you assume that everyone can afford contemplate.

Contemplate is basically a necessity in order to be a skilled fighter in a class that relies on half-mana kills. Otherwise, it's all guesswork. People might be able to pull it off without contemplate, but they won't be nearly as good.

absolutely, but a lot of people will have absolve loong before they have contemplate. And, even then with server lag it's not always perfect.

Contemplate is only Fabled; it's a bit more than halfway through Discernment, going by lesson count, if I remember correctly. Contemplate increases the usefulness of half mana kills immensely, and without it, it's probably better to not even bother with learning Absolve/Wrack/Toadcurse. It's not like you even have to be nearly omnitrans or anything to get it, and combat isn't balanced around lowbies. If you miss a half-mana ability, it should be through lag or terribly bad luck, not because you're too cheap to grab Contemplate and the very useful that come along the way to it.

Nihilist do have better mana draining.. They have Leech which drains mana.. I believe that Leech is strong and around the lines of Moon Lashing..

I don't think this will make Nihilist combat overpowered. Concidering that a warrior has an average of 3,000 Mana and that 2 amissios can drain 20% and 1000 Mana(which would be 33% of 3000 mana), a Celestine can pretty much kill a warrior easily...

Is Lash really that strong? First I've heard it spoken of as if it were. Can we get some math in here? Is 3k mana with or without surge, etc, etc.

Unless you lag like me

You must only lag as Clise then! Blame Tervic for that

Mana drain depends. We have leech and amissio in the Nihilists.. however amissio scales better.. if your max mana is high than its better to amissio than leech. Leech can be better at lower ranks. Wrack is 5 power and is harder to get than absolve. Celestines just dont like to work with absolve. I trigger wracking.. and I generally succeed on my wracks even if I aim for them in a group.. and my trigger doesnt track writhes and such.. I watch mana drop.. if I see it low I symbol for shackles and then amissio again to see if wrack triggers.

Paralysis is more for hexists, yes it can help with wrack and torture, however you have to remember that you then cant aeon.. so your ails need to be delivered fast enough to prevent curing out quickly, or to stick things in such a way you can get your goal done. Chained quickening may help in wracking but its yet to be tested (hopefully soon I will get a chance to ). Still want a timed instakill, I dont need soulless gimme a 12 second killer.. and oh the inhumanity

Oh Tervic bear the brunt of alot of my wrath.

I know this is old, but it needs to be addressed again:



So I was reading through it:

This was an update to poison afflictions, now the problem wasn't the afflicting of poisons, it was how that AL's and PB's only get the chance to afflict with one posion per attack, while BM and BC's had the chance to hit with two. Now with that said, this poison change never seemed to solve the issue at all, basically all it did was guarantee that a BC/BM would most definately hit with 2 venoms when they stack wounds, while PB/AL's will still only hit with one venom. Can someone please explain how this is possibly balanced?

2 chances to afflict with venoms >>> 1 chance to afflict with a venom, no matter how many wounds you do per attack. In the final outcome wounds will be high if you are a BM/BC or a PB/AL, so hitting with a better chance to afflict with one venom at the start of a fight doesn't (IMO) make it on par with guaranteed 2 venom per combo after 2-3 rounds in a fight.

Is there any reason why PB/AL's can double coat venoms? Simply give the above announcement quote to the BM/BC's and give PB/AL's the chance to afflict with 2 venoms.

Alternatively, let two-handers use those extra wounding levels to diminish resilience shrugging. Assuming no shrugging at critical for a two-hander, you'd have a two-hander doing exactly 1 poison afflict, and a one-hander doing the same 4/3 poison afflicts that they do now after wounding gets up there, so the edge still goes to the one-hander there. On the other hand, the two-hander has greater assurance of doing what they want. Too much? Too little?

The +20% precision (ie, higher wounding and higher chance to pull off a larger affliction) is intended to be the balance for less poisons/raw number of afflictions. (It will also leave the body more damaged, so a higher chance of the poison landing)

That's the way I see it, too. You do more wounds AND get poisons to hit more easily, so you have an increased chance of hitting with poisons from the start, rather than having to wait until later in a fight for them to start sticking.

Thing is, we don't have a relatively better chance of hitting with poisons from the start.

Look at the math - a two-hander has, at critical wounds, a 2/3 chance of getting a poison to afflict on someone with trans resilience. 100% afflict for the wounds, 1/3 shrug from the resilience. At zero wounds, the two hander has... a 4/9 chance. 2/3 chance of affliction, 1/3 shrug. (The 2/3 is from brief tests on an unwounded target doing 430 wounds per attack, with the poison rubbing off the blade 19/30 times - if someone has a suitably large data set, I would welcome refinement on this.)

I have heard, and respect, reports that the actual two-hander affliction rate is 3/4. 30 strikes is not a large enough data set to be perfectly confident in my results, and I will be conservative and assume that two-handers afflict poison at the 3/4 rate reported elsewhere, and not the 2/3 rate found in my brief testing. The chance, instead of being 4/9 at zero, would be 1/2.

Bottom line - The two-hander poison affliction chance ranges from 1/2 to 2/3.

A one-hander has, at critical wounds... an 8/9 chance of getting some poison to afflict through shrug, broken down into a 4/9 chance of getting two poisons, and a 4/9 chance of getting one poison. At zero wounds, the chances of getting a poison through are 1/2 (3/4 for at least one afflict, and a 1/3 shrug - I am assuming a 1/2 affliction chance. Again, if someone has further data, I welcome it), broken down into a 1/6 chance of getting two poisons and a 1/3 chance of getting one. If you weight the double affliction chances appropriately, then the blademaster can expect 4/3 poisons to hit per round at critical, and 2/3 at zero.

