Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

[BungieONI]

I don't think doing your best to win causes a loss of face. You lose face when you borderline cheat and it doesn't pay off. If Cai Shenhua handed us a full deck of precharged qi cards before the fight and we still lost, that's a loss of face. If we rigged our opponent for an ostensibly random match and showed up with obviously pre-sideboarded gear and lost, that's a loss of face.

Using something expensive that does nothing but adjust the range between fighters? Not even close to the line. Flashing our spiffy domain weapon is worse than that. I don't want to try to earn cool points by not trying our best.

Re: the payoff, the reward is to be able to buff up without being blendered. Even if the end result is more net buffs for Sun Liling, being able to reach that state while largely unharmed is better for us than if we are half (or more) dead by the time we reach the end of the buff cycle.

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I'll be clear, I think using an escape talisman is largely boring and thus have little direct interest in reading about it.

Here's some reasoning separate from that though since its interesting to discuss:
Assuming first that Liling gives us/we win initiative and that we have a viable destination to port to(terrain might preclude that), we port out. That's one turn where we can only maybe use Ten Ring Defense and maybe HRA(?)(not sure on either), and another where we can only move. In both of those Liling can get her Asura buff going with two full turns and Dharitri can start something, like her singing, though she may be held in reserve.

So by turn 2 of the match, Liling has started seeking Ling Qi and if Ling Qi moved a kilometer away, we can figure she'll take three to four turns to get to Ling Qi after she finds her track. By the start of turn 5 of the match Ling Qi will have dropped all of TRF, and the relevant bits of SCS, while boosting Zhengui and the Horror. For Liling she will have had 4 full turns to get into her buff cycle, if she wishes.

If we assume generously that it takes till after the start of turn five for Liling to find her, Ling Qi will have enough time to use all of FVM and get PLR set up, and then have Liling and Dharitri coming in on turn 8 or 9. We can assume in such a case that Liling is at the full realization of her buff cycle, at least as far as she is willing to go against Ling Qi. What we won't know is what Dharitri has done, and that's the issue I think here.

In a Ling Qi vs Sun Liling fight, it's pitting Ling Qi's buffs against Sun and Dharitri's combined buffs. I figure Ling Qi could feasibly maintain the size of the dice gap between her and Sun alone, maybe only lose a little. But not if there's Dharitri as well. In a situation with the escape talisman being successfully used, I fully expect/assume Sun Liling and Dharitri to come in with Liling pumped up as high as the two of them can make her without revealing any possible buff related trump cards(though I don't really expect her to have those). I don't think this is really the best we could do, nor very conducive to pulling out hidden things from Liling.

If we don't assume generously then I expect Liling to find the track around the end of turn three, which means that Ling Qi has till the end of turn 6/start of turn 7(3-4 turns to close) to buff up and use techniques. Turn 3 she can dump most of/finish TRF, turn 4 SCS and FVM, Turn 5 maybe finish FVM/Start PLR. I'm not sure on that one really, depends how using parts of TRF work with the talisman. The problem still comes back to what Dharitri does, and that its still assuming the speed with which Liling can close, and it leaves the chance of getting a poor surprise with our fortress of zones not being fully in place when Liling comes to stab us and our bro.


On the other hand, I like the idea of turtling up with TRU+TRF+HRA on turn 1 and staying close, I.e a general supporter of some form of Ganking Dharitri. I figure Ling Qi can survive and still be kicking after Sun's own turn one strike+turn 1 buffs, because she hasn't seemed to pull Dharitri on the first turn most times. The Horror and Zhengui then move, which finishes TRF and Ashfall. At that point we move into turn 2 and using PLR and SCS defenses, with SEA and other stuff as Erebeal laid out above. As a possible conditional, Dharitri might pop out here, in which case we have options like going for stuff like TehChron laid out, with FVM and SCS along with Zhengui and the Horror going for Dharitri.

If Dharitri didn't pop out in turn 2, I expect the perception test stuff from PLR to cause Liling to pull out Dharitri on turn 3. At that point in order to make Liling less dangerous and to try and keep the potential gap between us the same size, we start aiming for the blood dryad. If we can actually take out Dharitri, it is my assessment, as I've made before, that that will cause Liling to pull out stuff she wanted to hide.

I like this because it has the chance to get more accomplished in tangible goal posts beyond "Survived for more turns" than what I think is possible in the talisman option.

