Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

SITB · Jul 23, 2018

Once More, Into the Shadows is a bad plan. It tries to shoehorn stealth into an environment that isn't suited fot it.

It's a bright sunny woodland which negates the lowlight/darkness advantages that Ling Qi needs to have in order to have a chance to successfully stealth. This isn't an arena which plays to Ling Qi stealth specialty, and trying to force it into one is wasting a lot of qi and actions for middling benefits.

@Alectai's plan relies on twilight beauty to drop the light levels but: A) Seeing a 40 meter radius of low light is pretty bad for stealthing. B) It still means hemorrhaging qi while setiing the other buffs if Chu Song doesn't catch Ling Qi.

It also mentions nothing about what happens if Chu Song manages to catch Ling Qi after the first round leaving Ling Qi to try failing to disengage again.

veekie · Jul 23, 2018

So taking a shot at unspooling the political agendas going in here. Sticking to Ducal clans and the Sect, since the other nudges are basically background noise.
Initial positions and their status:
-Sun
--Major objective: Set back the Bai [Failed]
--Minor objective: Make Sun Liling happy because doting grandfather
---Liling Major objective: Payback against Cai Renxiang [Partial success]
---Liling Major objective: Kick Bai Meizhen's ass[Pending]
---Liling Minor objective: Teach Ling Qi a lesson [Partial success]
---Liling Minor objective: Teach Gan Guangli a lesson[Success]

-Guo
--Major objective: None
--Minor objective: See that the Gu excel[Partial success]
--Minor objective: See that the Han do not excel[Pending]
--Minor objective: See that their vassals don't do TOO shamefully[Success]

-Bai
--Major objective: Regain status[Success]
--Major objective: Fuck the Sun[Pending]

-Cai
--Major objective: Shape Cai Renxiang into a suitable heir[Pending]
--Minor objective: Evaluate Cai Renxiang's vassals[Success]
--Minor objective: Teach Cai Renxiang not to be complacent[Success]
--Minor objective: Announce new baby[Success]

-Argent Sect
--Major objective: Don't piss off anyone.[Failed]
--Major objective: Get talented disciples into Inner Sect[Success]
--Minor objective: Get some favors in side deals.[Success]

So how I think it went down:
-Day 1:
--Cai Shenhua does not meddle in the prelims, as she wants to test Cai Renxiang.
--Bai Suzhen does not meddle in the prelims, as she wants to focus on the opportunity to network(Meizhen has this phase in the bag anyway)
--Guo meddles a bit to make sure that Xiulan gets a winnable prelim, and nudges the Han candidates into tough but winnable messes.
--Sun Shao meddles a lot to satisfy Liling, he gets advance warning for her followers, he puts her subordinates into allied matches and he dunks on all the Cai followers.
--Sect just makes sure that the Monsters aren't paired with anyone important they might eliminate.

Aftermath:
-Cai Shenhua(and anyone who isn't blind) figures out that Sun Shao and the Sect skewed the match more than is reasonable to eliminate Gan.
--This is a great time to both get an ally which complements the Cai weaknesses as a new Duke by allying with the oldest Ducal clan.
--This is a great time to flip Sun Shao the bird for the insult he had shown her by dunking so hard on the Cai vassals in the prelims.
--This is a great time to slap the Sect on the wrist by denying them their big exhibition match that'd overawe the rest of the tournament.
--This is a great time to show people why you shouldn't cross a White in her own damned territory.

Cai Shenhua is definitely efficient.

PS: As a side note its inordinately amusing to me that Han Jian is going to get rekt by a guy called God Tiger.

SITB said:
Once More, Into the Shadows is a bad plan. It tries to shoehorn stealth into an environment that isn't suited fot it.

It's a bright sunny woodland which negates the lowlight/darkness advantages that Ling Qi needs to have in order to have a chance to successfully stealth. This isn't an arena which plays to Ling Qi stealth specialty, and trying to force it into one is wasting a lot of qi and actions for middling benefits.

@Alectai's plan relies on twilight beauty to drop the light levels but: A) Seeing a 40 meter radius of low light is pretty bad for stealthing. B) It still means hemorrhaging qi while setiing the other buffs if Chu Song doesn't catch Ling Qi.