Bottom line - the one-hander affliction chance ranges from 1/2 to 8/9 for getting at least one poison to hit, and from 2/3 to 4/3 if measured as average afflictions per round.

It is not utterly beyond possibility that there is some sweet spot at heavy wounds where two-handers do more poisons. However, one handers afflict more poisons both at zero wounds and at critical wounds, by significant amounts in both cases. It seems more likely that they do so throughout the spectrum.

Let me emphasize another comparison - the absolute maximum average poison afflictions per round a two hander can achieve at critical wounds is 2/3. The absolute minimum a one-hander can expect at zero wounds is... 2/3.

Two-handers do do more wounds. They do not appear to have a poison advantage early, late, or at any time.

My earlier proposed idea that two-handers diminish the resilience shrug with wounds would have resulted in a range from 1/2 to 1. Compare the current one-hander range of 2/3 to 4/3, and the current two hander range of 1/2 to 2/3. The scale - 1/2 the average afflictions at zero compared to at critical - would be normalized between the two types, although one handers would retain their marked advantage overall.

If you prefer to look at the chance of getting at least one affliction, it would result in a range of 1/2 to 1. The current one-hander range is 1/2 to 8/9, and the current two-hander range is 1/2 to 2/3. Two handers would have a small consistency advantage at the highest wound levels to match their small consistency advantage at the lowest, though less marked.

There are a few flaws in this analysis. First-- there is no "raw" affliction rate. Instead, this is based off of 1) The amount of wounding the target has, and 2) Your dexterity. The more wounds they have, the higher a chance of you getting an affliction-- and the higher chance of you getting a more damaging affliction as well. Further, +20% wounding means that the limb is more damaged, which increases the chance of a poison hitting-- which gives you that poison advantage in land-rate, though they cannot get two at once. You have to look at how wounded the limb is in order to calculate the affliction rate / the poison rate.

If you'd like to redo your analysis taking this into account, please do. I'm not saying that they are equivalent-- what I am saying is that a 2h weapon has a lesser number of afflictions they can hit their target with, but they have a higher chance of giving those afflictions. Does it completely balance out? Perhaps, and perhaps not. However, it is not quite as bad as you seem to be painting it.

Edit: Though you're talking more about the poison affliction rate. Again-- +20% wounding means that it is easier for a 2h weapon to get someone into higher stages of wounding, and deep into critical.

Some of you are forgetting that Two-Handers were also given a 0 wounds poison affliction attempt of 75% as compared to the 50% dual-wielders receive.

@Geb - I analyzed with the 75% rate in mind.

@Xenthos - That analysis was for poisons only, with no reference to wounding afflictions anywhere. A wounding analysis would be, as you say, far more complicated. I do agree that the increased precision means that two handers can move from the 1/2 to the 2/3 rate more quickly than one handers move from the 2/3 rate to the 4/3 rate. I do not believe that this increase ever means that two handers afflict more with poison than one handers. At best, they sometimes poison significantly fewer afflictions with slightly greater reliability.

I do believe that it is precisely as bad as I made out, no worse and no better - on the matter of poisoning in isolation. I did not intend to discuss any other topic there, and only wanted to address the perception that two-handers have an edge in poisoning early in a fight, as stated above. It was something that I thought possibly true until today, and it is something I have heard others repeat. It proved false when I checked it, and that is all I meant to state.

I do not think that two handers, overall, suffer from their lack of poisoning relative to one handers. Their increased precision and different wounds make for a different, but quite viable, approach to combat.

My post was made before I saw your post. I was pointing out to those who originally started the discussion that there is a difference in poison attempts at 0 wounds.

Anyhow, yes dual-wielders can generate a greater number of poison hits in a round than two-handers, but in order to do that they have to also accept a lower chance of poison affliction attempts to do it. So if the dual-wielder places two of the same poison on each weapon, yes the person will have the same base poison affliction attempt at 0 as a two-hander. If the person wants a chance to afflict with two instead of one poison, the person has to accept the lower affliction attempt rate of 50% per weapon. So you are mostly correct, depending on how the poison attempt rates scale based on wounds given. Depending on how the poison attempt rates scale per wound level, how well a person heals, and how resistant a person is to damage, a Two-Hander can statistically pull ahead in the number of poisons successfully applied to the target.

I think Vaerhon has some good points.

@xenthos I am not sure where you get the +20% precision, do you mean by the max cap of prc a two hander can achieve on his weapon? All is see, even if 2 handers have a +20% precision thing, is that they get a small headstart with hitting one venom, but when you get to the final outcome 1 handers will always end up in the lead, for they will at critical only have to get through shrugging to make two venoms stick.

@geb the 0 wound poison afflict attempt at 75%, that was what I was actually looking for in the announcements to see where the 2 handers got the upgrade, and didn't find that anywhere. Ok so lets say it was a ninja upgrade, 75% chance to hit one poison at 0 wounds doesn't exactly even things out in the final outcome, a higher chance of sticking one venom one time at inital start of a fight doesn't quite compensate for a chance to constantly stick 2 venoms starting at mid fight.

Now if 1 handers were to get 50% chance to stick 2 venoms no matter what the wounds, and 2 handers got 50% at the beginning and moved up to 95% by critical to hit with one venom, that would be more balanced, simply because the chance of the 2 handers sticking 2 venoms won't be 100%. I dunno, it is a thought. But I really don't see why 2 handers cannot get double wipes of venoms.


edit - sorry geb your post popped in before I finished. Ok but according to that announce, won't one handers get 100% affliction of venoms at critical wounds? That would mean they will always hit with 2 venoms, while 2 handers will always hit with on (of course not including shrugging)?