 

[veekie]

I'm actually against escape talismans now for tactical reasons despite previously suggesting it before:
-We know Liling has a buff cycle she can cast while attacking whenever she lands hits.
--This does not suggest that her buff cycle can ONLY be cast while attacking. Assume that at your own peril.
--Liling with the full Sanguine Armament and Asura art sets active is more buffed than we can get even with time to do a full FVM setup. If we want to push her, doing so is not a good way to achieve it.

-We know Liling has powerful long ranged attacks. Our first(and to date, only) combat KO came from her using a long ranged lance attack to oneshot us. It is very unlikely that this ability didn't improve.
--This suggests that the distance made by the escape talisman actually is to her advantage, in that she has strong attack options for Close, Medium, and Long ranges, while we have our best options in the Medium range band with shallow Long range options.

-We know Dhartiri's strategy involves AoE field control+DoT, health/qi leech, stealth ambush, ally support. In short, she's basically Ling Qi as a sunflower dryad.
--This points to playing the field control game being in our favor, as we know FVM works on degrading an earlier form of the sunflower field and odds are pretty good that so does Ashfall. But not if we let them finish setting up, because what are the odds of a spirit of a Sustain archetype(Wood) not having some equivalent of Traveler's End?

-We know Liling is GOOD tactically, and she's already had Ling Qi use an escape talisman to bugger off before. She's likely prepared for Ling Qi to run and hide. Might as well have her waste those art slots.

 

[Arkeus]

If, as Liling seems to do in every fight, she lets us go first (or has bad initiative), but still goes before Horror and Zhengui we'd be looking at the following defenses for each of her attacks if we go fully defensive:

1. TRU + HRA + TRD
   • 44 p.def, 9 armor, 2 perfect, negate first damage, immune to grapples etc.
2. TRU + HRA + TRD + IPF + SEA + GCD; DWV from horror; Ashfall
   • 63 p.def, 55 s.def, 9 armor, 3 perfect, 2 virtual health, negate first damage, immune to grapples etc., enemy must pass perception test to attack us
3. TRU + HRA + TRD + IPF + SEA + GCD + Mist + RS; DWV from horror; Ashfall
   • 67 p.def (single target), 51 s.def, 10 armor, 3 perfect, 2 virtual health, negate first damage, immune to grapples etc., enemy must pass perception test to attack us

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Speaking of, this is one of the rare fights where Zhengui is probably better served healing us almost every turns rather than attacking people.

cost 8 qi
Usable only while at least one instance of Ashfall is active, this technique consumes the ashfield to revitalize allies. On activation one instance of Ashfall is dispelled, allied targets within the ashfall zone receive a two die bonus to all defensive clashes, resolve, and stamina tests for three turns and have one point of lethal or nonlethal damage healed.

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one point of lethal damage (and TRD means we get lethal) healed every turns help a lot, and the +2 defence and resolve/stamina test boost can be pretty good too.

 

[Vikram]

Can't seem to deny the possibility that dharitri won't show up at all. Sun Liling might just visibly hold back a lot of stuff to deny Ling Qi face, besides, she might want the satisfaction of kicking her ass by her lonesome.

Edit: By hold back I mean even compared to the Shen Hu fight.

 

[BungieONI]

Can't seem to deny the possibility that dharitri won't show up at all. Sun Liling might just visibly hold back a lot of stuff to deny Ling Qi face, besides, she might want the satisfaction of kicking her ass by her lonesome.

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She might, but I figure its very unlikely based on past battle behavior where in every single on screen appearance Dharitri appeared in some form.

There's also the example of Six, who can do stuff from inside our navel. Dharitri, being of similar realm, and having supporter pieces like Six might be able to do the same.

 

[veekie]

Speaking of, this is one of the rare fights where Zhengui is probably better served healing us almost every turns rather than attacking people.

one point of lethal damage (and TRD means we get lethal) healed every turns help a lot, and the +2 defence and resolve/stamina test boost can be pretty good too.

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Say, wouldn't that piss her off even more if it looks like we're doing a flower-off?

 

[Erebeal]

-We know Liling has powerful long ranged attacks. Our first(and to date, only) combat KO came from her using a long ranged lance attack to oneshot us. It is very unlikely that this ability didn't improve.
--This suggests that the distance made by the escape talisman actually is to her advantage, in that she has strong attack options for Close, Medium, and Long ranges, while we have our best options in the Medium range band with shallow Long range options.