It also mentions nothing about what happens if Chu Song manages to catch Ling Qi after the first round leaving Ling Qi to try failing to disengage again.

This is bullshit. Yrsillar confirmed theres plenty of shadows. Its not a DARK environment. But not a bright one barring explosive AOE

zinay · Jul 23, 2018

SITB said:
Once More, Into the Shadows is a bad plan. It tries to shoehorn stealth into an environment that isn't suited fot it.

It's a bright sunny woodland which negates the lowlight/darkness advantages that Ling Qi needs to have in order to have a chance to successfully stealth. This isn't an arena which plays to Ling Qi stealth specialty, and trying to force it into one is wasting a lot of qi and actions for middling benefits.

@Alectai's plan relies on twilight beauty to drop the light levels but: A) Seeing a 40 meter radius of low light is pretty bad for stealthing. B) It still means hemorrhaging qi while setiing the other buffs if Chu Song doesn't catch Ling Qi.

It also mentions nothing about what happens if Chu Song manages to catch Ling Qi after the first round leaving Ling Qi to try failing to disengage again.

I agree that it isn't the best plan, but honestly the only other plan that has gained any traction is Turtle Fortress and that one is even worse.

The Meddler · Jul 23, 2018

[X] Once More, Into the Shadows

Arkeus · Jul 23, 2018

Sirrocco said:
More expensive than face-tanking?

Also, does Chu Song have flight? I don't think she has flight.

Yeah, much more expensive than face tanking. This is the thing: we are good at face-tanking, and we get back Qi every round we do so. We'd be mostly Qi-positive while face-tanking. When disengaging we'd actually spend a lot of Qi on our most expensive tech while also being unable to regain Qi as we won't be counted as being in combat.

Ling Qi's actual fighting style means that she regains 4-6+ QI/turns and only spends 3/4Qi turns of that while face-tanking unless Chu Song does damage to us, and Chu Song needs to do at least 7 damage for us to even use semiperfect Qi blocking (3 perfect defence, 1 damage negation, 2 ablative HP. This is not counting armour). Given that even if we had none of that, Chu Song likely has something like 10% chance of even touching us, this means we are basically regaining Qi for every round we are in a fight with her.

Running away, however, means not regaining that Qi, it means having to use our more expensive techniques (One with Shadow, GCD), and it means not having a lot of our defenses up (no mist, no water techs, no short duration defensive instants) so we are becoming squishy as hell too. If we fly, this is even worse.

It's basically trading our strength away for a gimmick we are not strong at under the assumption Chu Song sucks against it.... and if you'd looked at the fight against Chu Song, never did she actually fail a perception test. Other characters did.

"Hiding our tankiness" is not a factor if we get squished by trying to be too clever and using things we are bad at, and Ji Rong already knows about our tankiness. Not only that, but this plan will continue to not have Zhengui do anything unless we are either very lucky or very unlucky, and loses us first strike to boot.

I really don't get this "Let's not show off at all because Chu Song is really weak" assumption.

me.me.here · Jul 23, 2018

[X] Once More, Into the Shadows

Katreus said:
Nah, Han Jian and Han Fang were going to get bad matchups either way because of a combination of: HF pissing off both Cai and Sun in the prelims, and Guo would rather Gu advance but not very pleased with the Han.

The Han matchups weren't really political here. HF and HJ are 5th/6th weakest, right after the scrubs. Ji Rong and Shen Hu are in the 4-6 bracket just after the Monsters with us. They did get slightly tougher matches, but that was mostly an artifact of Kang Zihao getting a free scrub.

Ayashi said:
I'm thinking over it a bit more. Xiulan little ritual even with one of the nastiest results (short of death) is negated by Cyan. That seems to imply that people are expected to have a +1 talent event somehow by or at that level.
Meaning a "average" talent of 4 or 5 could, assuming s/he works hard enough and has enough support/resources/ect, hit Violet "normally".
So, assuming just one more significant event, Ling Qi is Prism material ?

Uh, IIRC the wound doesn't go away til Steel, which is the physical equivalent of Indigo rather than Cyan. It still means that a 4-5 talent can reach Violet, but it would basically be at the cost of a maiming for the large majority of the cultivator's lifespan, given how Green and later stages drag on.

