Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

Vote Tally : Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny) - Original | Page 263 | Sufficient Velocity [Posts: 6557-6672]
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[X] Resilience
No. of Votes: 51

[X] Resist
No. of Votes: 43

[X] Moon
No. of Votes: 28

[X] Darkness
No. of Votes: 27

[X] Wood
No. of Votes: 26

[X] Music
No. of Votes: 21

^^^Top 6^^^

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[X] War
No. of Votes: 16


Total No. of Voters: 99

DeusExBritannia said:

Vote Tally

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I think you need to put that in a quote or spoiler or something.

[x] Wood
[x] Fire
[x] Resilience

[X] Music
[X] Moon
[X] Wind

[X] Resilience
[X] Resist
[X] Cold

is there a rule against voting three times for the same keyword?
edit: like could i put down all three of my votes as cold?

GoodOldChap said:

is there a rule against voting three times for the same keyword?
edit: like could i put down all three of my votes as cold?

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It would just count as one vote I believe. Rules aside the vote tally eats duplicate lines.

Erebeal said:

It would just count as one vote I believe. Rules aside the vote tally eats duplicate lines.

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ah too bad i thought i was being clever

[x] Wind
[X] Music
[X] Darkness

[X] Music
[X] Darkness
[X] Moon

TehChron said:

*vomits in projectile*

WHY CAN'T PEOPLE JUST READ THE BOOK

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Reading the book doesn't mean you know the exact wording off the top of your head.

[x] Wood
[x] Wind
[x] Music

After more than a year I am still partial to this pun and combo of words. →_→

[X] Music
[x] Summons
[x] Wind

So I guess I should be chilling for Wood a bit.

Now, currently we aren't a real wood cultivator yet given we only have a single art with it, and there is a solid argument that we won't manage to get TRF+, and as such we just need to not get a new wood art and we'd be consolidating our elements more, which is good.

However, there is a solid argument thematic wise for having Wood be the medium through which our 'warm' arts work, and this is especially true if we do want the Spring/Winter duality. Not only would wood work perfectly for that image, but Zhengui having his own rebirth/destruction duality with wood/fire means we could be inspired by his own arts and inspire his growth even further.

So, basically, I see Ling Qi having two kinds of wood arts in the future: the Vitality ones (Arts inspired by TRF), and the Resilience/Resist ones. This is also why I am hoping for some of the support keywords to go through, as thematic wise our wood warm arts being support fit very well for our domain. Well, I guess ones like @AbeoLogos Verdent Sanctuary could work too.

[X] Vitality
[X] Wind
[X] Hearth

Arkeus said:

this is especially true if we do want the Spring/Winter duality

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Is there any example of someone with such drastically different elements in their domain? Is there a cultivator for whom the dichotomy between the elements of their domain is the Path itself? The way I see it, that trying to internalise such thing and building the entire mindset and personality on such basis will bring insanity (if it's even possible).

Varder said:

Is there any example of someone with such drastically different elements in their domain? Is there a cultivator for whom the dichotomy between the elements of their domain is the Path itself? The way I see it, that trying to internalise such thing and building the entire mindset and personality on such basis will bring insanity (if it's even possible).

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There are people who take seemingly opposing elements and assemble them into a harmonious whole, yes. The Argent Sect is built around that concept, even. I don't think your fears are warranted.

Arkeus said:

So I guess I should be chilling for Wood a bit.

Now, currently we aren't a real wood cultivator yet given we only have a single art with it, and there is a solid argument that we won't manage to get TRF+, and as such we just need to not get a new wood art and we'd be consolidating our elements more, which is good.

However, there is a solid argument thematic wise for having Wood be the medium through which our 'warm' arts work, and this is especially true if we do want the Spring/Winter duality. Not only would wood work perfectly for that image, but Zhengui having his own rebirth/destruction duality with wood/fire means we could be inspired by his own arts and inspire his growth even further.

So, basically, I see Ling Qi having two kinds of wood arts in the future: the Vitality ones (Arts inspired by TRF), and the Resilience/Resist ones. This is also why I am hoping for some of the support keywords to go through, as thematic wise our wood warm arts being support fit very well for our domain. Well, I guess ones like @AbeoLogos Verdent Sanctuary could work too.

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I think that's an important point to make. Elemental distribution is primarily an issue of thematic coherence and secondarily an issue of cohesion of bonuses. The former also aids the latter significantly. If we have a clear "role" for an element, then we can collect like bonuses under that element for equivalent bonuses to another cultivator with broader bonuses, while presumably benefiting from our narrower bonuses (which achieve similar practical utility) 'costing' us less. Or not, cultivators are all unique snowflakes.

In any case, we can examine some of our elements and their bonuses.
Darkness: Core thematic element, no cultivation bonuses, weak offense bonus, weak-moderate resist bonus, no spirit, Domain Weapon element
Moon: Core thematic element, cultivation bonuses, no effect bonuses, spirit
Music: Core thematic element, cultivation bonuses, qualitative effect bonuses, spirit
Wind: Moderate-strong thematic element, cultivation bonuses, weak-moderate initiative bonus, obsolete skill training bonus, no spirit
Water: stubborn thematic element, cultivation bonus, weak defensive bonus, spirit
Wood: Moderate-strong thematic element, no cultivation bonuses, weak-moderate health bonus, 2 spirits

Broken down like this, we see that any individual element has some fairly substantial gaps in its bonuses, except for perhaps Music. Effect bonuses are kind of meh all around, cultivation bonuses are inconsistent, and spirit coverage is... well you could ditch our actually definitely permanent spirit and the breadth of our coverage wouldn't change at all, which is a bit weird.

