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Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

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Humbaba said:
On further reflection it's probably just my imagination.

What I meant was that, for commoners like us or Ji Rong, a big part of early cultivation is experimenting and trying to figure out what style works with your abilities and creating a build that works for you. Clans usually don't suffer from this. If you look at Ling Qi's build its a bit of a mess, our arts don't entirely synergise, leading to things like PLR's anemic dice.

Ji Rong lost a month of cultivation and his free access to the archive, plus had a significant time in the mountains unable to collect sect points. I know he has higher talent, but even with that for him to have matched Ling Qi (who kept getting excellent art lootdrops) despite his disadvantages, it feels like he had to have settled on his style very early.

Although, as I said, on reflection that's fairly believeable.
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It is indeed quite believable for him to have settled on it early, for good reasons both meta and in-universe. The meta one is that its just yrs controlling Ji Rong, so there's really only one force manipulating his free choice, where as Ling Qi has dozens.

In universe I think Ji Rong sort of settled on a brawler archetype and ran with it as hard as he could, because its what he knew how to do really well. We know he explored around a bit in the early days and is a very one track individual, so once he got the bit between his teeth on a Heaven image that was basically that.
 
Humbaba said:
What I meant was that, for commoners like us or Ji Rong, a big part of early cultivation is experimenting and trying to figure out what style works with your abilities and creating a build that works for you. Clans usually don't suffer from this. If you look at Ling Qi's build its a bit of a mess, our arts don't entirely synergise, leading to things like PLR's anemic dice.
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Our build is a mess because we kept getting art drops and were unable to bring ourselves to let any of them go. If we'd had to make our own build from the archives it would (probably) have been a far more coherent wind archer build.

Ji Rong also didn't have fights over music complicating matters.
 
TehChron said:
*sighs*



It can be seen pretty clearly right there, you know?
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Which happens after Lanhua dies. Shen Hu's domain weapon just vanishes for a round or two in the middle of the battle, right when it would be really useful.

Look:
Round 1: Gae Bolg, attempted block by domain weapon.

yrsillar said:
Shen Hu's forward foot dug into the mud, and the rich earth at his feet shattered in his wake as he launched himself forward, bubbling mud and marsh reeds pouring from his shoulders even as glittering diamond claws grew to encase his outstretched fingertips. The crimson princess merely grinned in the face of the charge though, her green eyes gleaming with open bloodlust. Blood gushed from her palms, crawling up her limbs to form gauntlet and vambrace, even as her terrible black barbed spear took shape. Even as her own feet launched her backward, she drew her arm back, and in the blink of an eye launched the spear, screaming through the air like a newly launched arrow.

A great granite slab shimmered into existence in front of Shen Hu, as wide and tall as a full grown man. In the next instant, the blurring missile struck it's surface and shattered, sending a spiderweb of hairline fractures across it's surface.
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Round 2(ish) Shen Hu charges Sun on the tree, firing crystal and mud grapples. Dhatri landmine is tripped. This is another round as Liling uses a completely seperate attack to take off Lanhua's arm. Note the complete lack of defensive domain weapon doing anything. EDIT: And he was in Lanhua at that point, so it wasn't exactly occupied doing other things.
yrsillar said:
It was not content merely charging though, as the tree Sun Liling had landed on tilted drunkenly, the soil at its roots softing as grasping muddy hands rose to clutch at the girls limbs. She laughed, launching herself from the branch, her voice now distorted, reverberating within the fanged maw of the three faced demonic helm that now covered her head. "You've made another mistake, you know!" She exclaimed, bloody mist erupting from channels all across her armor as she spun gracefully through the air, avoiding the grasping hands and launched spikes of crystal as easily as Ling Qi herself had, if not moreso.

Ling Qi felt it then, a ripple of disquieting qi that spread outward from the now fallen tree that Sun Liling had stood upon. The very air shimmered with it… or perhaps something else. Brightly colored flowers bloomed from now swiftly rotting bark, and spread outward, devouring grass and soil alike in a multichromatic carpet. It reached Lanhua's thick, trunk-like feet only a few seconds later, despite the beasts alarmed step backward.

She winced as the beast, who had suffered everything she had rained on it in near silence, let out a warbling scream, a great gash of a mouth opening across it's upper body as hungry rootlets dug into its muddy flesh, and new flowers bloomed, crawling swiftly up the earthen pillars of the beasts legs. Lanhua tore it's feet from the writhing ground, leaving behind head sized chunks of mud in the grasp of the hungry rootlets. Yet it wasn't enough to escape, already new blooms of vibrant green were swelling with cancerous life across the beasts pockmarked legs.