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That's completely wrong. She just ran up to us and stabbed us. Likely with a regular attack given how low her dice were. And we were already mostly dead due to her rain of spears earlier.

Her melee is much stronger than her ranged. If we somehow made things become a ranged fight (we won't) it would be far better for us.

 

[MobiusC]

So we see similar characteristics from renji from bleach. And no flipping duh he is nostalgic from when he was a thug. He had a sister,and friends. He was respected and didn't have to sit across from a vampire from his sisters killer's family and know others think he's a better person then you. Back then he wasn't betrayed, punished for no reason , and forced to fight and lose repeatedly for a side he probably only supports because they are better then the enemy.
As I said we don't have a big enough interaction size to know whether he is a heroic thug or a villainous thug. Assuming thug equals irredeemable scum is a bit much especially when we are friends with a dictator and a sadistic torturer(note I'm not saying I don't love them but do keep in mind objectively we are the bad guys).

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My impression of Ji Rong is he's generally thoughtless and thinks he has the whole world figured out. So basically a normal teenager. The difference is that being a cultivator–especially a high talent cultivator–is that mentality can stick hard which makes him dangerous.

I wouldn't call him an irredeemable thug but I would definitely be wary of him and his development, as his poor capacity for self-reflection means that whenever bad things happen it'll never really be his fault. I wouldn't mind asking for duels every now and then just to gauge our facetanking ability though.

 

[BungieONI]

My impression of Ji Rong is he's generally thoughtless and thinks he has the whole world figured out. So basically a normal teenager. The difference is that being a cultivator–especially a high talent cultivator–is that mentality can stick hard which makes him dangerous.

I wouldn't call him an irredeemable thug but I would definitely be wary of him and his development, as his poor capacity for self-reflection means that whenever bad things happen it'll never really be his fault. I wouldn't mind asking for duels every now and then just to gauge our facetanking ability though.

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That'd be a fun role for him to fall into in the sequel thread. I'd enjoy reading that.

 

[Humbaba]

We can have most of our buffs up by turn 2:

1. TRU + HRA; TRD; DWV from horror; Ashfall
   • 52 p.def, 44 s.def, 9 armor, 2 perfect, 2 virtual health, negate first damage, immune to grapples etc.
2. IPF + SEA; GCD; DWV from horror
   • 63 p.def, 55 s.def, 9 armor, 3 perfect, 2 virtual health, negate first damage, immune to grapples etc., enemy must pass perception test to attack us

Beyond that, you'd really just have mist and RS (if we ever use it which I'm not convinced we will). Elegy could improve things further, but that requires us actually landing it which is going to be difficult.

If, as Liling seems to do in every fight, she lets us go first (or has bad initiative), but still goes before Horror and Zhengui we'd be looking at the following defenses for each of her attacks if we go fully defensive:

1. TRU + HRA + TRD
   • 44 p.def, 9 armor, 2 perfect, negate first damage, immune to grapples etc.
2. TRU + HRA + TRD + IPF + SEA + GCD; DWV from horror; Ashfall
   • 63 p.def, 55 s.def, 9 armor, 3 perfect, 2 virtual health, negate first damage, immune to grapples etc., enemy must pass perception test to attack us
3. TRU + HRA + TRD + IPF + SEA + GCD + Mist + RS; DWV from horror; Ashfall
   • 65 p.def (single target), 51 s.def, 10 armor, 3 perfect, 2 virtual health, negate first damage, immune to grapples etc., enemy must pass perception test to attack us

Now, how does all this compare to our last fight here? Well:

1. TRD -> 38 dice, 7 armor
   
2. TRD + Mist + DWV; Ashfall -> 51 dice, 7 armor, 2 virtual health
   
3. TRD + Mist + DWV + HRA + GCD -> 57 dice, 9 armor, 2 perfect

And that's about as high as we got. We might have gone up to 58 dice and 10 armor if we popped RS in turn 4, and maybe regained 2 virtual health if we recast DWV turn 5, but yeah.

Basically, if we go solidly defensive, and have the horror, we can get much better defenses in turn 2 than we ever had in the Ji Rong fight.

