Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Fantasy
[X] Plan everything and sharing
My shopping wish list is pretty short:
-New knives
-Formations tools
@yrsillar Can Ling Qi keep an eye out for Formations tools while she's shopping? Preferably useful for breaking them, like a cultivator's version of lockpicks, but even some fancy brushes would be neat as an option.
My shopping wish list is pretty short:
-New knives
-Formations tools
@yrsillar Can Ling Qi keep an eye out for Formations tools while she's shopping? Preferably useful for breaking them, like a cultivator's version of lockpicks, but even some fancy brushes would be neat as an option.
- Location
- United States of America
That is a weird analogy to be using here. I mean, if we are going with a cereal analogy, then there would be three types of cereal: lucky charms (pure offensive buffs/defensive debuffs), Honey nut cheerios (solid defense buffs/offensive debuffs), and Mini-wheats (offensive and defensive buffs). Why do you buy all three? Because you like all three. Trying to say that in order to combine offensive buffs and defensive buffs is like combining Lucky charms and Honey Nut Cheerios is silly, as there is a perfectly acceptable cereal right in the middle. A combination of buffs is not a combination of different cereals, it is its own thing.
As for situations where a slight boost to defense and offense is better than a pure defensive boost or a pure offensive boost, there are a bunch of them.
We are fighting a group of mooks who are already debuffed to Timbuktu but are still able to reliably hit you. You want to, however, deal with them quicker and still not get hit. You pop Guiding Zypher so that FVM dissonance can hit more reliably and they lose what little chance they had to hit you. A specific example where this may come up is during the current heist we are planning on doing against 15 crafters.
Another example is where we are already winning and we want to win faster but not give up on our melody or defense. Pop Guiding Zypher for that little extra hit chance for Dissonance while remaining safe behind a wall of mists.
Another example is when we are fighting against a higher level opponent and we have already popped our defensive buffs, but we need to do a little bit more with dissonance to even the odds. Guiding Zypher helps keep us safe while also helping Dissonance hit more reliably. (this is perfectly feasible, as we can pop all TRF related buffs in a single turn and against Sun Liling, who doesn't use spiritual attacks it seems, adding a little bit extra to our defense and offense would be a much-needed boost).
The prior example against peers and mooks as well.
When we run against an opponent who is heavily armored against debuffs (for instance they have AM). Buffing ourselves evens the odds against them.
A buff to protect our more important buffs against something like disruptive star from FSA.
These are some examples of where Guiding Zypher, as it is right now, would be a better use of qi then TRF or AM, or it stacks the odds in our favor to add GZ to the mix as well. And GZ is arguably the weakest of ZB's techniques.
Also, battles aren't determined by how slow we take damage, its the difference between the amount of damage we are doing to them and the amount of damage they are doing to us. Having a technique that is an offensive and defensive buff helps us on both sides of the equation.
There will be a mini vote
Sure thats a thing you can look into
Looked into the AM meridian thing. Looks to me like you have a head one open still. I may have made a book keeping error somewhere though? AM should take up two head meridians as of the next level though, which you have
That head meridian was for AM3 I thought? So now we should be using Head/spine/head... We shouldn't have any open now that we've learnt am3.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Ah, then this means we don't need a fourth Meridian for level 4?
Or if we do, is it another Head still or another Spine?
- Location
- United States of America
good to know!
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Huh, were the Argent Arts starting in red then? Or are they just particularly powerful Second Realm exclusive Arts?
Or are they on par with SCS/FVM and that they go into Green? The fact they need as many Meridians as FVM does suggests the this.
So AM is harder to level than FVM and SCS?
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Our fears of ~150 successes + meridian for cap have been realised.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
On the other hand.
Considering how good it already is at Rank 3, Rank 5 is going to be some hot nonsense
- Location
- United States of America
We know that these are the beginning of the Sect's arts, which means that they are probably geared towards early yellow/mid yellow and go up all the way to late yellow for an extremely powerful base. Then the next branch of the arts moves from green onwards. It makes sense that the core arts of a major sect are extremely powerful and potent and just build up from there.