Almost as if to add insult to injury, a blurred, six armed form fell on the beleaguered spirit from above. A barbed spear dug into muddy flesh, whipping and darting in a red blur, digging great furrows to seek the flesh beneath, and a mighty arm, raised to swat away the foe, fell with a crash to the earth, cleaved from it's body with a single stroke of a mighty black bladed axe. Lanhua's torso bubbled then, and Shen Hu emerged, gleaming crystal talons raised, only to crash against two upraised curved blades dripping wetly with sizzling sanguine fluid.
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Round 3. Defensive domain weapon reappears defending against Sun Liling.
yrsillar said:
Lanhua dissolved then, mud and reed disintegrating back into earthy qi that flowed back into the scowling Shen Hu's navel. He stood at the ready in a vast field of flowers now, flanked on one side by the near naked Dhartiri, and on the other by Sun Liling. The princess' armor had evolved since Ling Qi had seen it last. She still held her twisted, thorny spear easily in her two true arms, but the curved blades held in the false limbs below had grown smoother and more refineed, as well as longer, and now, a third pair of arms, seemingly thick with muscle, sprouted from above her natural limbs. The right hand held the massive curve bladed black axe which had taken Lanhua's arm so easily, while the left was empty, it's hand held near her face, palm out and fingers straight, as if half in prayer.

"That was unnecessary," Shen Hu said flatly, ignoring the bloody cut on his shoulder.

"Well, what can ya expect?" Sun Liling's reverberating voice answered. "Waving a meal like that in front of my poor spirit's face?"

The boy's lips were set in a thin line as he he turned on his heel and charged, crystal claws outstretched toward Liling's smiling spirit. Sun Liling blurred forward, but the slab of gray rock that was Shen Hu's domain weapon shimmered into existence, blocking her path with a crash. Yet concern never appeared on the spirit Dhartiri's features as black claws slashed through the space where her head had been. The curvaceous creatures spine bent, silken garments fluttering as she escaped the path of Shen Hu's attacks, leaving him to catch only a few strands of dark hair.
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Hangwind said:
"Okay, so she's managed to piss her opponent off and create some distance. Now she'll probably vanish into a tree or something-"
*Kaboom*
"It looks more like she decided to tank a Wind technique to the face then drop a flaming turtle on her opponent."
"But...WHY?"
*Clang* *Shing* *Ping*
"Oh, look! A duel with the girl while the spirit beasts do their own thing!"
"Makes no sense...Never..."
*Music*
"Hey look! She made it so her opponent can't see her! Admittedly though, it feels like someone should realize that there's an enemy there. Generally, it's considered unnatural to have to chose between breathing the air and drinking it, at least this far inland."
*Whimpers*
"And now she's beating the girl like a cheap rug."
"SHE'S DOING IT ON PURPOSE! SHE'S NEVER FOUGHT LIKE THIS BEFORE!"
"Alright brother, calm down. I'm sure Mother and Father will be happy to pay for a tutor to get your perception up."
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Let's get ready to rumble!
yrsillar said:
"Only one side was fighting for something besides their own pride," Ling Qi replied as the shape of the terrain began to solidify around them, they stood at the top of a large hill in a lightly wooded scrubland, the sky bright with the colors of sunset. "But this conversation is pointless, isn't it?"

'Suppose so," Ji Rong admitted, a lopsided grin spreading across his face as he raised his fists into a guard stance. "Gonna break your face now." He said cockily, his usual demeanor returning.
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"Now she should be serious. There's no way she punks Ji Rong like she did Chu!"
"I'm not sure which is worse: the idea that you and most of the sect can be demolished by someone fighting with their hands tied behind their back, or that you may have somehow been missing all of THAT."
"Honorable Elder Brother?"
"Yes?"
"Shut the **** up."
*Snickering*
*FALCO PUNCH*
"That had to hurt."
"Interesting that she didn't create any distance. She did get her mist up and dodged the second punch."
*Sweet Chin Music*
"Yeah, but it doesn't seem to be doing any good. Wait, she's pulling out an escape talisman!"
*Suddenly Worms*
"Nnnnnnope. Looks more like a call for reinforcements to me! Note, this is why it's a good idea to get to at least Green. Being one of many is very close to being one of many casualties."
"But where did she even get the qi card? The only person...oh. When she stole Yan Ranshu's stuff."
*Lightning Combo: Burst and Bash*
"This has to be winding down. They're both badly hurt now."
"I think you might finally be right."
"I hate you."
"I know."
"But why is she staying in his face? Shouldn't she be trying to get away and blast him from a distance?"
That is what you would expect from a stealth specialist, yes."
*Grinding teeth*
"Heh heh heh."
*Tangleroot catches*
"Time for the backstab!"
*RAVER'S FANTASY*
"Hmmm."
"Please. Brother. No."
"Is it physically possible for one person to be less stealthy?"
"I'm begging. Stop."
"And it had to be her own technique. No one in the entire sect is from a celebration clan. In fact, the only prominent light user is the Cai, and that certainly isn't their technique!"
"BROTHER!!!"
"... I wonder if she does birthdays? We might need to set you up with a Light spirit. Otherwise, I'm worried you wouldn't see them!"
"I'll kill you!"
"Is that why you like the Tuo girl? She's loud enough for you to hear where she is?"
"AAAAARGH!"
 
