Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

[Erebeal]

Sure, however, I disagree you can quantify the dice down to simple investments. The world that has been crafted is a lot more complicated than figuring out the most efficient way to get to 120.

You are furthermore assuming that Sun Liling will invest equal effort as us into cultivation and that she will get an equal return on her investment

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The world is also bigger than Sun Liling. Unless we hit aomething like a level cap for, say, music, the specialist will nearly always be stronger than the generalist at the same level.

Splitting our build means we will be weaker at 20 years old than we would be if we were specialised. Correspondingly we will be lower on the metaphorical ladder.

And yes. Build are more complex than this. Certain investments can produce qualitative shifts in the game that have disproportionate quantitative effect. For example: if we get stealth high enough to effectively go invisible in combat then anyone who lacks sufficient perception or AoE will be at a huge disadvantage, as we will have effectively negated all their offense dice. Guarding against being trumped like this is hugely important.

However, I see absolutely no reason to think that going both music and archery would produce this kind of qualitative advantage.

 

[Thor's Twin]

The reason to specialize isn't because we're incapable of hitting "sufficient dice" otherwise, it is to get there faster due to having more focused cultivation, and it is to streamline combat-time action economy[1].

If we had enough time we could totally develop multiple styles to Monster-competitive levels and situationally switch loadouts in-between. Hell, that's what Liling did as prep to ambushing us; tracking, speed and spiritual defense instead of a simpler "more death".

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No one else that I can remember has made that argument and most everyone has argued that if we don't specialize we won't be able to deal with a hypothetical threat because we won't have the dice to beat their defense.

However, in the interest of argumentation and debate, there is a counter-argument to be made. Getting more archery arts does not streamline combat-time action economy any more than having archery/music. We will have more choices to make at each stage of the fight with a pure archery build, as each tech that could be used at certain stages of the combat would have a competing tech that could just as well be used. In that instance, the choices have decreased value as there is another option that could just as easily be used.

With music/archery build, we have a limited number of choices for ranged combat, and then a limited number of choices once they get into effective range. In other words, the choices are more valuable in a music/archery build than in an archery build. Or, in other words, the time we spent on each art has more meaning and value because the techs from each art would be used more.

As for the speed aspect, I can see an argument that could be made there. Reaching the benchmark faster means having time to cultivate other arts that don't impact battle. That's an argument for specialization but not against using both music and archery. We get 2 archery arts and 1 utility art in an archer specced build, and 1 archer art and 2 music arts in the hypothetical music/archery build. The question then is how much value is that utility art and how much does it help us. We know the answer to that question for the music/archer build, not necessarily for the pure archery build.

Yes. By specializing, we increase how often our attacks hit, and hedge against something unexpected changing the die totals. Alternatively, by getting bonuses from non-talisman sources, we free up our talismans to be used for defensive bonuses or more qi reduction or whatnot.

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True, but that is not the crux of the argument that many people are making for why we need specialization. People's arguments that we need specialization in order to get the amount of dice needed to defeat the mythical opponent is paradoxically opposed to the argument that specialization allows us more leeway in dice to get better defense. You can make one argument, but I don't see how you can make both.

As for increasing how often our attacks hit? That is again the argument that specialization is needed to get the dice to effectively combat people. However, our build works around this by being debuffed focused where one hit further increases our chances for other offenses to hit. However, this argument is opposed to your argument that by specializing we can then focus our dice on something else that is needed.

The world is also bigger than Sun Liling. Unless we hit aomething like a level cap for, say, music, the specialist will nearly always be stronger than the generalist at the same level.

Splitting our build means we will be weaker at 20 years old than we would be if we were specialised. Correspondingly we will be lower on the metaphorical ladder.

And yes. Build are more complex than this. Certain investments can produce qualitative shifts in the game that have disproportionate quantitative effect. For example: if we get stealth high enough to effectively go invisible in combat then anyone who lacks sufficient perception or AoE will be at a huge disadvantage, as we will have effectively negated all their offense dice. Guarding against being trumped like this is hugely important.

However, I see absolutely no reason to think that going both music and archery would produce this kind of qualitative advantage.

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And I don't suppose that if I gave some reasons where it could be a qualitative advantage the hypothetical archer won't come out again? The hypothetical archer that will always be better than us unless we go a specific route?

