you should bug that too.

Personally, I'm not particularly concerned about chainyank. There are PLENTY of other nasty ways of ganking people in group combat (I'm looking at you in particular, springtraps).

What I want to see is either high momentum monk damage OR high momentum monk aff rate OR easy of building momentum nerfed, while buffing low momentum options.

If we can't remove wounding form monks, perhaps take away (or reduce) damage increase based on wounding, and/or remove (or reduce) damage bonus against prone enemies.

foolofsound:

Personally, I'm not particularly concerned about chainyank. There are PLENTY of other nasty ways of ganking people in group combat (I'm looking at you in particular, springtraps).

What I want to see is either high momentum monk damage OR high momentum monk aff rate OR easy of building momentum nerfed, while buffing low momentum options.

If we can't remove wounding form monks, perhaps take away (or reduce) damage increase based on wounding, and/or remove (or reduce) damage bonus against prone enemies.

I'm very interested in seeing a log of you fight against a monk with a list of defenses set prior. It's obvious you don't understand the class (I'm not saying this to be mean), so let me explain a few things on how monks work:

Damage has nothing to do with momentum. Damage comes from modifiers, those being: total amount of wounds, prone or not, sensitivity or not, lunged or not.
Wounds are exactly the same way. Momentum doesn't contribute directly.
Building momentum is very easy against people who don't know how to hinder. Very hard against those who understand monk combat and go for their weak points.
Momentum only determines the quantity of afflictions versus the quality. The higher the momentum, the better quality affs a monk can put in without sacrificing the quantity as much.
Higher quality afflictions have momentum penalties associated with them. Once used, the monk loses momentum.

Now here's where it starts getting complicated. To be effective against a competent opponent, you have to balance damage and wounds with afflictions, or else you'll never get anywhere. More wounds = better chance of poison proc. You need the damage to force sipping to prevent applying health. You use the afflictions to force the opponent to make further choices between cures.

In my honest opinion, I think much of the monk problem is a lack of understanding in the nuances of the class. It's very possible to prevent momentum gain, but it requires timing and knowledge.

1) Do you mentally keep track of roughly where the opponent's momentum is?
2) Do you use rebounding effectively? As in, when it comes up, you force the monk to hit it or raze?
3) Are you using all available cures? Sipping, scroll, sparkle, at minimum, beast healing heavily suggested.
4) When you hinder a monk, do you do it to maximize the time spent between attacks?
5) Are you properly using parry and stance?

Some examples of the above:
1) Knowing your opponents momentum will save your life and make it easier to judge when to hinder and when to fight back. Low momentum monk? Go full offense. Got a few hits on you? Hinder to keep them under mo3.
2) Rebounding comes up. A monk must raze that or hit it. If they raze, they either spend 3 power or they lose an arm action. A raze prevents grapples (the ones considered weapon attacks, such as ninshi), a chance of a poison proc, and an ideal form. This matters with quicksilver too.
3) An omnitrands demigod fully artied monk will wreck a lot of people unless they're on a close playing field. By that I mean, full cures, full skills, and at least an RoA. that 15% matters quite a bit, maxmizing the dmp, etc.
4) Monk just attacked you, so you stun 0.5seconds after. Stun lasts for 1 second. So...1.5s after the monk attacks, it can attack again. But it was off eq/bal anyway, so the stun really did nothing. Alternatively, monk attacks. You hold off using your stun until 2.8 seconds have passed. You stun. It's now been 3.8s since monk last attacked, buying you far more time to recover than if you stunned immediately.
5) Monks get damage from knocking you down. That's generally an attack on the legs.

Above are examples that can get people going in the right direction. If people aren't doing those things, then they're allowing a monk to walk over them and deserved to die rather quickly.

To compare it to LoL. Monks are like the ad carries. Feed them what they want, they'll wreck you. Deny them, they're worthless.



I need to do some confering, but I do have an idea for a good nerf. I'll post that here soon.

You both forgot the Wisp requirement of trees/forest on both caster and target rooms. /nitpick

Not that it matters much to the discussion, but ambush/tackle hasn't been possible for a while, since the change to ambush a while back.

And, as someone who is an omnitrans, artied-out, demigod with somewhat decent curing, I'll still say that monks are a tad on the OP side. Yes, I understand how monks work, and, no, I don't like the mechanics at all.

You both forgot the Wisp requirement of trees/forest on both caster and target rooms. /nitpick


I say that it doesn't matter, that it's still spammable. If spammability is the problem, it should be nerfed with all the others.