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I don't think using a talisman would cost us much face because all we're doing is getting ground. It's not really a pay to win item so much as a pay not to instalose in a contest with a stupidly unfair opponent in a match style that blatantly favours them.

You're ignoring that Sun Liling gets a say in this unless we run away, and she is a vampiric buffer/debuffer with excellent first strike capabilities. So by the time turn 2 actually rolls around our defences are at significantly less than that because she has hit us with a strike that debuffs us and grants her further buffs.

There are several advantages to running away straight off. One of the biggest of which is that if we don't win the initiative clash (or Liling doesn't let us go first) we can buy some time to heal (deepwood vitality and ashfall, which takes time) and dispel her techniques from us as well as get fully buffed.

Secondly, as others have pointed out given her emphasis on qi regeneration wih Dharti, and her theme of taking others strength as she engages them, it seems fairly likely that Liling's full buff cycle is either entirely dependent on actually laying the hurt on people, or much more likely that it becomes highly expensive to to maintain, potentially forcing her to choose between burning qi while chasing us or not having it fully up (and since she 'knows' we're a stealth specialist she'll probably opt for the former). Wheras ours likely lasts longer.

If we get our mist up early it should also help prevent her laying down dharti as a trap we could step on in the chaos of trying to dodge in melee due to our dissonance effect attacking indescriminately.

I do admit I'm having trouble thinking of clever tactics though. With the increasingly complex tech system I'm acutally looking forward to going narrative where most of my clever tactics don't hit the wall of 'Sun Liling simply has better dice and you need to get really lucky and win a clash with her and also you can't micro'. I can think of narritive ways to justify getting an opening*, but they keep running into dice and a lack of micro.

*Hiding the horror in our qi dampening mist to suprise her with another green combatant and give us a split second for example. Not the worst idea narritivly (though not exactly inspired), flat out doesn't work mechanically.

 

[Erebeal]

I don't think using a talisman would cost us much face because all we're doing is getting ground. It's not really a pay to win item so much as a pay not to instalose in a contest with a stupidly unfair opponent in a match style that blatantly favours them.

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Oh sure, its plausible.

Ultimately, we should be talking about how we should be playing this and what looks good etc. with Renxiang. And by that I mean Yrsillar.

We just don't know the answer. But we can find out both in and out of character.

 

[BurnNote]

My impression of Ji Rong is he's generally thoughtless and thinks he has the whole world figured out. So basically a normal teenager. The difference is that being a cultivator–especially a high talent cultivator–is that mentality can stick hard which makes him dangerous.

I wouldn't call him an irredeemable thug but I would definitely be wary of him and his development, as his poor capacity for self-reflection means that whenever bad things happen it'll never really be his fault. I wouldn't mind asking for duels every now and then just to gauge our facetanking ability though.

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That's a good point. I'm almost tempted to sell him Argent Mirror, to get him to do some self-reflection. But giving one of your main enemies a tool that counters your best stuff seems like a not so great idea.

 

[BungieONI]

That's a good point. I'm almost tempted to sell him Argent Mirror, to get him to do some self-reflection. But giving one of your main enemies a tool that counters your best stuff seems like a not so great idea.

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There's also very little reason for Ling Qi to think of doing so, and little reason for him to accept.

He ain't keen on enemies, as we've found out. And Ling Qi just had her face broken by him, so I expect any sort of positive relationship on her end to no longer be feasible(in this context I know I wouldn't bother with him).

 

[Hangwind]

-We know Liling has a buff cycle she can cast while attacking whenever she lands hits.
--This does not suggest that her buff cycle can ONLY be cast while attacking. Assume that at your own peril.
--Liling with the full Sanguine Armament and Asura art sets active is more buffed than we can get even with time to do a full FVM setup. If we want to push her, doing so is not a good way to achieve it.

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If she hurts stuff. Literally every indication ever says that she needs to cause wounds to use her buff cycle.

-We know Liling has powerful long ranged attacks. Our first(and to date, only) combat KO came from her using a long ranged lance attack to oneshot us. It is very unlikely that this ability didn't improve.
--This suggests that the distance made by the escape talisman actually is to her advantage, in that she has strong attack options for Close, Medium, and Long ranges, while we have our best options in the Medium range band with shallow Long range options.