If we are fighting someone, then hopefully we already know what they are good at and not just picking a random person from the ground. Because we are a sneak, we don't like engaging in a fight, and we have a great tool for gathering information on enemy cultivators we can know if this person prefers to fight at range or up close. Having both options allow us to pick the method of fighting that gives us the advantage.

Having a dedicated single target ranged options enables us to bleed people from afar. If we know that they prefer close ranged, then that gives us the incentive for fighting from afar. Unless they have ranged capabilities equal to ours or superior, or have a large distance movement art, that places them at a huge disadvantage. And we know that they don't have ranged options that are superior to ours because we did our homework.

Having a dedicated AoE close ranged options enables us to bleed people up close, trap them where they can't escape, and debuff all of their stats. Unless they are our equal or superior in close ranged combat, then they will have a huge disadvantage because they can't gain distance from us to utilize their specialty. And since we know that they don't have superior close ranged options, because we did our homework, then we will have the upper hand.

If they are equal to us in both areas, then the fight would be even and competitive and not a one-sided slaughter that people are claiming it would be.

We won't be choosing to fight an opponent who is superior than us in both options unless we are bringing friends, and if we get jumped by an opponent who is superior to us in both options than we engage in stealth and run away (Sun Liling). The same thing happens if we get engaged by an opponent in the range that they are superior to us.

If we can't stealth and run away, which I might add is what we are really good at and will probably continue to be really good at, and the opponent is superior to us then something drastically wrong has happened outside of combat and being a specialist in one area will not save us from this fight.

 

[PrimalShadow]

True, but that is not the crux of the argument that many people are making for why we need specialization. People's arguments that we need specialization in order to get the amount of dice needed to defeat the mythical opponent is paradoxically opposed to the argument that specialization allows us more leeway in dice to get better defense. You can make one argument, but I don't see how you can make both.

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That is a false dichotemy. What you are reading as two arguments ("we need more offensive dice!" and "extra offensive dice can be 'moved' to defense by reallocating talisman bonuses") are really just one argument: "we need more power".

The truth is that our bonuses are relatively fungible. We have flexibility in choosing where we add dice, both by choosing talismans in the short term and by allocating arts in the long term. We want to allocate our power in a way that maximizes what we can do. When we are trailing on offensive dice (like we are now), that means marginal changes go towards improving our offensive; if we were in a situation where marginal increases to offense weren't that valuable, they would instead go towards defense or whatever.



If we have the ability to arrange for getting 50 dice in multiple offensive disciplines, then we can get 50 dice in ONE, and then use the freed up talismans and meridians and XP to boost something else. Whichever of our pursuits is most valuable on the margin, we can dedicate more resources towards it.

Practically speaking, I strongly doubt that we will have enough power to match Sun Liling by the tournament, much less beat her. However, even if we do, that doesn't change anything. We would STILL want to distribute our energy in a way that maximizes our power, because Sun Liling is not the ceiling; there are stronger beings out there, and even if they don't have our growth rate that is hardly going to help us if we have to fight them.

 

[Ayashi]

When we are attacking, we are crippled by the fact that we can not break the DV of a weapon. If we roll 100 success difference in a clash with a 1 DV weapon, we will do 1 damage. At a certain point, the more dice you have will not be increasing our average damage because our average differences in successes would be larger than the DV of the weapon. At that point, the value of your dice diminishes greatly because on average, they do nothing for you.

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Doesn't current Arts progression already show that Arts do not simply stack attack dice endlessly ? Sun Liling didn't attack us with a 50 attack dice skill, but with a:
- 35 dice + 2auto +2perfect damage +2(or more) armor penetrating + -2speed - 3def debuff ranged attack;
- 35 dice + 2auto +2perfect damage +2(or more) armor penetrating melee attack that triple hit


Overall the "attack dice" is a good metric to compare things, but realistically Arts will give other useful attack bonuses instead of just simply increasing dice endlessly. Including artificially increased DV like AS2 already does for us.

 

[Thor's Twin]

That is a false dichotemy. What you are reading as two arguments ("we need more offensive dice!" and "extra offensive dice can be 'moved' to defense by reallocating talisman bonuses") are really just one argument: "we need more power".

