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Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

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Quest said:
Why not both? No, seriously. With the ability to switch arts in event time and the correct arts, we can easily change our arts with the needed situation.
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That ability requires spending a lot of time training multiple arts only to forgo the use of and passive bonuses from one of them in each combat.

No thanks; I'd rather just open more meridians. Seriously, we've got enough meridian slots that we don't need to hamstring ourselves by trying to swap between arts that are all important to our build.
 
Thor's Twin said:
I don't think it is crippling our chances though. We will still have the ability to get the Falling Stars art, probably even in the near future if we want to work towards it, so it wouldn't be crippling for us. Your right that the Ash Shadow art is another debuff art without granting extra damage and that is a point against it, but the possibility of getting ash constructs is enticing and synergizes well with our build.
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Yes, it is. Every debuff art we take is another round that we need to dedicate to getting it up and running. Possibly more if we need to recast it in the middle of the fight. The entire strategic point of debuff arts is to combine the effects of several different turns into one and block off any chance at recovery. We have that now plenty. But we don't have a way of capitalizing on it. Right now, another debuff art without damage is actually a net negative for our fighting style.
 
My main concern with the ashen art though I do see it's melee benefits is that it's melee benefits sound rather limited until maybe level 5 or 6 (or even higher level versions of the art) when we get the constructs. "More complex Ash constructs available at higher levels."
 
Ok, so Shiny Syndrome is going through the drain.
I thought some vocal parties wanted some attack art. It's the whole reason we have an arm meridian after all.
But since the majority want it :
[X] Ashen Shadow Art
Just don't forget we might want all the other art we saw, before getting a healing art !

Edit: @Arkeus might be so smug right now
 
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Hmm, true... Though I would say that Choking hazard might be a Save-or-Suck that could end some fights, and Physical Debilitation can ruin glass cannons. Not very good against very physical cultivator though, and I guess this is the main worry.

To give some examples, Hong Lin and Kang Zihao fought very physically, and Hong Lin had an Art that pushes away the Mist; Huang Da with his possible Perception Art probably is not bothered much by the Mist or Ash.

By the way, jumping to a different argument, considering it is partially Wind, I doubt any Qi Constructs of Ashen Shadow is enough of a meat shield or give good DV when used as weapons.

So conflicted.
 
[X] Falling Stars Art

This and Ashen Shadow both look great to me, but I feel that we're starting to overspecialize and breaking out of that earlier is better than the increased efficiency getting Ashen Shadow would grant. Ice Wraith is... adequate, but I feel that it is too melee/tank focused for us.
 
[X] Ashen Shadow Art

For our current situation, Ashen Shadow seems like the best choice. It's an offensive art that's usable with our hands free, so we can use it together with Forgotten Vale Melody. It possibly also synergizes with Sable Crescent Step, due to Ash helping with low-light conditions. I also like the flavor of it (Fire/Wind! Ash! Awesome!), and the greater potential of 6 levels. The "more complex" constructs we'll get later on sound quite versatile, too.

I would have preferred something with more punch, like the Falling Stars Art, but I don't think we're prepared to use that one. We need arm meridians, a proper bow, the new cultivation spot, and the ability to play FVM hands-free to make proper use of Falling Stars. We can come back to it in two weeks or so, when we have the foundation to make good use of it.

But my ideal offensive art would be something stealth and melee focused, a bursty assassination art. Hiding in the mist and then backstabbing with a powerful blow. That would be my favorite direction to take, just in terms of combat style. Maybe we'll find something like that on the second floor? Pew-pewing from afar with a bow just isn't as cool. Gauging the mood of the thread though - doesn't seem likely.

Ice Wraith doesn't really appeal to me. I don't like the Water/Wind flavor, and absorbing damage seems to go against our stealthy/evasive style. Not to mention it needs a slashing weapon, so right now it doesn't seem to combine well with FVM. And we could use more elemental variety.

Rippling Lake isn't even in consideration for me. The one Support Art we have is more than enough, I'd much prefer self-sufficiency, and something direct.

Changing tacks, what's going on with the tally feature, anyway? It's gone from Thread Tools, and I see people posting just "Inserted tally", like so:
Epicrandom said:
Inserted tally
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What gives? Does it look like that for everyone?
 
Grosstoad said:
.

By the way, jumping to a different argument, considering it is partially Wind, I doubt any Qi Constructs of Ashen Shadow is enough of a meat shield or give good DV when used as weapons.

So conflicted.
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I wouldn't expect more than dv 4 but they should be tougher and stronger than our mist constructs. Our mist constructs barely exist after all.
 