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Bullshit. We know she has ONE ranged attack. It seems to be limited to either one attack or fairly close range though. How? Because we got away in the Crimson Princess interrupt and she only ever used it once. If we win initiative and go a kilometer away, she's not going to be able to snipe us. And Heartseeker isn't an automatic hit. We damn near dodged it even back then, and we've only gotten stronger since.

She seems to have a reroll, but I think, judging by the hesitation she showed when she used it against Shen Hu, that it costs her heavily.

-We know Dhartiri's strategy involves AoE field control+DoT, health/qi leech, stealth ambush, ally support. In short, she's basically Ling Qi as a sunflower dryad.
--This points to playing the field control game being in our favor, as we know FVM works on degrading an earlier form of the sunflower field and odds are pretty good that so does Ashfall. But not if we let them finish setting up, because what are the odds of a spirit of a Sustain archetype(Wood) not having some equivalent of Traveler's End?

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Every indication is that our Most is the natural counter to her flowers. Making her come to us in a place of our choosing is the best thing we can do.

-We know Liling is GOOD tactically, and she's already had Ling Qi use an escape talisman to bugger off before. She's likely prepared for Ling Qi to run and hide. Might as well have her waste those art slots.

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We know she's an absolute monster in melee. We're not. If we stay in melee, we lose. Period. Yes, it's the strategy she'll expect, but that's because it's the only one that isn't pants-on-head retarded. The bard does not punch the barbarian in the face.

It's also why I suggested my plan. We know that we can't melee her down. We know that she's going to know that as well. If we can take advantage of her reaction to our knowledge, we might just pull out a victory.

 

[Neshuakadal]

Bullshit. We know she has ONE ranged attack. It seems to be limited to either one attack or fairly close range though. How? Because we got away in the Crimson Princess interrupt and she only ever used it once. If we win initiative and go a kilometer away, she's not going to be able to snipe us. And Heartseeker isn't an automatic hit. We damn near dodged it even back then, and we've only gotten stronger since.

She seems to have a reroll, but I think, judging by the hesitation she showed when she used it against Shen Hu, that it costs her heavily.

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How do you know she has one ranged attack? We don't have her full art kit. I find it very likely that she will pull other ranged attacks because she knows we can fly. Also reading her actions when she threw that spear that dodges blocks I read no hesitation. This is the text
"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."
I don't see any hesitation there. No where else in the text do I see any hesitation from Sun Liling. Could you quote the passage you see hesitation from Sun Liling in the most recent fight that we have seen her in?
I know that you are responding to a comment from our first fight with her. However that was not a ranged attack. That was simply a movement art that got her in range to us. That was also 8 months ago. 8 months of refining her arts and building her domain means a great deal has changed.

One of your statements also says that she needs to cause injury in order to buff herself. This may be true. However we see in the most recent fight that her armor started forming out of the blood that flowed from her palms.

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.

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It seems very likely that her arts have a self harm aspect to them and then Sun Liling can use blood from other wounds to buff even more.

 

[Hangwind]

How do you know she has one ranged attack? We don't have her full art kit. I find it very likely that she will pull other ranged attacks because she knows we can fly.

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She's a melee fighter. If she can be good at literally everything ever, then we're fucked no matter what we do. And regardless, her ranged attacks are weaker than her melee just because her ranged attack hits once while her melee is like quad wielding. (Spear, two swords, axe, shield?)​

Also reading her actions when she threw that spear that dodges blocks I read no hesitation. This is the text
"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."
I don't see any hesitation there. No where else in the text do I see any hesitation from Sun Liling. Could you quote the passage you see hesitation from Sun Liling in the most recent fight that we have seen her in?

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Here:

As Sun Liling landed lightly on the extended branch of a leafless tree, Ling Qi caught a faint, split second fluttering of her eyes, any hope that the Sun girl had suffered a setback died though as qi flared from the center of her forehead,

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It seems her reroll costs her. She has a way of mitigating the consequences, but that seems to cost her qi as an active.

One of your statements also says that she needs to cause injury in order to buff herself. This may be true. However we see in the most recent fight that her armor started forming out of the blood that flowed from her palms.

It seems very likely that her arts have a self harm aspect to them and then Sun Liling can use blood from other wounds to buff even more.

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And that's fine. I would much rather she be powering herself by hurting herself instead of powering herself by hurting us!

 

[tehspooniestbard]

It seems her reroll costs her. She has a way of mitigating the consequences, but that seems to cost her qi as an active.