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On the contrary, if your argument is that extra offensive dice will help us hit more often and we need that because we need to hit more often, and extra dice can be transferred to another area that we lack, then that argument is contradictory. If we need the dice to hit more often, and we need to hit more often, then if we take the extra dice, that are helping us hit more often, and place them in a skill we lack, then we won't be hitting as often. If we don't need the dice to hit more often, or as consistently, that is a different story. A different story discussed below.

I agree that the general argument is that we need more power., and I agree with that sentiment. The argument that most people are making for specialization is, however, that unless we specialize in either archery or music we can't be a good cultivator. I have given reasons against that, and shown dice to disprove that.

We don't need to specialize to remain competitive. It is not a situation where Ling Qi will fail to achieve her goals if she does not specialize. There are, however, certain distinct advantages to specializing. Advantages that may help Ling Qi in achieving her goals, but are not needed to achieve her goals.

The most vehement proponents of specializing have not really mentioned them, which is perplexing. These advantages are concrete and useful without having to try and use a hypothetical super archer that will always beat us, in order to try and persuade people to go for specialization.

Here are a couple that have popped up during the discussion.
1. Speed. If we specialize, then we don't need as many arts to reach the dice goal that we want to have. This allows us to reach it faster and then move on towards a different goal. That different goal could be more dice, or a utility art, or anything else really. Generalists don't have that luxury. Example: 2 arts needed to get FVM competitive. We need 3 arts to get archery and FVM to that level. The time and resources spent on that 3rd art didn't need to be spent. Or could have been spent on something else.

2. More flexibility with dice. Let me be clear, this advantage does not exist if there is a feeling that we need more of a specific dice to be competitive. As long as we need the dice to go to a specific area of our build, then we have little to no flexibility with our build. However, as you have mentioned, once we have the dice where we feel competitive then additional effort can be spent on other things that we feel are weak points. A generalist does not have that luxury. A generalist must spend his time getting the arts to be competitive. This is an offset of speed.

People should be going for specialization because it gives concrete advantages and they want to do so. Not because they feel it is necessary in order to be competitive. Specialization is not necessary, it may be helpful, but it is not necessary.

 

[wankongyew]

Personally I quite like the idea of Ling Qi having archery as a backup tool in her arsenal. I don't see how feats like destroying the shaman's talisman from range while stealthed could be replicated without it for example.

At the same time, I have a hard time imagining that sometime between breakthrough and the tournament the thread would vote to spend the sect points and take an action to visit the archive to get a FSA successor art. It's likely that at some point the thread would go for another music art, some kind of spiritual attack buffing art or some kind of larceny / stealth art. Maybe all three. After getting Green, we'd want to grind EPC, SCS, FVM, AM, TRF. I suspect that our moon patron will provide another path for advancement after EPC is capped. I also think a lot of people would want to try to get Argent Genesis early before Inner Sect. It's debatable whether or not we'd want to grind AC, AS and AE.

In between all this, I can't see getting and working on more archery being a vote-winner. This means that FSA 5 is as high as Ling Qi will likely get before the tournament.

 

[Cheesecake]

On the contrary, if your argument is that extra offensive dice will help us hit more often and we need that because we need to hit more often, and extra dice can be transferred to another area that we lack, then that argument is contradictory. If we need the dice to hit more often, and we need to hit more often, then if we take the extra dice, that are helping us hit more often, and place them in a skill we lack, then we won't be hitting as often. If we don't need the dice to hit more often, or as consistently, that is a different story. A different story discussed below.

I agree that the general argument is that we need more power., and I agree with that sentiment. The argument that most people are making for specialization is, however, that unless we specialize in either archery or music we can't be a good cultivator. I have given reasons against that, and shown dice to disprove that.

We don't need to specialize to remain competitive. It is not a situation where Ling Qi will fail to achieve her goals if she does not specialize. There are, however, certain distinct advantages to specializing. Advantages that may help Ling Qi in achieving her goals, but are not needed to achieve her goals.

The most vehement proponents of specializing have not really mentioned them, which is perplexing. These advantages are concrete and useful without having to try and use a hypothetical super archer that will always beat us, in order to try and persuade people to go for specialization.