Humbaba said:
Does anyone else feel like Ji Rong mangaed to avoid experimental build penalites a little too well?
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Peter87 said:
He is doing straigtforward facepuncher build not musician/support/summoner/thief/archer build.
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Yeah pretty much this. He has pretty much two goals hit harder and hit faster. He is so effective because what he's doing is simple. With his talents he can afford to just overwhelm his opponent.
 
...

Say, is it just me or did Sun Liling loose initiative against Shen Hu? He was described as acting first, he put on his claws and earth armour before Liling created her spear and armour.

If that is indeed the case it would be very useful for us. Not receiving a first turn hit where we only have a single reactive defense technique up would be great for our turtle stratagem.
 
Don't know if this is possible either because the tournament 'event' is ongoing or because the system is changing soon, but it would be great if a point could be spent to bring stamina up to 6 dots.
 
Humbaba said:
Which happens after Lanhua dies. Shen Hu's domain weapon just vanishes for a round or two in the middle of the battle, right when it would be really useful.

Look:
Round 1: Gae Bolg, attempted block by domain weapon.



Round 2(ish) Shen Hu charges Sun on the tree, firing crystal and mud grapples. Dhatri landmine is tripped. This is another round as Liling uses a completely seperate attack to take off Lanhua's arm. Note the complete lack of defensive domain weapon doing anything. EDIT: And he was in Lanhua at that point, so it wasn't exactly occupied doing other things.


Round 3. Defensive domain weapon reappears defending against Sun Liling.
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A simple reason it might not have appeared in the middle is that he pulled it back in a play to preserve it for when he went with his version of attempting to take out Dharitri.
 
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Ayashi said:
I wonder if the dispel would work on Sun Liling Blood Armor.
I mean it would be hilarious if it did, and considering it's a frieking armor set it's hard to argue it doesn't qualify as a valid dispel target...
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Bigger question is how resistant Sun Liling is to dispells. At a guess, probably very. Though she might not bring the best of her dispel arts and talismans against Ling Qi. We don't really do dispelling, after all.
 
adamashield said:
I would go with hide to see if she can waste qi while we prepare, but that spirit will eat the soil and its life getting stronger. Wait.

There has to be a limit how big that spirit can grow otherwise there would be no forest (after all there a white cultivator with one of those)
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it was pretty heavily implied there isn't a limit considering how the Sect Elders kind of panicked about the damage it would unleash when she used it in Thunderdome.

Humbaba said:
Does anyone else feel like Ji Rong mangaed to avoid experimental build penalites a little too well?
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It's not really "experimental build" when you have Chu Song and then Sun Liling to guide you...
Moreover "facepuncher" isn't really a revolutionary concept for a combat build...
 
Ok, so action breakdown:

  1. Turn 1
    1. Ji Rong attacks; TRD response
    2. FVM + Dissonance
    3. Zhengui: Ashfall
  2. Turn 2
    1. Ji Rong attacks us and Zhengui? Multi-hit tech? Fluff? Counter in turn 1 + attack on us in turn 2?; DWV response
    2. Zhengui attempts attack, Ji Rong dodges
    3. Worms + HRA
  3. Turn 3
    1. Ji Rong attacks, bounces off armor; response unknown
    2. Gui Spearing roots + Worms attack (misses)
    3. More worms + PC
    4. Ji Rong response? Lightning nova (knock back, doesn't kill worms)
    5. Zhen Boiling Shot (lands)
  4. Turn 4?
    1. Ji Rong attacks us, solid hit; response unknown
    2. HC (+ presumably SEA), messes him up
    3. Ji Rong uses domain weapon to restore qi
  5. Turn 5?
    1. Ji Rong hits again; response unknown
    2. FVM refresh
  6. Turn 6?
    1. Big worm attack, worm grabs, Gui lands woodland grasp
    2. IPF
    3. Ji Rong counter? kills worm
  7. Turn 7?
    1. Ji Rong ranged attack, failed perception test
    2. LW
It gets kind of confusing after a while. Clearly a lot of narrativing going on (not a bad thing), and this makes it hard to fit things perfectly into strict mechanical order.