Raeri:



To get beyond the base DMP from sipping amber/darkbeers that's available to everyone, you have to get drunk enough that you're operating under a permanent mini-stupidity/badluck effect. It's not worth it.

It took a non-bard to envoy changes to be able to better monitor DMP & tolerance levels. Both are crucial mechanics to more effectively utilize brews.

Perhaps a bard envoy should take up the Brewmeister banner to have better trade-specific access to higher levels of alcohol-induced DMP.

The mechanics and skillset are in place. They just need to be fine tuned.

I say that it doesn't matter, that it's still spammable. If spammability is the problem, it should be nerfed with all the others.

That's a bit of a ridiculous stance to take, I think.

As a whole, people have an issue with a skill. You can't just look at one aspect of that issue, and claim that everything sharing that aspect also deserves to be nerfed without considering the ability as a whole.

Lehki:

That's a bit of a ridiculous stance to take, I think.

As a whole, people have an issue with a skill. You can't just look at one aspect of that issue, and claim that everything sharing that aspect also deserves to be nerfed without considering the ability as a whole.

The issue with this particular skill was it's spammability when it was considered as a whole. It follows that it extends to other skills.

I also know that my stance is ridiculous, but that said, I think that the other side is equally ridiculous. The difference is that I'm taking what follows to the extreme to demonstrate the ridiculousness whereas others are stopping where it's convenient.

Essentially, the problem is that ninja can spam the skill without having to squint first to know their opponent is there. If that is indeed the unfair advantage of the skill, it must raise the same question for all other skills of the same type. I didn't choose this particular facet of the skill to focus on, however. Logically, what people are saying is that 1) its restrictions are okay, 2) the spammability isn't, and therefore the skill isn't fine. If we do the same thing for wisp: 1) it's restrictions are fine, 2) it's spammability is fine, therefore the skill is fine.

Why is 2) okay for one and not the other? People want to point at the restrictions as justification, but that means that the problem with Nanuki is not its spammability, but its restrictions.

One person blocking or casting an icewall the -instant- upon entering the room prevents the possibility of a yank for the entire group. Shielding yourself the -instant- you enter the adjacent room prevents you from being yanked. The only way to yank someone is to luckily hit the person between the time they enter the room and defend themselves against it. The ninja doesn't know the moment a person enters the adjacent room. They don't know whether they're shielded or not. The nerf forces a ninja to know the moment someone enters the adjacent room and then also yank them before they defend against it. It might not sound too hard, but considering the time it takes between typing 'e' (the direction) and then 'es' (my shield alias), it's impossible for anyone to know and react between that time.

There's no reason for the enemy to not know that they're entering the room adjacent to another group. There's no reason for the enemy to not do something immediately in that adjacent room: either move to another or shield/block/sit/etc. It's insane to think it's possible for any person to time a chaindrag perfectly. The skill requires luck to be successful as it stands. If you eliminate the ability to rely on luck, might as well delete the skill.

In all honesty, all the forced moment skills (except maybe the illum one as I'm unfamiliar with it) are entirely preventable. You can only blame yourself for getting yanked, radded, wisped, beckoned, etc.

I also know that my stance is ridiculous, but that said, I think that the other side is equally ridiculous. The difference is that I'm taking what follows to the extreme to demonstrate the ridiculousness whereas others are stopping where it's convenient.
I don't think it helps your argument really. I mean, Wisp's delay pretty clearly put's it in a different category then the rest. Wisp you can react to counter it, the other skills you're mentioning need you to be proactive to prevent it.

While admittedly I have not bothered reading any of the other posts that are longer then a few sentences, but for the other skills you mentioned, rad, beckon, etc(what is etc? I can't think of any others), an EQ/balance loss to prevent spamming sounds great to me.

Sojiro:


Druids:

-Increase sap delay to .75-1s (currently .5s)
-Have Druidry Sap kill you after 30s of not curing it, make it leave a cool corpse like with geomancy fossils (Shuyin's remains are here, preserved in hardened sap).

I'm a bit concerned about the second suggested change, and a little more so when paired with the first. While it's true that druidry does need some buffs, I think this time limit is still a bit too short. The problem with sticking sap right now is that a druid has to give up actively trying to kill you in order to maintain it. However, if you grant the ability to kill by doing nothing but focusing on hindering, I think you've made it a little too easy. Keeping someone sapped in your demesne while actively focusing on hindering is not much of a task. Some terts might struggle more with it than others, but I definitely do think dreamweaving, for example, might make this a real killer.

