Usually we can't train a rank until we have the Meridians to use it IIRC.
Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Fantasy
- Location
- Staring into the void
[X] Plan everything and sharing
I like throwing knives and ZB+
I like throwing knives and ZB+
- Location
- United States of America
Alright, time for a rational, reasoned defense of ZB+. As I have noticed a disheartening lack of them.
First off, will ZB+ be good? That is the premier question we need to answer. And no, I'm not going to argue "we should get it too see if it is good or not" because that, is a silly argument. The argument will be thus. Historically, we have never gotten to level 2 of an art and said: "wow this was a waste of our time." Arts are designed to be enticing at all levels, for the level that they represent. ZB represents low to mid red, and it is wholly unappealing to late yellows. FSA, on the other hand, is for late red to mid/late yellow, and it is extremely appealing right now. We can't say that we expect an art to be bad when no art has been bad for the level that it is meant to represent. So the argument that we have no idea if ZB+ is going to be good or not is based on a bad analogy to ZB. ZB+ is a better and improved art of ZB, it will be better and it will most likely be appealing to the level that it is meant to be at, which is low yellow to late yellow, probably.
Second off, why do we want ZB+, or, what does ZB+ offer us? First off, it is cheap to learn. We get -10 successes needed to learn it after the first level, and we get an additional =5 to successes to learn it because it is a heart art. This means that it is -15 successes per level after the first one. This means that it is cheaper and easier to learn than any other art we could get (in terms of successes). Next, it offers actual tangible advantages that our other arts don't give us. First off, it's passive stacks with SCS to a ludicrous degree, allowing us to reliably go first (important with our need for FVM) and stacks with FSA to increase the damage we deal with projectiles, or primary damage dealing weapon.
That is just for ZB's passives, which will be improved and possibly expanded upon with ZB+. The techniques are next. Against the Wind provides a unit-wide debuff for the enemy by both lowering the dice they have for offense and defense, while also limiting their speed. We can expect significant increases in this from ZB+. This debuff is useful for A) kiting the enemy, and B) dealing with a bunch of mooks where we want to hit them better also don't want them to hit us. (In contrast to the pure defense that TRF gives us which is for dealing with peer or higher level opponents.) This debuff can be potent and ZB+ is going to make it even more potent.
We then have the support function of ZB. Guiding Zephyr. This provides a buff to all allies in range, as well as increase the damage we deal with projectiles. Again, this is for when we are wanting to deal more damage to the opponent, as well as keep our defenses up. We can expect ZB+ to dramatically increase this as well, to make it more appealing for the area that it is in.
Finally, we have Shielding Gale, which provides protection against projectiles while simultaneously forcibly removing unwanted people from our personal space. We don't want people targeting us in melee, as we have a better defense against ranged projectiles (look at ZB's passives again). This art, which we can expect to be significantly upgraded helps with that. It is also an instant which provides a lot of opportunities for which instant we want to use in a given situation.
Why should we get ZB+ now, rather than later? Every single week we are going to have a lot of stuff to do, especially when we have EPC quests and Sun Liling's quests to worry about. It will always be difficult to find the time to go to the archives and get an art because we will always have things to do. So the real question is, why shouldn't we get it now? We have an action that we can spend on getting it that doesn't take away any of our other opportunities outside of Elder Jiao's training. So the question then becomes, is getting ZB+ now a good use of Elder Jiao's training.
There are a plethora of options available to us for his training. Formations, Investigation, AC, Melee, etc. So what do those things have over ZB+ now that would make it more productive to get ZB+ later? Formations is a huge time sink and if it is something we want to pursue, then we will want to get more actions then Elder Jiao's training to actually bare some fruit. After all, he is not going to be providing us with formations for our use so we have to come with our own. And we don't have any to practice with (unless you want to practice with the two-dot security lock). Investigation runs into the problem of overtraining AM, especially since we want to use AM with the 8fold path pill week. AC runs into that same problem and we don't have the meridians to effectively use it currently. Melee... is a completely different bag of worms that I don't feel like getting into. Suffice to say, melee probably isn't our best bet either.
Other suggestions have been made, but none of them have gained any traction. There is a definite investment to make in any of them and none of them stand out as particularly noteworthy. ZB+ is an option among many, but an option that will yield immediate results. If we approach getting ZB+ as something that is going to wow us, as every other art has that we have acquired when we have acquired them, then there is no particular reason not to use Elder Jiao to get and train in it.
Motile Mollusc
Bitten by a radioactive were-tilde
- Location
- Here
Clearly, we should get a lesson in Fashion from our esteemed Elder! Sight-based passive attacks!
More seriously on the subject of skills, should we get a Stealth lesson out of Jiao at some point?
We are going to cap it by normal use anyway, so it's a waste in that respect.
But we may get a speciality (or two?) out of it, and i think it would be interesting for us and Ling Qi to see what he says about what's probably our best skill.
On ZB+, I'm curious as to what "a martial art that brings out the power of wind in the user in all it's uncontainable glory." will turn out to be. Just ZB, but more? Or something extra/greater? Not sure if now is the best time for it, but that's what the hivemind will decide.
- Location
- scrabbling
All that you have argued is that ZB+ may be an acceptable use for actions and meridians, not that it is acceptable to use Elder lessons or that it is acceptable to use Elder Jiao lessons. There is a distinct difference.