Here are a couple that have popped up during the discussion.
1. Speed. If we specialize, then we don't need as many arts to reach the dice goal that we want to have. This allows us to reach it faster and then move on towards a different goal. That different goal could be more dice, or a utility art, or anything else really. Generalists don't have that luxury. Example: 2 arts needed to get FVM competitive. We need 3 arts to get archery and FVM to that level. The time and resources spent on that 3rd art didn't need to be spent. Or could have been spent on something else.

2. More flexibility with dice. Let me be clear, this advantage does not exist if there is a feeling that we need more of a specific dice to be competitive. As long as we need the dice to go to a specific area of our build, then we have little to no flexibility with our build. However, as you have mentioned, once we have the dice where we feel competitive then additional effort can be spent on other things that we feel are weak points. A generalist does not have that luxury. A generalist must spend his time getting the arts to be competitive. This is an offset of speed.

People should be going for specialization because it gives concrete advantages and they want to do so. Not because they feel it is necessary in order to be competitive. Specialization is not necessary, it may be helpful, but it is not necessary.

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So you agree specialization is more powerful because it gives more dice. Logic then dictates that if we fight someone who has spent the same level of resources (time, talent, drugs, etc) into a specialized build we would lose because they will be more powerful and have more dice. I don't see how you can not realize that the "hypothetical super archer" argument and the one you just made are basically the same.

 

[wankongyew]

In support of this, the aesthetics of the art are the main reason I don't like it. Yan Renshu's gross worms and a poison theme are not my idea of cool. If we wanted clouds of something to fight with, we should have grabbed ASA way back when, especially since it hinted at combat constructs for later levels.

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I'm also predisposed against AE for its aesthetics. Even Meizhen thinks it's icky. You should listen to Meizhen.

I think that if we want to get minions, we should invest the time on getting a second spirit companion post-breakthrough instead. Personally I think Hanyi is fine and getting her is a realistic proposition given the pre-tournament constraints. I'm not set on that however.

 

[Thor's Twin]

So you agree specialization is more powerful because it gives more dice. Logic then dictates that if we fight someone who has spent the same level of resources (time, talent, drugs, etc) into a specialized build we would lose because they will be more powerful and have more dice. I don't see how you can not realize that the "hypothetical super archer" argument and the one you just made are basically the same.

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No, I don't agree that specialization is more powerful because I don't agree that it gives more dice. It has the potential, the possibility, the chance, that we can choose to gain more dice in a certain field. That is certainly true. That does not mean that if we specialize we will get those extra dice for offense after we reach the number of dice we feel is competitive. Instead of getting more dice we might get that stealth/larceny art people want.

Furthermore, specialization ultimately limits our options on how to deal with threats. If we specialize as an archer we will engage people as an archer, there is no middle ground there. We will not walk up to them and engage them in melee because even though we might be able to use an archery art in melee that does not make it the position we want to be in. The same goes for if we go for music AoE. We will have no adequate answers for ranged attacks and we must go to them in order to fight, even if they are the worst archer in the world. There are advantages and disadvantages to going specialized and for going generalized.

Logic dictates, that if we fight a specialized person who has spent the same level of resources (time, talent, drugs, etc) into a specialized build as we have done in a generalized build then the one who wins is the one who is able to fight at a greater advantage than the opponent and leverage their dice better. As we are right now, if we fought a specialized archer, we would lose if we fought them at range. We would win, however, if we fought them in close enough combat that we can use the mists to block their perception, prevent them from leaving, and fight in melee with AC and with our debuffs on him.

Unless, of course, you are suggesting that Archery is the perfect build with no weaknesses what so ever, and can fight equally as well in a 5m platform as a 1,000m field. Which is what the hypothetical super archer is suggesting. An archer will not have good close range answers for a fight that is close ranged. He will have answers, and he will have solutions, but it will probably be the general "get away now so that I can leverage my range advantage" rather than "I can operate equally well at distance and at close quarters."

 

[Erebeal]

Logic dictates, that if we fight a specialized person who has spent the same level of resources (time, talent, drugs, etc) into a specialized build as we have done in a generalized build then the one who wins is the one who is able to fight at a greater advantage than the opponent and leverage their dice better. As we are right now, if we fought a specialized archer, we would lose if we fought them at range. We would win, however, if we fought them in close enough combat that we can use the mists to block their perception, prevent them from leaving, and fight in melee with AC and with our debuffs on him.