I realize its a bit late, and I'm willing to wait and see if maybe my predictions don't turn out true, but a short and hard time limit on sap puts a lot of pressure on having near flawless sap curing (and I mean beyond the best standards one sees today). And even then, I think it could get fairly messy.

I'll hold off suggesting a better time limit, since I think we need to test out exactly how long a druid can regularly maintain a sap for against a fighting opponent. But 30 seconds still seems like it's a bit short all around.

Group combat is group combat, so I'm not entirely worried there, especially since 30s is an implausibly long time to tank a number of people in sap with or without this change.

I agree with the idea, cant recall if I posted that here but basically 1s delay would mean something like stagstomp is 3s min to cure. Passives hit you? Tough. Will be really easy to set back curing.

Groups will just be horrible, worse than aeon, least its tree based.

Fully agree. I remember Enyalida saying (it may have been in person) that a better change would be keeping Sap at a .5 second delay and making the insta 60 seconds, or something similar.

I did indeed say all of that, and still would say it. I don't really like still having to rely on sap, or have really tiny adjustments to get the skill just right, balancing on the edge of a knife.

The main problems with sap right now are that it's extremly hard to initially get the sap, especially if you aren't a dreamweaver. This verges on impossible against decent curing and most classes for anyone who isn't really on the ball (down to the .5 seconds) with their sap, and there isn't really any buildup non-dreamweaver druids can do to help make their sapping easier. If that was the case, where druids had some innate method of buildup or attrition (think darkmark for cruc), then I would support some nerf to sap. As is, if the druid is half a second too soon or too late, they've missed their window and are out 5p. Adjusting the balance loss on sap is a good move to mitigate that problem.

Similarly, even with sap on a target, it's a real race to outpace curing. If the druid isn't doubly lucky to have stupidity hit and have it fail an action, the target may optimally cure out of sap within the space of a single balance of the druids. Looking to the Hartstone demesne, the only effect that directly hinders the curing of sap is paralysis. This means that at trans discipline, the target can optimally cure out of sap within a single second after the demesne hits. Similarly, if the (Hartstone, non-Dreamweaver) druid hits the target with stagstomp, the target will be free of the eq loss in three seconds (a bit shorter then the neutral balance on stagstomp. Keep in mind that a neutral eq/neutral balance stag user is likely to be at +1eq -1 balance from paints), during which they may cure other afflictions thrown at them. This leaves the druid having to use all of their active abilities to hinder the curing of sap, which can again verge on impossible against good curing, as some tertiaries. Generally, this is only a problem in the first 10 seconds or so of sap, but as time wears on that the druid is unable to kill the target, there is an increasing chance that the target will continue outpace druid hindering, unless the druid has some subsidiary effects brought into play to gradually increase affliction output. This is where having it eventually kill you comes in. If the druid does not feel the need to spend time throwing away actions on damage or mana drains (for dreamweavers), they can continue to try and bring affliction to bear to stop the opponent from curing. I'm of mixed opinion on how well this would work out, but I agree (and have said so in the past) that 30 seconds is too short a window.

A concern brought up on the Druid thread that the introduction of a new tertiary might bring into question any buffs to Druidry. Having played around with Shamanism and trying to use it to further my single and group combat, I've come to a few conclusions on how well it meshes with druidry. It seems as if one of the goals of Shamanism was to give the druid a place in group combat away from their demesne, and possilbly to give a better kill condition to druids (though it gave HS druids yet another health kill). It also looks like there were some dispensations designed to make it easier to sap a target. My conclusions are that at this point, and for the foreseeable future, the skillset fails to meet these goals, even when compared to a druid's other available options. Don't get me wrong, Shamanism has a few very powerful abilities (that I can name off hand, Land. Claw. Tornado. Quicksand.... That's mostly it.), but few of them mesh particularly well with the druid's style of killing and terrain dependance and all of it is packaged in a mechanic that is extremely unwieldy and cost inefficient, however fun of RP it makes. If you are looking for a good druid skillset, look at dreamweaving. I'm not actually sure why runes was apparently considered the go to for so long.

Envoy reports will slowly make the skillset function in a more reasonable manner, one hopes, but the high costs and low scale of effects generally makes things not work out. I'm hesitant to envoy nerfs to skills that need it, like claw and quicksand, because not much else is all that worth speaking about. I'm probably coming off rough here, but that's what I feel about the skillset. I have envoy reports or ideas written for Cloudburst, Weatherguard, microTemp/Wind/Precip, Bone, Frogs, Sky, Freeze, Lightning, and Death at the moment. Ask me about them and I'll be happy to fill you in.