(Nor have I been convinced that ZB+ is an acceptable use of resources. Nearly all of the pertinent reasons you have tried to provide apply to any art Ling Qi pursues, and the rest is a mere description of what ZB does and a 'what if ZB+ does it better?', which is worthless.)
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It is easy enough to extol the cities of a technique when it stands in isolation; what you HAVEN'T done is show that these techniques somehow present capabilities that significantly improve over what we can do now.
For example - Guiding Zephyr is "is useful for A) kiting the enemy, and B) dealing with a bunch of mooks where we want to hit them better also don't want them to hit us". So is our newest tech from FSA, which blinds multiple cultivators. So are our FVM techs, which can disorient, damage and debuffs. Are you really going to tell me that Guiding Zephyr is sufficiently different that having it as an option provides major benefit over what we already have?
Same for the other techs. Are they useful? Sure. Are they a useful ADDITION to what we can already do? Not so much.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'd say ZB+ is useful in that it can be used with arrows or knives and so's less situational than FSA. FSA is great alone, when we want to snipe or when we don't feel the need for FVM, but ZB+ could be used alongside FVM, throwing a knife without the stop in between.
Generally speaking, I'd say it's one of the arts that could produce a clear improvement in our kit rather than just new options. It'd allow for more damage to be dealt at range without switching to a cumbersome bow as well as provinding a better team offensive boost. It's benefit to ranged attacks is especially exciting with Zhengui spitting fire.
- Location
- United States of America
I have argued that all other options are just as possible as ZB+ for an Elder training. ZB+, on the other hand, gives us immediate returns and benefits while all other options have not. I have not heard one argument about why ZB+ is objectively worse than the other options (subjectively yes, objectively, no) or why ZB+ is not an acceptable use of an Elder's time. Elder Jiao doesn't care what we use his time for, so we might as well use it to advance an art, in an element, that we know we are good in. It's other people's job to now come up with an argument why ZB+ is not just as acceptable for Elder training as any other use.
By what meter of usefulness are you using? We can start with the flute, and then in addition to that buff up our allies with Guiding Zypher to increase our allies' damage against their weakened defense. We can do that while playing FVM. If we want a mixed bag of defense and offense, then that is the best way to go, far better (even in its current state) then TRF which only gives defense. We have a debuff that takes away their defense, we have a buff that increases our defense, but ZB provides the middle ground for both defense and offense, very useful against mooks or peer opponents.
If a bunch of mooks are coming to gangbang on Zhengui, we could buff him up with TRF, but it would be more useful to blow them away with Shielding gale, especially if they are also using ranged attacks. The reason being is that an enemy who lost his chance to attack cannot deal damage, while an enemy that still has a chance to attack still has a chance to deal damage.
I mean, people are saying that ZB isn't good compared to our other options, or ZB+ is redundant compared to our other options, but only ZB and FVM provide both added defense and added offense, and we can use the majority of ZB with FVM at will. In what way isn't having that option, in addition to our other options, incredibly useful?
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
We were informed there are Arts that chain off of Zephyr's Breath that require mastery of it to not suffer penalties/gain advantages developing. "ZB+" is the placeholder name we've got for it.
Which is why I think if we go with this, that Yrsillar will more-or-less immediately give us a list of our options of where to go from there while he's working on the main part of the turn.
- Location
- United Kingdom
To go through each part of ZB:
The last actually has pretty good synergy with knives. For Ling Qi, her bow is too long range to benefit from this, so it's good that knives are being trained as well to benefit from an upgrade to this.
We could probably do with getting some new knives as well.
Obviously the first three passives are all great, and will most likely continue to be great when upgraded.
The last actually has pretty good synergy with knives. For Ling Qi, her bow is too long range to benefit from this, so it's good that knives are being trained as well to benefit from an upgrade to this.
Straight up reduces their dice pool on a success. Hard to go wrong there.
This one isn't quite as useful, especially in a 1v1, so we just have to hope the upgrade is good.
Useful to get someone out of melee range who we don't want to be there/disengaging in general.
We could probably do with getting some new knives as well.
... It still needs items. It needs our knives ( or, if it becomes instant, our bow).
[x] Alectai
Proxy vote okay?
Proxy vote okay?
At the coat of massive losses to our power, sure. All those Bow and FSA bonuses, put to no use whatever...
Anyway. Yes, that is a use, but not one I would find sufficient to warrant an art. Especially after Ling Qi figured out how to use the Bow in combat after playing FVM (drop the flute, then shoot people.)
Why would we caster if it is a mixed bag or just defence? In the vast majority of battles, it all comes down to the same thing in the end; making our side take damage slower than their side.
Because there is basically no situation where such an option offers a meaningful improvement over our other options.
It is the same way people who like two different cereals don't worry about buying cereal that consists 50% of one thing and 50% of another.
Hell, to a first order, buying both cereals at all is unnecessary; you like 'em both, so just stick to one! Still, sometimes you are in the mood for one thing or another; whatever. But needing to buy a mix is unnecessary even to a second order. Most of the time a choice of the cereals will do, but if it isn't just dump some of one out, then some of the other. Caring about precise measurements is really missing the point.
Especially if instead of paying power box of cereal, you pay for TYPE of cereal.
[X] Plan everything and sharing
Shouldn't we train both SCS and FVM with this?
We are. Zeqing is fvm