In terms of the more questionable decisions:
  • DW response turn 2 instead of the better GCD? Defensible if wanting Zhengui to tank.
  • Summoning worms immediately instead of using IPF turn 2. This one was really weird.
  • Then IPF was used turn 6 when, if he was debuffed enough for LW to land and weak enough for it to finish him, HC would have crushed him far more effectively. Especially given that this would have been the last turn that PC would be up (I think) so if we missed we'd have wasted our buff there.
  • Summoning more worms turn 3 instead of using EW to buff them to actually effective levels. The weird part here is that I thought we could only have a maximum of 4 worms out at once... have we unlocked a combat breakthrough here @yrsillar?
Other commentary: Ji Rong was on us a lot. It's hard to know if hiding behind Zhengui was doing much. There was also a lot of fluff about the worms driving him back etc. that I'm not sure has any direct mechanics here, but works fine narratively. It's possible the worms were doing something defensively fluffwise that could justify using them turn 2 instead of IPF, but eh...

Overall, it's probably a good thing that we're moving to narrative and revamping the system next year. Trying to manage the optimal mechanical order here and its loose relation to the narrative is kind of awkward.
 
Chronic said:
Bigger question is how resistant Sun Liling is to dispells. At a guess, probably very. Though she might not bring the best of her dispel arts and talismans against Ling Qi. We don't really do dispelling, after all.
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I actually expect that we are better at resisting dispells we have made it a special focus because everyone and their brother tries to dispell us. I would not be surprised if Sun Liling has not had a single dispell check against her all year.
 
Humbaba said:
Which happens after Lanhua dies. Shen Hu's domain weapon just vanishes for a round or two in the middle of the battle, right when it would be really useful.
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I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that "Domain Weapon vanishing" is referring to a temporary dismissal rather than you not noticing it present for the rest of the fight after I pointed out it had been used to bar Liling's own charge.

See? Now we can just say it was a miscommunication and leave it at that cuz I dont want to bother with arguing the alternative.
 
fictionfan said:
I actually expect that we are better at resisting dispells we have made it a special focus because everyone and their brother tries to dispell us. I would not be surprised if Sun Liling has not had a single dispell check against her all year.
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The thing is, the new dispel tech that Cai just showed us means that you can't afford to have poor dispel resist. Because someone using that to remove your semi-perfect defense and then hitting you can remove like half your health - or more if you're unlucky.
 
Erebeal said:
Other commentary: Ji Rong was on us a lot. It's hard to know if hiding behind Zhengui was doing much. There was also a lot of fluff about the worms driving him back etc. that I'm not sure has any direct mechanics here, but works fine narratively. It's possible the worms were doing something defensively fluffwise that could justify using them turn 2 instead of IPF, but eh...
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It kept him in Ashfall as Zhengui stacked it, thus constraining the fight to Zhenguis preferred range with Worm support.

Plus it forced Ji Rong to engage Zhengui repeatedly, which would have cost him actions or Qi of some stripe. Like, Molten Shell clearly had an effect, given it was burning up his feet and that couldn't have been good for his Qi reserves.
 
fictionfan said:
I actually expect that we are better at resisting dispells we have made it a special focus because everyone and their brother tries to dispell us. I would not be surprised if Sun Liling has not had a single dispell check against her all year.
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Dispelling her buffs is a pretty obvious way to try and defeat her though. And we know from the very art we have in our card that at the very least CRX, perhaps the biggest enemy of Sun Liling this year, dabbles in dispellery. Since ducal art suites are supposed to cover all corners, i would be surprised if she didn't have a potent defense against dispelling.
 
TehChron said:
It kept him in Ashfall as Zhengui stacked it, thus constraining the fight to Zhenguis preferred range with Worm support.

Plus it forced Ji Rong to engage Zhengui repeatedly, which would have cost him actions or Qi of some stripe. Like, Molten Shell clearly had an effect, given it was burning up his feet and that couldn't have been good for his Qi reserves.
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Oh yeah, we have to stay close to Zhengui for those reasons. It's just not clear that it accomplished anything defensively beyond that.
 
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