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And what, might I ask, do you think happens if we try to deal with an archer by arching them back?

The answer is that if they're specialised in it and we're not then they'll win. You don't win by playing the other person's game - you win by forcing them to play yours.

Trying to do all the things at once doesn't give you options - it just means that you have no strengths to leverage.

 

[Thor's Twin]

And what, might I ask, do you think happens if we try to deal with an archer by arching them back?

The answer is that if they're specialised in it and we're not then they'll win. You don't win by playing the other person's game - you win by forcing them to play yours.

Trying to do all the things at once doesn't give you options - it just means that you have no strengths to leverage.

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Umm.... I'm not sure that you actually read my post. I literally just said that we wouldn't win by being in an archery contest with a specialized archer. I also said that to win we would need to force them into melee, where we would have the advantage, in order to win.

We are not trying to do all the things at once, so we would have strengths to leverage. We would engage them with musical arts to debuff them, trap them in close range, and slowly wear them down.

Hypothetically, what if we were an archer specialized that was trying to get into an archery contest with a superior archer? We would lose. There would be no contest and more importantly, no logical way for us to win. What other advantages would we have to leverage? What other tools would we have to employ in that situation? The same could be said if we engage a superior melee person in melee. As a specialized archer, we would lose, handily.

If we were are as we are now, and engage a superior archer, then we engage them in melee where they can't leverage their dice. We would win then. If we were to engage a superior melee we would engage them from range, so that they can't leverage their dice. The definitions of superior to us would be greater in each of these instances than what a superior archer would look like to our specialized archer build. However, a lesser melee specialist would be superior in melee than our specialized archer build, but may be our lesser still for a generalist build.

 

[wankongyew]

And what, might I ask, do you think happens if we try to deal with an archer by arching them back?

The answer is that if they're specialised in it and we're not then they'll win. You don't win by playing the other person's game - you win by forcing them to play yours.

Trying to do all the things at once doesn't give you options - it just means that you have no strengths to leverage.

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Not really invested in this theoretical debate while I prefer to focus on the practical and doable. But I think the idea here is rock-paper-scissors. Strong rock beats weak rock but maybe weak paper is enough to beat strong rock? Is strong rock, no paper, no scissors better than say weak rock plus weak paper?

 

[PrimalShadow]

On the contrary, if your argument is that extra offensive dice will help us hit more often and we need that because we need to hit more often, and extra dice can be transferred to another area that we lack, then that argument is contradictory.

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We will do whichever one of those nets is more power. No contradictions.

I agree that the general argument is that we need more power., and I agree with that sentiment. The argument that most people are making for specialization is, however, that unless we specialize in either archery or music we can't be a good cultivator.

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We need to specialize to be the best cultivator we can be. Your argument seems to be that we can beat our current competitors, and therefore we don't need to worry about this. I say that I disagree about your first point, but every if I agreed, we couldn't beat someone who was at our own power level of they built more efficiently, and so we aren't being the best cultivator we can be, at least in terms of power.

There are certainly things that it is worth giving up power for, but until we agree on the point that not specializing is inherently giving up power there is no point having that discussion.

 

[Klaus]

Good point, but i wonder how that build would translate mechanically to Ling Qi considering the quest mechanics.
Without synergetic stacking of Arts how exactly does she achieve the needed dice (if nothing else) to be viable ?

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I'm not sure I understand the question.

The point of that post was that Meizhen's set of synergistic stacking arts was awesome and we should learn from it.
What I learned was that synergistic stacking arts aren't about monomaniacal focus on a single element or skill.

Like, if you want to be a carpenter, it doesn't pay to spec exclusively into hammers. Even if you are a genius with a hammer having even basic proficiency with a saw makes you far better at woodworking.

That's the complete opposite of what I'm saying.

Having a focus is the means to actually achieving the objective of being able to compete with any meaningful opponent.

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I believe his argument is that you're saying "focus on music" but talking about a "music" focus doesn't actually provide much information.

For example:
music!DPS? Learn Bass cannon art.
music!Debuff? Learn FVM.
music!Healer? Learn reverse-FVM.
music!Tank? Learn Sonic Wall art.

"Melee DPS" is a focus. "Debuff/Burst" is a focus. "Dammage over time" is a focus. "Music" is a "how", it needs to come after the "what".