We should seriously consider trading AC or AM to Han Jian for whatever Argent Art they got, if they got one. These arts are looking like they are going to be monsters in terms of capabilities and power. The problem is that we are tight on time already and these arts are going to take a lot of time to train and get ready.
The potential problem there though is that we won't be able to trade AC, since Xiulan already has it. Which means AM.
And AM is really good. Against us. If you wanted 1 technique to counter us, AM would be it. And we might have to fight them in the tournament.
The is a real risk here.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
That's an excellent point.
There's no huge risk sharing it to our friends, because they're mostly going down the Production Track anyway, but against other competitors, Argent Mirror is an excellent way to shut us down.
Honestly, I don't think we need any more Argent Arts. If we should find more, wonderful, but it's not something we should go out of our way and take unneeded risks for. It's bad enough that Bai Meizhen has it, but we don't really have much of a chance against her anyway.
There's no huge risk sharing it to our friends, because they're mostly going down the Production Track anyway, but against other competitors, Argent Mirror is an excellent way to shut us down.
Honestly, I don't think we need any more Argent Arts. If we should find more, wonderful, but it's not something we should go out of our way and take unneeded risks for. It's bad enough that Bai Meizhen has it, but we don't really have much of a chance against her anyway.
The other thing to think about there is what purpose such arts would have.
The argent arts here seem to be designed to fill a basic cultivator's build, covering all the key arts one needs.
AM does perception and spritual defense.
AC does martial arts.
Movement is the next obvious gap to fill, and wind/thunder sounds fairly logical there.
So what's last for heaven/earth? Ranged is a possibility, but lots of people don't do that, and martial arts are more traditional anyway. My guess would be a physical defense/counter art. Counter arts seem to be fairly popular (see Meizhen, Xiulan, Suyin), and it works as a good basic part of a cultivator's build. Also works with the elements.
Now, neither of those would be that useful for us. We already have a good movement art, and we're already stacking a lot of defense. The marginal returns would be limited, even though I'm sure they're good. Heck, one of the big things people brought up as a reason to get another movement art - SCS's darkness limitation - has just stopped being a problem.
So yeah, my feeling is that the payback probably wouldn't be worth the risk. To say nothing of the fact that we don't really have room for them anyway.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
It really depends how much of our time open up. Given AM5 is the cap for yellow we have much less time than hoped, and there is also a danger that TRF5 is the cap, too. In that case both TRF and AM would be significantly harder to max than FVM/SCS before breakthrough. While as far as we know it's not because it is significantly higher quality than FVM/SCS, I think it might be a combination of "Ling Qi is actually really damn talented at what FVM gives and there is an implicit bonus there not told" and "FVM/SCS purposefully begin so low level so that it's easier to learn thorough".
Basically if we don't need to trade AM and we have time I would be all for a wind/thunder leg/lung movement art. Our speed is actually stagnating lately and I've been thinking we need more of that. However, Yan Renshu art is probably higher priority than that to me, and maybe even the art in the shaman bag if it turns out to be the Shaman's musical art.
AM5 being a thing before yellow and probably needing 150? successes change things, and while it also mean it will be really damn good at that level, it also means we can spare less time learning new arts.
@yrsillar considering the bookkeeping error for AM3 meridian, are you sure TRF3 doesn't need a third meridian?
Basically if we don't need to trade AM and we have time I would be all for a wind/thunder leg/lung movement art. Our speed is actually stagnating lately and I've been thinking we need more of that. However, Yan Renshu art is probably higher priority than that to me, and maybe even the art in the shaman bag if it turns out to be the Shaman's musical art.
AM5 being a thing before yellow and probably needing 150? successes change things, and while it also mean it will be really damn good at that level, it also means we can spare less time learning new arts.