[X] Falling Stars Art

Ashen Shadow is great, but let's not forget, these are all first floor Arts--in other words, they're not things that can really be our keystones, because they'll fall behind given time. We came here to get a technique that closes the holes in our build--and the biggest hole we have right now is that we have no real way of winning a battle quickly. Falling Stars Art gives us a technique that we can use after leveraging our stealth to get a good position, have a weapon that gives us good range (The Bow), and then absolutely fucking wreck guys for a few turns before they get close enough that we can start layering our debuffs. This Technique allows us to exploit The Initiative, which is currently our greatest weakness by far, and it has enough potential that it'll last until we can find something better, because its very simplicity means that its effectiveness can be maximized. It does one thing, but it does it well enough that it'll likely last us a very long time before defenses get good enough that it falls behind.

And let's be frank, Ashen Shadow is going to end up spending a turn opening a Meridian as well. This technique here is also the best with regards to us eventually seizing that awesome Site we found--and benefits from it as well, while the others don't.
 
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Evilness42 said:
[X] Falling Stars Art

This and Ashen Shadow both look great to me, but I feel that we're starting to overspecialize and breaking out of that earlier is better than the increased efficiency getting Ashen Shadow would grant. Ice Wraith is... adequate, but I feel that it is too melee/tank focused for us.
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If it is too anything for us wouldn't that be keeping us from being overspecialized
 
PrimalShadow said:
Right now, I think the quest we need to ask ourselves is: "Do we want to improve our current combat style, or shift away from it?

Our current combat style is using FVM to debuff our enemies and SCS+dodge+stealth to kite them, and then down our enemies either through direct attacks or via a combination of their own Qi expenditures and FVM's attrition abilities. Clearly, the last step here is somewhat iffy; we don't have the capacity to properly deal with our enemies after we've started kiting them, which is why our current approach to combat is kind of awkward.

The current arts offer us several approaches to make our combat less awkward.

The Falling Star Art offers a simple and direct approach - drop the kiting thing and apply damage directly. This can be used before we set up FVM to have our enemies start off damaged and weakened, or after we get FVM up so our enemies are weakened by its debuffs. However, in both cases, this relegates FVM to a side role; depending on the circumstances we may choose to focus on FSA or FVM, using them together provides minimal synergy.

The Ice Wraith Art makes us better at attrition warfare while giving us the ability to cut through our opponents' defenses when we want to move in for an attack. Damage and physical-debuff mitigation means that we can afford to take a few hits, which lends a great deal of robustness to our combat style. And the attack capabilities means that we actually have an attack booster to rely on when we want to speed up our fight.

The Ashen Shadow Art makes us better at this kiting by giving us both debuffs and attacks that we can do without needing to stop playing. And like the Ice Wraith art, it also provides a direct damage booster if we need it. This also synergizes with FVM, but this time it does so by making our debuffs more debillitating instead of improving our ability to withstand whatever our enemies toss out through said debuffs.
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Thor's Twin said:
I don't think it is crippling our chances though. We will still have the ability to get the Falling Stars art, probably even in the near future if we want to work towards it, so it wouldn't be crippling for us. Your right that the Ash Shadow art is another debuff art without granting extra damage and that is a point against it, but the possibility of getting ash constructs is enticing and synergizes well with our build.
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Yeah no FSA works perfectly well with FVM, there's a damn reason every thing lasts for 4 turns after we stop playing, set everything up and then spam FSA to wreck our enemies.

ASA doesn't make us better at kiting because it's an Art that requires us to dive into melee instead of attacking from range. We've only used melee once or twice.

Don't mislead people.

Rhydarson said:
Ok, so Shiny Syndrome is going through the drain.
I thought some vocal parties wanted some attack art. It's the whole reason we have an arm meridian after all.
But since the majority want it :
[X] Ashen Shadow Art
Just don't forget we might want all the other art we saw, before getting a healing art !

Edit: @Arkeus might be so smug right now
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Or you could fight against them for FSA instead of giving because "the majority want it".
 
PrimalShadow said:
???

The problem with FSA needing a Meridian is that it wastes 10 dice of pill bonuses this turn, not that it needs a Meridian period.
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So?

Yes, that's a large number, but ten dice isn't worth failing to accomplish our original goal of having a technique that hits real hard. Ashen Shadow just basically does the same thing FVM does, except it takes even more actions to set up when we already have a dangerously long set-up period.

Action Economy is our biggest enemy here, and Ashen Shadow isn't going to help much when most battles are resolved within four rounds.
 
Taparu said:
"More complex Ash constructs available at higher levels."
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More complex ash constructs later imply the ability to create non-complex ash constructs earlier in the art. I'm thinking complex ash constructions are beasts or humanoid creatures that are able to move in more complex ways. Simple ash constructions would be a short wall, a rolling boulder, a circling stream of ash around us, that sort of thing. Merely because it is more complex ash constructs later doesn't mean we won't have simple ash constructs to work with earlier.