 

[Black Noise]

@Thor's Twin, for sake of clarity could you summarize (preferably in as few words as possible*) what exactly you're arguing for?

Best as I can tell is that you disagree on what "specialized" means. Where you mean one thing while others are (or at least I am) thinking about something better described by a "cohesive and focused build" where most/all arts contribute towards all available combat options, like what Xiulan or the Monsters have in their builds.

* ETA: seriously, it looks like you're debating in good faith (all sides are) but your posts are downright demoralizing from sheer wordcount.

 

[Erebeal]

Umm.... I'm not sure that you actually read my post. I literally just said that we wouldn't win by being in an archery contest with a specialized archer. I also said that to win we would need to force them into melee, where we would have the advantage, in order to win

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Sorry, I quoted the wrong part of your post. I was referring more to your suggestion that we didn't have a good answer to to archers.

As you note, we actually do have an answer to archers.

In any case, I can't see any way that archery would actually help us. In what situation would archery be a trump card even at low dice? Against a melee spec?

While one might argue that ranged has an advantage over melee, we know that it is not objectively stronger because otherwise everyone would be ranged. Melee specs have ways of getting to ranged specs. If we try to use our "long range advantage" against a melee spec, then we'll find it doesn't work very well. Afterall, they're able to compete with dedicated ranged specs, and so they'll have a very easy time with our half-assed build.

 

[Thor's Twin]

@Thor's Twin, for sake of clarity could you summarize (preferably in as few words as possible*) what exactly you're arguing for?

Best as I can tell is that you disagree on what "specialized" means. Where you mean one thing while others are (or at least I am) thinking about something better described by a "cohesive and focused build" where most/all arts contribute towards all available combat options, like what Xiulan or the Monsters have in their builds.

* ETA: seriously, it looks like you're debating in good faith (all sides are) but your posts are downright demoralizing from sheer wordcount.

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Sure, not a problem!

I am arguing against the position that specialization is needed in order to be the best cultivator we can be. I am arguing against the statement that we need to specialize. I am also arguing against the position that not engaging in specialization is inherently losing us power.

We need to specialize to be the best cultivator we can be. Your argument seems to be that we can beat our current competitors, and therefore we don't need to worry about this. I say that I disagree about your first point, but every if I agreed, we couldn't beat someone who was at our own power level of they built more efficiently, and so we aren't being the best cultivator we can be, at least in terms of power.

There are certainly things that it is worth giving up power for, but until we agree on the point that not specializing is inherently giving up power there is no point having that discussion.

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Since we are talking about battle builds I am assuming that by "best cultivator" we are referring to a person who can win as many fights as feasibly possible. And that by "power" we are referring to the number of dice we can throw at a problem. Or in other words, the total number of dice we could possibly have.

I think a logic exercise would help clear up my position then.

1. There are 100 cultivators
2. Each cultivator may have 100 arts
3. All arts give the same number of dice
4. All cultivators have the same stats.
5. There are two types of arts: melee and ranged
6. No cultivator has the same load out of ranged and melee arts as another
7. The one who has more ranged arts will win a ranged battle
8. The one who has more melee arts will win a melee battle.
9. Each cultivator will fight every other cultivator in 2 battles: 1 melee and 1 ranged.
10. Who wins the most fights? The one who has 100 melee, the one who has 100 ranged, or the one who has 50 melee and 50 ranged.

It is in this problem that we have reduced the concept of specialist and generalist to its base components. The 100 melee fighter will win 100 melee battles and zero ranged battles. The 100 ranged fighter will win 100 ranged battles but 0 melee battles. And the cultivator who has 50 melee and 50 ranged will win 50 melee battles and 50 ranged battles.

All in all, every single cultivator in this hypothetical will win a total of 100 battles. The specialist has not "gained" any power nor has the generalist "lost" any power as they all had the same number of dice to work with. Yet all the cultivators were the best cultivators they could be because they won all the battles they feasibly could.

Edit: due to some confusion as to the way battles were determined, step 9 has been modified.
The words "every other cultivator in" has been added.

 

[PrimalShadow]

All in all, every single cultivator in this hypothetical will win a total of 100 battles. The specialist has not "gained" any power nor has the generalist "lost" any power as they all had the same number of dice to work with. Yet all the cultivators were the best cultivators they could be because they won all the battles they feasibly could.