@yrsillar considering the bookkeeping error for AM3 meridian, are you sure TRF3 doesn't need a third meridian?
All those examples are kinda meaningless because more dice is always better is a truism (and I am pretty sure I can find more useful actions for each scenario rather than use ZB), if Ling Qi deals with numerous opponents that can hit her then she is already lost given the stacking penalty from multi opponents (and how can mooks hit her in the first place with how the system is stacked against lower realm cultivators?).
ZB gives Ling some minor bonuses (because it's baby's first art) and ZB+ will only be marginally better compared to Ling's other options. If Ling wants to shoot better she should train FSA, if Ling Qi wants to hit harder/debuff/buff she should train Argent Current* given that ZB has a range of 30 meters which is less then the FVM range and near Ling's own range so she can simply attack from the mist and disengage.
And of course the real kicker: ZB+ doesn't actually synergize with Ling Qi. It's a wind art and all of Ling Qi reducers are for either darkness or water and one heaven. So even if ZB+ against all expectations will turn out to be amazing, Ling still wouldn't use it overly much because it would drain too much Qi. We saw how battles are mostly decided by who runs out of Qi first, so doing more with less is king, ZB bonuses will require too much Qi to be worth it.
*Which, given the fact it's a reward from a trial from achieving something that normally wouldn't be is probably better than even a floor 3 art. Also a heart/arm art which means it's both for attack and buff/debuff.
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- Location
- Staring into the void
We haven't gotten wind qi reduction gear because we've not had many actives that use it. But it's stupid to ignore Ling's innate talent at wind because of gear.
Lack of wind actives -> no wind qi reductions -> don't get wind arts as there are no wind qi reductions -> lack of wind actives -> etc
That's ignoring the longterm for the short.
Also, yrsillar keeps writing wind fluff about us, and right now it honestly feels kind of silly, since ZB in its current state is unusable, and we're generally focused on FVM/SCS instead of any wind action.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
Beside, we do have some Wind Qi reduction gear we want to keep, Blizzard Pin. I also personally want to upgrade it when we find a grade 3 wind/water core. After that... well, our knives are cheapo mid-gold level knives, if that. replacing them for decent knives when we get more money could be done, so that should be another 2Qi reduction there.
We'll probably want to do a full up grade/replace of a lot of our gear by the end of the year, so we shouldn't want to do that TOO soon. Our knives are probably the only bit of gear we should upgrade within a couple of months unless we find a LOT of money when raiding the crafter hideout.
We'll probably want to do a full up grade/replace of a lot of our gear by the end of the year, so we shouldn't want to do that TOO soon. Our knives are probably the only bit of gear we should upgrade within a couple of months unless we find a LOT of money when raiding the crafter hideout.
...
We just more-or-less maxed out our use of Instant actions, and you want to get another another movement art? Spoiler: it will use Instant Actions, competing with every other defensive art we've got.
So, no. Stop it. No new arts until Early Green at the earliest! We need to master what we've got, not waste time learning more things that will compete for actions with what we do already. You want speed? Max out SCS first; then we can maybe talk.
And when will Ling get the gear? How will she pay for it (Remember that both robes were gifts)? Or where would she wear it (Because most of Ling Qi arts are darkness based and the new cool art she got is water based which is what her current qi reducers reduce)? The whole argument for using the Elder action to study ZB+ is because it gives immediate results, so saying that it's a long term investment is silly. FSA is also a wind art and actually gives Ling Qi options that she lacks, so investing in it and it's upgrade art is superior to ZB.
EDIT: Like, currently Ling is equipped for Darkness/Water arts and a bit of FSA specifically (The bow and pin). Suddenly trying to switch elements and redo her whole gear is super wasteful rather than build on staff she is already good at.
EDIT EDIT: All current plans suggest using somehting like 80 RSS which is half of Ling Qi current funds. And I am highly skeptic of the idea that the raid is going to make Ling Qi rich beyond her wildest dreams rather than continue to enable her pill addiction for another 3 months.
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