Arkeus · Jul 23, 2018

NotAlwaysFanfic said:
Sect still gets to look good for the skilled disciples they produce, and they might have gotten some things from people rigging the match, but it was definitely Cai humbling them by springing the duel on them so suddenly.

Keep in mind that Cai had plenty of legitimacy to force the change, given how blatantly the Sect let the deck get stacked against CRX in the prelims.

Sect just showed that a major, major deal has been brokered at their tournament. The Meng just got screwed over hard for not sending a representative, and the Jing might have lost a great opportunity.

This basically established the Argent Sect as one of the most important if not the most important places to have been this decade.

They gained a lot of face from this.

SITB · Jul 23, 2018

veekie said:
This is bullshit. Yrsillar confirmed theres plenty of shadows. Its not a DARK environment. But not a bright one barring explosive AOE

It's literally in the description: "Below their names in the brackets were the characters for 'light forest' and when she focused on them, her vision swam granting her the sight of a bright sunny woodland similar to the outer grounds of the sect, though more thinly grown"

There are shadows because, unless Ling Qi fights in a literal white room, objects that block the sun (such as a few sparse trees) create shadows. Ling Qi noted herself that the terrain disadvantages her.

Deadly Snark · Jul 23, 2018

veekie said:
--Major objective: Don't piss off anyone.[Failed]

Eh, I'd say that their major Objective was: Dont piss off anyone too much.

With all the various powers with a stake in the pie this year, it was all but impossible to avoid pissing off anyone period. The best they can do is to dance between the pitfalls so that at the end of the day, no one can be too pissed at them. And more importantly, so that the various angers and grudges between the factions are directed at each other and not at the Sect itself.

And on that point they have been doing decently well. Who knows how things might progress in the future, but as it stands no one has any grounds to think too badly of them, but have every reason to want each other's heads.

BungieONI · Jul 23, 2018

I'll just leave this here for reference in the discussion.

yrsillar said:
Alectai said:

There seems to be some debate now that I've submitted my plan @yrsillar ,

Based on the description of the environment, there should be plenty of shadows around to use for One With Shadow, but some believe this is a very sparsely wooded place with the sun directly overhead?

That this an environment that's effectively neutral on its face, not one that's inherently stacked against us, right?

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

It's a lightly wooded area in the middle of the day, so it's bright, but there are plenty of shadows from the leaves and such.

veekie · Jul 23, 2018

SITB said:
It's literally in the description: "Below their names in the brackets were the characters for 'light forest' and when she focused on them, her vision swam granting her the sight of a bright sunny woodland similar to the outer grounds of the sect, though more thinly grown"

There are shadows because, unless Ling Qi fights in a literal white room, objects that block the sun (such as a few sparse trees) create shadows. Ling Qi noted herself that the terrain disadvantages her.

Explicit statement otherwise

yrsillar said:
It's a lightly wooded area in the middle of the day, so it's bright, but there are plenty of shadows from the leaves and such.

This is a neutral environment.
A favorable one is already dark like in the prelims. An unfavorable one would be desert or grasslands where natural cover is sparse.

archangis · Jul 23, 2018

Once more into the shadow will make us snatch defeat from the jaw of victory if she is anywhere near our level.

Even face tanking is better because at least it trade qi for qi and actions for actions.

Once more into shadow is giving her free turns to buff herself and we spend a lot of qi to give her that opportunity.

Even better, it lose a lot of face to CRX, by giving our ennemy the opportunity to show off. We should be trying to show she is weakling easily beaten, not spend qi freely to run away from her as of we are scared.

Even if we win with that plan, we lose, at least politically.

SynchronizedWritersBlock · Jul 23, 2018

Yeah, Once More, Into the Shadows is a really fucking bad plan. Can we not do that.

Axel Fones · Jul 23, 2018

archangis said:
Once more into shadow is giving her free turns to buff herself and we spend a lot of qi to give her that opportunity.

Do you and others actually think someone who's more of a bruiser is going to beat Ling Qi in a sustained buff/debuff war? Especially if LQ takes the opportunity to stall and set up an ambush first?

fictionfan · Jul 23, 2018

We need another plan. Something that is actually good.

veekie · Jul 23, 2018

archangis said:
Even better, it lose a lot of face to CRX, by giving our ennemy the opportunity to show off. We should be trying to show she is weakling easily beaten, not spend qi freely to run away from her as of we are scared.