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You are correct when the choice of categories (melee vs ranged) is up to an RNG. It is NOT correct when you get to control which category you fight with. If the format is that at the beginning of the fight you get to choose if the fight is melee or ranged, suddenly the 100-0 and 0-100 builds win everything. If the format is that your opponent gets to choose, then it varies by opponent but something like 50-50 is generally the best.

And lo and behold. For our actual build, 100-0 type builds are suggested for offensive dice (since you mostly have control over how you attack), but 50-50 type builds are suggested for defensive dice (since your opponent chooses what you defend against).

 

[Klaus]

This was a very interesting analysis. One thing that I get out of it is that Bai Meizhen has one art that is flat out amazing (Abyssal Mantle) and then a lot of other arts that play well with it. In my opinion, our amazing art is SCS. As it is now it borders on a tactical teleport. It still has three levels to go, and I don't think we've seen anybody with nearly as good of a movement art.

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Yeah, SCS is pretty amazing. All three of its techniques are three dots, and it started in red. It used to have four techniques but one of its instants turned into a passive. TRF started in yellow, and it's still using two dot techniques.

 

[jacobk]

I'm not sure I understand the question.

The point of that post was that Meizhen's set of synergistic stacking arts was awesome and we should learn from it.
What I learned was that synergistic stacking arts aren't about monomaniacal focus on a single element or skill.

Like, if you want to be a carpenter, it doesn't pay to spec exclusively into hammers. Even if you are a genius with a hammer having even basic proficiency with a saw makes you far better at woodworking.

I believe his argument is that you're saying "focus on music" but talking about a "music" focus doesn't actually provide much information.

For example:
music!DPS? Learn Bass cannon art.
music!Debuff? Learn FVM.
music!Healer? Learn reverse-FVM.
music!Tank? Learn Sonic Wall art.

"Melee DPS" is a focus. "Debuff/Burst" is a focus. "Dammage over time" is a focus. "Music" is a "how", it needs to come after the "what".

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We're going to have a hard time being efficient with our build. We don't have the full catalog of available arts. Forget weighing them against each other, we don't even know what arts exist beyond vague descriptions. Like, a short range archery art could mean learning how to use a bow and arrow as improvised melee weapons. Or it could mean big damage buffs for short range shots. Or counterattacks triggered by opponents moving to within range. Or arts that let us shoot and move so it's tough for others to close into melee. Or some combination of all that. We just don't know.

The good news is that talent can cover up for inefficiency. Ling Qi can do well if our decisions are merely ok rather than great. She could get in trouble if our decisions are outright bad. By hedging our bets a little we lower her ceiling while raising her floor.

Our focus right now is more or less "Battlefield Control," I think. Buff allies, debuff enemies, attack from range. We need a new art and possibly rejiggered talismans to make our debuffs actually stick. We also have the problem that we want to use a flute to debuff and a bow to attack.

Maxing out AE will patch things over until the tournament, I think. It lets us summon monsters to deal damage while playing the flute or summon poison clouds for debuffs while shooting arrows. Eventually we'll have to commit one way or the other but I think we'd actually be fine putting that decision off until next year by using AE to fill in the gaps.

 

[Thor's Twin]

You are correct when the choice of categories (melee vs ranged) is up to an RNG. It is NOT correct when you get to control which category you fight with. If the format is that at the beginning of the fight you get to choose if the fight is melee or ranged, suddenly the 100-0 and 0-100 builds win everything. If the format is that your opponent gets to choose, then it varies by opponent but something like 50-50 is generally the best.

And lo and behold. For our actual build, 100-0 type builds are suggested for offensive dice (since you mostly have control over how you attack), but 50-50 type builds are suggested for defensive dice (since your opponent chooses what you defend against).

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I'm sorry, but I should have made it clear. There is no choice in combat for this scenario, every cultivator will fight every other cultivator 2 times. Once in ranged, once in melee. We're trying to reduce as variables as possible so letting the inside combatants choose who they will fight and which battle they will fight in defeats the purpose of reducing variables.

In this situation, the generalist will win 100 fights, and the specialists will win 100 fights each. Everyone in this tournament will win 100 fights. This shouldn't be possible if the generalist has lower power than the specialist, inherently.