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Ah, I read that as her shaking off Shen Hu's second spirit's Languid Summer Art (or whatever it's called). She even brings it up in the subsequent line:

"Tricky," she said, clicking her tongue as the armor finished forming across her chest, and twin skeletal arms grew, from beneath her own, clutching jagged blades. "You've got a second spirit after all."

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[Hangwind]

Ah, I read that as her shaking off Shen Hu's second spirit's Languid Summer Art (or whatever it's called). She even brings it up in the subsequent line:

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Rereading...I'm not sure. The point is, engaging someone in close combat that specializes in close combat when we specialize in stealth and buffing and have neither is outright silly. Like memetic D and D noobs silly. Leroy Jenkins is a cautionary tale, not a guideline. It would have been my plan without talismans, but we have a near guaranteed way of disengaging.

 

[Humbaba]

How do you know she has one ranged attack? We don't have her full art kit. I find it very likely that she will pull other ranged attacks because she knows we can fly. Also reading her actions when she threw that spear that dodges blocks I read no hesitation. This is the text
"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."
I don't see any hesitation there. No where else in the text do I see any hesitation from Sun Liling. Could you quote the passage you see hesitation from Sun Liling in the most recent fight that we have seen her in?
I know that you are responding to a comment from our first fight with her. However that was not a ranged attack. That was simply a movement art that got her in range to us. That was also 8 months ago. 8 months of refining her arts and building her domain means a great deal has changed.

One of your statements also says that she needs to cause injury in order to buff herself. This may be true. However we see in the most recent fight that her armor started forming out of the blood that flowed from her palms.



It seems very likely that her arts have a self harm aspect to them and then Sun Liling can use blood from other wounds to buff even more.

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She has at least one more ranged attack, which is a nasty AoE dispel and aggravated damage combo (red thorn death flight from thunderdome 2). I'd be extremely surprised if she had much more though. She's a melee focused build. Having a really effective ranged AoE dispel and an extremely nasty single target seeker (I'd like to think she spent a long time working on that, thinking of us) more than covers her the hole in her build.

That said her using projectile attacks against us is no bad thing, we have some nice passive bonuses against projectile attacks from Zephyrs breath, and further active boosters if we need them. On top of already good defences. Plus her ranged attacks will generally be weaker than her melee.

If she needs to cause injury to herself to sustain or reactivats buffs unless she is wounding us then breaking contact and forcing her to bleed herself of health or with until she can catch up is advantageous to Ling Qi. I suspect it's a one turn burst strike that becomes sustainable and takes some of the costs form her enemy if she wounds.

 

[Neshuakadal]

She's a melee fighter. If she can be good at literally everything ever, then we're fucked no matter what we do. And regardless, her ranged attacks are weaker than her melee just because her ranged attack hits once while her melee is like quad wielding. (Spear, two swords, axe, shield?)​

Here:

It seems her reroll costs her. She has a way of mitigating the consequences, but that seems to cost her qi as an active.

And that's fine. I would much rather she be powering herself by hurting herself instead of powering herself by hurting us!

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Rereading...I'm not sure. The point is, engaging someone in close combat that specializes in close combat when we specialize in stealth and buffing and have neither is outright silly. Like memetic D and D noobs silly. Leroy Jenkins is a cautionary tale, not a guideline. It would have been my plan without talismans, but we have a near guaranteed way of disengaging.

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While staying at range is the best bet we have of doing anything using an escape talisman does not increase our chances by a significant amount. The way I am looking at this is a cost benefit analysis. There is several assumptions that I have built into my analysis. The first and primary assumption is that we are not going to win. Now that I have that framework I look at what we can do in the battle and the different costs in doing so. Using an escape talisman to build distance does not get us anything because it does not advance our stated goal (which is to force a tech revel). At best we get 1 more turn to build up while Sun Liling does nothing but walk slowly towards us. I think this is highly optimistic and that she will instead dash towards us and buff her dice past what our 1 extra turn would give us in dice. Since I believe that is a net loss I do not know why we would do waste red stones like that.