This is utterly baseless. We're a stealthy skirmisher build, and thus fighting like a stealthy skirmisher is not at all shameful when its how we dominated our preliminaries. We have explicit acknowledgment that our performance in the prelims met all expectations and made up for Gan's loss, so we are under no pressure to use strategies to show off in this round beyond beating the opponent.

We're facing an opponent specialized in powerful alpha strikes based on her elemental composition and past performance, so assuming our defense is solid enough to take her in her strongest point is the height of arrogance.

By contrast we already know she's not particularly amazing at mobility compared to us, that the environment allows for stealth, and that our next two opponents are going to almost certainly be packing perception arts because we ruined their day with stealth too often. This is our best opportunity to showcase our ambush ability, which if it fails due to unexpected perceptiveness AND mobility, then goes to our defenses anyway.

Neshuakadal · Jul 23, 2018

archangis said:
Once more into the shadow will make us snatch defeat from the jaw of victory if she is anywhere near our level.

Even face tanking is better because at least it trade qi for qi and actions for actions.

Once more into shadow is giving her free turns to buff herself and we spend a lot of qi to give her that opportunity.

Even better, it lose a lot of face to CRX, by giving our ennemy the opportunity to show off. We should be trying to show she is weakling easily beaten, not spend qi freely to run away from her as of we are scared.

Even if we win with that plan, we lose, at least politically.

Not really? It shows that we are good at other things rather than running straight for people with mists up. Like I don't like the plan because I think turtle fortress is a better plan to show off. However that doesn't make it a bad plan. It has a lot going for it and hides key abilities like toughness until a tougher fight. I honestly don't think that whatever Chu has can beat us after all we beat a dragon that was a level higher than us 2 or so months ago. We are much better now.

I think plan shadow plays a bit into Chu plan since she knows we are a sneak. But beating her when she preps for us just shows how strong we are. I also sort of want her to show off. It helps drain the bad blood away. And I feel really bad for the Chu family and would like her to get some support later on in her career.

SITB · Jul 23, 2018

veekie said:
Explicit statement otherwise

This is a neutral environment.
A favorable one is already dark like in the prelims. An unfavorable one would be desert or grasslands where natural cover is sparse.

It's an explicit statement that there are shadows. It's still bright and as noted 'thinly grown' which means that the forestation isn't dense.

Like, all of Ling Qi stealth techniques rely on low loght levels which aren't part of the environment. Hell, using FVM and hiding in the fog is less wasteful.

Like, if she is slower than Ling Qi despite being faster om the imitative then doing a fighting retreat (expressing FVM fully while ceding meaningless ground is better.

SynchronizedWritersBlock · Jul 23, 2018

Axel Fones said:
Do you and others actually think someone who's more of a bruiser is going to beat Ling Qi in a sustained buff/debuff war? Especially if LQ takes the opportunity to stall and set up an ambush first?

Previous experience against strong gap closers suggests that running bleeds qi and actions. Once you are into range of a peer-level gap closer, and she will start close enough to get into that range, you won't get your opportunity to stall and set up. Instead, all trying to run does is conceded to being harried. Also our stealth sucks, like, it's actually not very good if we don't gear for it. It's not a strength we can rely on.

Neshuakadal · Jul 23, 2018

SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
Previous experience against strong gap closers suggests that running bleeds qi and actions. Once you are into range of a peer-level gap closer, and she will start close enough to get into that range, you won't get your opportunity to stall and set up. Instead, all trying to run does is conceded to being harried. Also our stealth sucks, like, it's actually not very good if we don't gear for it. It's not a strength we can rely on.

We don't really have a comparison though for our stealth. We don't know what targets we need to hit in order to be great a stealth. We don't know the perception dice that people have throwing around. Saying we suck at stealth seems premature because we don't know where we should be at this level.

Arkeus · Jul 23, 2018

veekie said:
Explicit statement otherwise

This is a neutral environment.
A favorable one is already dark like in the prelims. An unfavorable one would be desert or grasslands where natural cover is sparse.

It's not neutral, actually, it's somewhat of a good environment for Ling Qi.