Anyway, aside from theme relevance, Darkness doesn't offer a lot other than its relevance to Domain Weapon. Which, personally, I find a bit questionable. Sure, we've got a decent Domain Weapon that'll last us a while, but if we're arguing that the possession of a lasting benefit in an area is a positive argument in focusing on it, then we're going to have Zhengui offering Wood bonuses pretty much forever. Parallel non-cultivation bonuses that complement our Wood Way bonuses too, as seen with the Health/Health bonuses we have stacked. Darkness also hasn't been explored theme-wise in a while, despite being our primary element by far, which is a bit of a shame.

Moon? Moon doesn't actually do anything, it just trains faster. Which is nice, but everything but Darkness has that too, from one source or another. Music is inherently an add-on element that doesn't even necessarily show up in the meridians of Music arts. It costs us nothing in terms of build space, is going to show up in any selection of arts regardless of whether we vote for it, and it pretty much irrelevant to any of the issues at hand because of it. Water cultivates good, has a forgettable bonus, and very little thematic exploration for Ling Qi; Water's nature has pretty much only been explored in AC, which is an unsuitable art we're dropping. Wind's a mess, but story-wise it's a relevant mess and we're still resolving the threads of that; cultivates decently well though.

Thematically, Wood has some interesting things to offer, and Zhengui's just... very relevant, in a lot of ways. There's a long-term relationship we can confidently develop. It's perhaps the most stable element/environment relationship that we have, in terms of availability for future development. I admit, some of my fondness for Wood is that its Way bonus was very neutral and not ruined by a really weird breakthrough that was bad and wrong.

Varder said:

Is there any example of someone with such drastically different elements in their domain? Is there a cultivator for whom the dichotomy between the elements of their domain is the Path itself? The way I see it, that trying to internalise such thing and building the entire mindset and personality on such basis will bring insanity (if it's even possible).

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It's simple. Instead of internalizing two conflicting elements, you internalize two complementary prisms through which the elements are each independently explored two-fold. The advantage to the approach is that the worst case scenario and best case scenario are the same. Namely, when we ascend to a Great Spirit, we actually ascend as two, interlinked, Great Spirits.

Varder said:

Is there any example of someone with such drastically different elements in their domain? Is there a cultivator for whom the dichotomy between the elements of their domain is the Path itself? The way I see it, that trying to internalise such thing and building the entire mindset and personality on such basis will bring insanity (if it's even possible).

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We know of two spirit beasts doing it so far: Zhengui and Gu Tai's spirit beast:

week 41 said:

Xiulan's cousin did, as it turned out, have a fair amount of advice to offer, or rather, his spirit did. Yuzhao was a creature of Sun and Death, unique to the eastern deserts and descended from the now extinct phoenixes that once resided there… or so she had bragged. The point was, she had a fair amount of insight to offer Zhengui on mixing his two conflicting natures of growth and destruction.

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Zhengui is a big part of why the theme of spring/winter is considered, I think.

Anyway, if we are thinking of short term (until green 3), then we have roughly 2 ways to quantify elements in our make up: by numbers of arts and by meridians:

• Numbers of Arts wise, we have 4 Darkness arts (SCS, FVM, FSS, ENM), 3 Moon arts (PLR, CDE, SCS), 3 Water arts (FSS, CDE, FVM), 2 Wind arts (HDW, ENM), 1 Wood arts (TRF)
• Numbers of meridian wise, we have 11? Darkness meridians (3+ SCS, 3 FVM, 2 FSS, 2+ ENM), 9? Moon meridians (5 PLR, 2+ CDE, 1+ SCS), 6? Water meridians (3 FSS, 2+ CDE, 1 FVM), 6? Wind (4 HDW, 1+ ENM), 4 Wood (4 TRF).

Now, this does make it pretty clear that Moon is slowly catching up to Darkness but is still not there. At best, we could say that Ling Qi would have Darkness/Moon as primary, and Water/Wind/Wood as secondary. However, Darkness is clearly by far the most important of our element, Water is trolling us, and wood having just 1 art and 4 meridian only qualify as secondary because TRF is so good and a pure wood element art.

Basically, unless we want to be Primary Darkness with other elements being there to balance it somewhat, we want to get more moon/wood so that there can be more than one true primary element.
Shhh Water.

In all honesty, I don't like wood much. It served us well as part of TRF, but I don't feel it's a core part of Ling Qi. It feels a bit too solid for me, and I see Ling Qi as more ephemeral. In connection to Zhengui, I'd actually prefer we develop the fire aspect over the wood aspect, which is why I'm still a believer in Ashen Shadow Art lol.

[X] Resilience
[X] Resist
[X] wood

[X] Moon
[X] Secrets
[X] Music

[X] Music
[x] Summons
[x] War

[X] Resilience
[X] Resist
[X] Darkness

[X] Resilience
[X] Resist
[x] Wood

Varder said:

Is there any example of someone with such drastically different elements in their domain? Is there a cultivator for whom the dichotomy between the elements of their domain is the Path itself? The way I see it, that trying to internalise such thing and building the entire mindset and personality on such basis will bring insanity (if it's even possible).

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The Weilu clan was made up of sun/moon cultivators. Though admittedly that's not a great argument for it not driving people insane.