I also believe that focusing on Sun's spirit is the wrong call. In every fight this tournament Sun's spirit has started underground. The spirit launches an ambush and then comes up to finish off the prey. If what you said (I think it was you I can't find the quote so please correct me if I am wrong) Sun might not have the best control of her spirit so lengthening the fight gives a greater chance that the spirit does something silly and revels a tech that Sun wanted to keep hidden. Moving away from Sun is important because we want to avoid an ambush from the Spirit. This might force the spirit to show case some of it's movement arts that could be valuable information for our friends. However using an escape talisman moves us too quickly and Sun is just as likely to move her spirit to her danitian, blitz after us, then materialize her again. The longer the spirit is on the field under it's own power the more likely it will do something stupid.

If we make the assumption that Sun's spirit starts underground in it's ambush form, which given the last two fights seems like an assumption I can make, then a basic idea can be made. This is to separate Sun from her spirit. Nothing we know of has unlimited range so all the buffs that the spirit gives can be negated if distance is created between the two. We have yet to see the spirit use a movement art. Therefore it may be slower than Sun. However if it uses a movement art to keep up with Sun's chase then that is good information for our friends and completes our stated goal. If it the spirit does not have a movement art and distance is created then Sun may use another self buff art that has been kept secret so far. This is also good information and completes our stated goal. Now how do we do this?

Step 1: Trigger Grinning Crescent Dancer as our instant
Step 2: Begin movement phase by going as far backwards as possible to create space away from ambush and Sun
Step 3: Trigger Mist of the Vale expanded to 100 meters as main action; this is to hope to get decrease the dice thrown at us and increase the amount of times she has to make that delicious perception check while racing towards us.
Step 4: Trigger Thousand Rings Unbreakable as main action to stack even more defense
Step 5:Trigger Hundred Ring Armament as instant to stack even more defense.
Step 6: Continue moving in away from Sun but shifting as to form a spiral away from Sun's beginning point; this is to force Sun to change directions often(will likely make no difference but every variable we add increases the chance of a mistake) and keep her spirit in a position where it could act yet increasing the distance between Sun and her spirit.
Step 7: After several revolutions of the spiral express Zhengui in order to tag team Sun (this is likely to make little difference but buy some more turns for a mistake to happen); Sun's spirit seems really interested in eating other spirits and by expressing Zhengui we force it to make a choice, either it advances quickly to try and get food or it sits still or it advances slowly. If it sits still then we have a numbers advantage which will help us force Sun to revel techs or if it advances quickly then we revel it's movement tech or if it advances slowly we revel that it likely does not have a movement tech. All of this is good information and completes our stated goal.

I feel like a game plan like this is our best bet to get Sun, or Sun's spirit, to revel techs. Focusing on the defense will increase the rounds and increases the chance of Sun getting frustrated and making a silly mistake. Moving away from Sun's beginning spot moves us away from her ambush spirit and gives us a chance to revel additional techs that spirit has. However while moving away from the spirit we want to keep in mind that we don't want Sun to just dematerialize the spirit and then express her back. We want to stay close enough for long enough in order to try and force a movement tech from the spirit.

I don't think this general plan gives us the best odds of victory, however it should buy us time while hopefully forcing Sun or her spirit to show some techs.

 

[Hangwind]

The first and primary assumption is that we are not going to win.

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Gonna be honest, I stopped reading right here. This is a bad attitude to take. If you believe you can't win, you won't. We're cultivators. Our entire life is a struggle against the will of the heavens. We're following Cai. We're going to face worse odds than this. If we falter now, if we don't have a will to win now, when we have a safety net, when will we? As long as your logic is based on "WE'RE GOING TO LOSE AND THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT!" we aren't going to see eye to eye.

 

[AbeoLogos]

Sun Liling has at least two ranged attacks. One is an explodey AoE, remember?

Anyway, @yrsillar I've been thinking about the fight and I have two... and a half main concerns.

The first is the big one, and it's the use of PLR in the fight. Ling Qi kept the whole thing till the very end of the fight, and it doesn't seem to make sense on, well, multiple levels. The plan that won was more or less Mists - > Defenses -> Worms + Buff -> Lunatic Whirl. IPF is a defensive technique, and since LW requires it to be active in the field, the logical move was to deploy IPF during that second phase, before the worms, so that it would benefit us for most of the fight and Ling Qi would be able to drop the capstone technique of her plan at a moment's notice. Two details of the fight make this especially troublesome: Ji Rong was managing to punch through our defenses even when they were up, and Ling Qi should have been able to estimate what kind of heat he was bringing... to her face, and the only time Ling Qi totally avoided damage was when she did eventually use IPF.