Hangwind said:
Right now, another debuff art without damage is actually a net negative for our fighting style.
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I am honestly not seeing how another debuff art is going to be a net negative for our fighting style. The argument made is that it will take more rounds to set up the debuff's which prevent us from capitalizing on the debuffs because it gives them more turns to dispell the debuffs. However, if they are spending time dispelling our debuffs, then we are still in a good position to keep recasting them forcing them to dispell them again. FVM is crazy efficient for us and it will cost a lot more to dispell it than it costs for us to set it up (looking at the qi usage of something like Argent Mirror Arts for reference. I agree that having the supreme damaging art that is Falling Stars is going to help us tremendously in starting or finishing fights, but having Ash shadow prevents people from being as effective once they get up close. If Hong Lin fights us again, I would rather have the option of sending the blinding cloud of ash that has her blinded and choking allowing us to get some more breathing room then the ability to do more damage, although more damage is certainly going to be extremely useful in that fight regardless.

ugg.. Questions questions.

I'm going to reservedly change my vote towards Falling stars. I love Ashen Shadow, but getting something like Fallen Stars will allow us to fight the beasts and monsters in the forest more effectively, allowing us to take larger missions with more rewards so that we can get the 2nd level of Ashen shadow quicker. I really want Ashen Shadow, and I think it is going to be an extremely valuable tool in our arsenal.

[X] Falling Stars Art
 
Guys, fuys, what are you doing. We came here for high burst damage.

Ling Qi's talent with a bow is tremendous. She became proficient by occasionally plinking with it for a week. She gets three points of progress while also learning polearms and grinding stats.

Don't pick up yet another area DoT. We already have Mist for that.

Its excellent to pick up Heaven now, because it will always come paired up with Moon/Stars. Its naturally synergistic.
 
Yeah, the biggest argument against Ashen Shadow--I feel, is that it just makes our current action economy issues worse, because it adds even more set up to a build that already requires a lot of it. Meanwhile, Falling Star is so focused that it almost certainly gets a lot of power out of it, and we're already good at debuffing and generally being an asshole to everyone around us in battle.

Falling Star is also literally the "Baby's First Houyi Imitation" Art. And that guy is a fucking badass..
 
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[x] Ashen Shadow Art

I'd like to eventually get all of the first three, preferably before we break through so we can get those elemental mastery bonuses. My vote for the first was a bit of a toss-up between Ashen Shadow and Ice Wraith.

While the latter would grow ridiculously quickly, thanks to hitting all of our growth bonuses, it would also rely mainly on our weaker weapon masteries (heavy polearms and any others we get like swords). We could use our knives instead, but we mainly use them as throwing weapons so we'd lose a lot of our versatility there.

Ashen Shadow, on the other hand, will grow a bit more slowly, but gives us the ability to attack directly without losing the power of Forgotten Vale Melody as we do. And that's really why I chose it for our first, because it slots into our current combat build in a very effective way.

Falling Stars is something I want to get, too, but I'd prefer to wait until we get that new site locked down. That will probably take us a month or two to get around to, so there'd be a lot of argument for just taking a second or third floor equivalent, but I'm moderately against that. I'd prefer to build on the foundation, as some people have put it.


I feel like I'm on the extreme far end for the number of arts I want to have, though, so I don't have much hope for this plan. But I do have some. Hell, I'm still holding onto hope that we go back and grab Crimson Flowing Art from our first archive search.
 
Seventeen said:
[x] Ashen Shadow Art

I'd like to eventually get all of the first three, preferably before we break through so we can get those elemental mastery bonuses. My vote for the first was a bit of a toss-up between Ashen Shadow and Ice Wraith.

While the latter would grow ridiculously quickly, thanks to hitting all of our growth bonuses, it would also rely mainly on our weaker weapon masteries (heavy polearms and any others we get like swords). We could use our knives instead, but we mainly use them as throwing weapons so we'd lose a lot of our versatility there.

Ashen Shadow, on the other hand, will grow a bit more slowly, but gives us the ability to attack directly without losing the power of Forgotten Vale Melody as we do. And that's really why I chose it for our first, because it slots into our current combat build in a very effective way.

Falling Stars is something I want to get, too, but I'd prefer to wait until we get that new site locked down. That will probably take us a month or two to get around to, so there'd be a lot of argument for just taking a second or third floor equivalent, but I'm moderately against that. I'd prefer to build on the foundation, as some people have put it.


I feel like I'm on the extreme far end for the number of arts I want to have, though, so I don't have much hope for this plan. But I do have some. Hell, I'm still holding onto hope that we go back and grab Crimson Flowing Art from our first archive search.
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It'll be a hell of a lot harder for us to get the site locked down if we don't have the ability to kill the Rimefur Wolves, I point out.

And we did get The Drop on them when we approached in the first place, pull that off and we could potentially pop one or two of them before they close.
 
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