 

[Klaus]

So, while researching our build I ran across this in our breakthrough bonuses:

??? Bonus
Wind Techniques require ten fewer successes after initial mastery
Ranged weapons require one fewer experience per mastery dot

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I'm also pretty confident that this is going to increase on our next breakthrough. Thankfully we won't have to wait long to find out.

I am on record as wanting a burst damage art and I don't are really care how we do it as long as the techniques fit our strategy, but this does change some of the math. Being able to level up a wind/archery art faster than an alternative gives more dice from the art/skill themselves. Calculating the exact impact would be difficult, unfortunately.

 

[TotallyNotEvil]

Having a focus is the means to actually achieving the objective of being able to compete with any meaningful opponent.

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You mean that, but that's not what you say.

Your analysis is inherently flawed because --

Sticking with our simplified analogies... If we go [music 30, archery 30, p.def 30, sp.def 30] and Sun Liling goes [spear 40, p.def 40, sp.def 40] then she crushes us with equal investment.

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Ling Qi looks a lot more like Music 15, Archery 30(+15), p.def 30 (+15), sp. def 30(+15).

We use our music to enhance our archery. It's that simple, and something your model completely fails to consider.

We don't need to add +6 to shooting, because everyone in our Mist has -6 to defense, and so on and so forth. Effectively, we are even better in the field we are want to play than the mono-focus guys.

This is how an hybrid build, which does not in any way means it lacks focus, can match or surpass pure ones.

Hell, that's the definition of synergy.

The problem is that the first AE tech (which, I should note, is often a foundational/thematic tech for an Art) doesn't synergize with our abilities and uses skills and techs that don't line up with our skills.

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See, I never understood that.

From the moment I read AE's mist ability, I assumed we will just be able to breath it through the flute. Does it matter if the air we are breathing through it is normal or poison mist? We are explicitly exhaling it. Just need to be good enough to figure out how to do it while playing,

as the techniques fit our strategy, but this does change some of the math. Being able to level up a wind/archery art faster than an alternative gives more dice from the art/skill themselves. Calculating the exact impact would be difficult, unfortunately.

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I will note we gain mastery with the bow specifically three times faster than normal. And consider now Mastery 5 -> 6 takes three times as much "XP" for each point of progress. Now consider what 6 -> 7 and 7-> 8 might look like.

Ling Qi might like music, but she is Beethoven with a bow.

 

[PrimalShadow]

I'm sorry, but I should have made it clear. There is no choice in combat for this scenario, every cultivator will fight every other cultivator 2 times. Once in ranged, once in melee. We're trying to reduce as variables as possible so letting the inside combatants choose who they will fight and which battle they will fight in defeats the purpose of reducing variables.

In this situation, the generalist will win 100 fights, and the specialists will win 100 fights each. Everyone in this tournament will win 100 fights. This shouldn't be possible if the generalist has lower power than the specialist, inherently.

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The point is, in every fight, 1/2 the time you are using one stat, and half the time the other. In that scheme, it doesn't matter how you spec. However, it is also a terrible model for offensive capability, because we CHOOSE what to attack with. It is why it is silly to try to get masteries with a large number of different weapons; you aren't forced to fight with every possible mastery am requesting number of times, but can and should choose whatever you are best at and stick to that.

 

[Erebeal]

We use our music to enhance our archery. It's that simple, and something your model completely fails to consider.

We don't need to add +6 to shooting, because everyone in our Mist has -6 to defense, and so on and so forth. Effectively, we are even better in the field we are want to play than the mono-focus guys.

This is how an hybrid build, which does not in any way means it lacks focus, can match or surpass pure ones.

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Except that if we don't put enough points in music then our mist may be completely unable to debuff anyone.

But yes, we can get away with lower attack if we assume that our enemies will be debuffed. This is pretty much the only way AE will ever be viable for instance.

Of course, if we're relying on debuffs to land our shots, then archery becomes rather questionable as a secondary skill. If we need mist to make it viable, then we can't use it for long range, which loses one of its great advantages. And if we're keeping people in the music field, then we're better off just using music arts and attacks - which would also benefit from the debuffs and would allow more passive stacking.

The only way this wouldn't be true is a) if music is utterly useless for damage (clearly not true), or b) we get some kind of harp bow and music archery art that uses Archery + Expression or something.