Every viewer of the fight should be wondering why we didn't deploy something useful like that earlier, and when we did use it, there was zero reason to. PLR is our slowest art, and Ji Rong was so weakened that he passed out once we used it... so we could have just frozen him again and won that way. Ling Qi took longer to do a thing worse for unclear reasons. This is the kind of thing that not being too explicit in plans was supposed to prevent, but it looks like it was the direct cause here, even if the winning plan wasn't the most clear. No offense, but you made Ling Qi look like an idiot in front of the audience. This really sucks because this was our best opportunity to really impress while fighting a peer, and especially to showcase PLR. It's an art that will have 0 effect on Sun Liling, to the point that its slowness means we can't even afford to bring it out, so this was the biggest best chance. In all, a serious, though not irrecoverable, blow to Ling Qi's long-term strategic social goals.

Second issue is pacing and sense of time. Contrast the fight with Chu Song with this one and things look really weird. Chu Song took 'minutes' from refusing to concede while already beat to Ling Qi downing her, and we were using our freezing attacks. This whole fight seems to have taken maybe 5 minutes in total. I get that a lot of this is probably conflicts between mechanics and narrative, but it creates a strong sense of dissonance towards Ling Qi's abilities and what she can accomplish in a given period of time. Or it means that she was explicitly and deliberately dragging out the Chu Song fight in order to be deliberately cruel, because even playing things defensively cannot account for the discrepancy in pace. Ling Qi needs to be able to consistently accomplish roughly the same amount of Stuff in a given span of time if we're to make plans, especially in the narrative system we're moving into in the sequel.

The half of an issue is debuffs on Ling Qi were mentioned, but no mention of Sixiang doing anything about them, which is mildly jarring given it's the only thing the moon maiden does, for a not insignificant chunk of our qi reserves. I get how s/he just didn't fit into the narrative though. I get the impression this fight could have used another day of polishing. We're not that impatient, you know? I'd rather wait another couple days while the seems get ironed out.

 

[jacobk]

While staying at range is the best bet we have of doing anything using an escape talisman does not increase our chances by a significant amount. The way I am looking at this is a cost benefit analysis. There is several assumptions that I have built into my analysis. The first and primary assumption is that we are not going to win. Now that I have that framework I look at what we can do in the battle and the different costs in doing so. Using an escape talisman to build distance does not get us anything because it does not advance our stated goal (which is to force a tech revel). At best we get 1 more turn to build up while Sun Liling does nothing but walk slowly towards us. I think this is highly optimistic and that she will instead dash towards us and buff her dice past what our 1 extra turn would give us in dice. Since I believe that is a net loss I do not know why we would do waste red stones like that.

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I would dispute three assumptions here:

(1) We are not guaranteed to lose. There's many a slip twixt cup and lip. If we can make a plan to move from 1% to win to 5% to win I think it's worthwhile. Crits happen.

(2) A kilometer in distance gives us more than one turn to prepare. Especially since we can move immediately after using the talisman, meaning that the closing speed will be limited to Liling's speed advantage over us, not just her raw speed.

(3) Even if Liling can buff beyond what we can buff, it's better for us that the buffing happen at a civilized distance than the buffing happen while she is stabbing us in the face. We don't have the option of a buff-free fight.

 

[AbeoLogos]

I would dispute three assumptions here:

(1) We are not guaranteed to lose. There's many a slip twixt cup and lip. If we can make a plan to move from 1% to win to 5% to win I think it's worthwhile. Crits happen.

(2) A kilometer in distance gives us more than one turn to prepare. Especially since we can move immediately after using the talisman, meaning that the closing speed will be limited to Liling's speed advantage over us, not just her raw speed.

(3) Even if Liling can buff beyond what we can buff, it's better for us that the buffing happen at a civilized distance than the buffing happen while she is stabbing us in the face. We don't have the option of a buff-free fight.

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Our escape talisman has a half-kilometer range.

 

[Yeangst]

Theoretically, I think that going after Dhartiri first is probably a good idea.
Practically, though, I'm not sure we can pull it off. It's not like Ling Qi is great burst damage, and I don't see a scenario in which she can hit the spirit without Sun Liling simultaneously hitting her.