It's an environment that is bad for stealth because it's daylight (so lesser EPC bonus) and it doesn't have so much low light places we can easily stealth around (so no permanent +3 autos)... but it's really good for Zhengui.

Half of Zhengui's ability are enhanced by being in a forest.

Sirrocco · Jul 23, 2018

Arkeus said:
Sect just showed that a major, major deal has been brokered at their tournament. The Meng just got screwed over hard for not sending a representative, and the Ji might have lost a great opportunity.

This basically established the Argent Sect as one of the most important if not the most important places to have been this decade.

They gained a lot of face from this.

Remind me who the Meng and the Ji are?

Personally, I half-agree. I figure that the fact they were even able to contain the fight and keep it from damaging the onlookers was pretty impressive. I think that the brokering of a major deal didn't hurt them any. I think that the fact that the onlookers *were* able to see such a demonstration fight was in their favor as well. That's an experience that doesn't come often, even for relatively high level cultivators. I think that they were obviously humbled by her stealign the fight slot and then by the individual matchups that resulted, and everyone who's watching will know what happened there, but I think that it's balanced out. It's mixed. Lost a bit of face directly, gained a bit of interest for later, which is the sort of thing that pays off in its own way.

I think that Cai Shenhuag basically reminded them who was boss and got some concessions out of it, but I don't think she made them bleed.

archangis said:
Once more into the shadow will make us snatch defeat from the jaw of victory if she is anywhere near our level.

Even face tanking is better because at least it trade qi for qi and actions for actions.

Once more into shadow is giving her free turns to buff herself and we spend a lot of qi to give her that opportunity.

Even better, it lose a lot of face to CRX, by giving our ennemy the opportunity to show off. We should be trying to show she is weakling easily beaten, not spend qi freely to run away from her as of we are scared.

Even if we win with that plan, we lose, at least politically.

Everyone knows that our combat style is "evasive flitting black cloud of dark and frozen doom". I guarantee that deciding that we dont' want to get into melee with the dedicated melee spec isnt' going to make us look bad. It's going to make us look like we're playing to our own strengths.

I'm not sure what the focus on running out of qi is. We have plenty to spool up for a few rounds even after running away, and this really isn't likely to turn into a war of attrition. We'll be able to recharge fully before tomorrow regardless.

"Desperately trying and failing to chase your foe through the woods" is not "showing off" for a melee character. Standing there and letting her whale on us would actually let her show off a lot more.

Arkeus · Jul 23, 2018

Axel Fones said:
Do you and others actually think someone who's more of a bruiser is going to beat Ling Qi in a sustained buff/debuff war? Especially if LQ takes the opportunity to stall and set up an ambush first?

Because it's not a buff/debuff war. Stalling and setting up an ambush actually means we can't set up our good debuff/buffs, while she set up our own, and it relies on her perception sucking when we have low stealth capabilities.

It trades away our strengths (being faster than her, first strike, being tanky, being able to debuff her) for our weaknesses, and it doesn't even concentrate on any weakness of hers.

Arkeus · Jul 23, 2018

Sirrocco said:
Remind me who the Meng and the Ji are?

Jing are the ducal clan of the Alabaster Sands.

The Meng are "We are Screwed", the clan:

yrsillar said:
Ling Qi grimaced as a trailing leap and a midair spin carried her through a rapidly narrowing gap in the shifting grid of light, and her mind raced, putting together the answers to the question. "Meng clan, controls the western marshes. Staunch Weilu conservatives. Former ties with the Bai, backed Sun Shao. Neutral and distant at court. Isolanist"

The Meng basically should have been here, and should be begging the Cai right now to help them beg forgiveness to the Bai.

They are missing a very short time window.

Sirrocco · Jul 23, 2018

Arkeus said:
Because it's not a buff/debuff war. Stalling and setting up an ambush actually means we can't set up our good debuff/buffs, while she set up our own, and it relies on her perception sucking when we have low stealth capabilities.

It trades away our strengths (being faster than her, first strike, being tanky, being able to debuff her) for our weaknesses, and it doesn't even concentrate on any weakness of hers.

You have a *vastly* different idea of what our strengths are compared to her than I do.

Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

Crazy cat guy

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Tryhard As Fuck

Seven gremlins in a trench coat

Please sir, may I have some Meows?

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Pedantic

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Crazy cat guy

Pedantic