Alright, so on a completely different note, PLR has been kind of awkward since forever. We were complaining about it (again) on Discord last night, and I was thinking about how it fits into our overall strategy. The problem, I feel, is that it either wants to be replacing FVM or FSS in our overall combat strategy, and historically it just hasn't really been good enough. It's taken a while to really get up to being useful, and because we had better options we've continually put it on the backburner. Trying to do FVM + PLR + FSS just gets kind of messy and confused, and we run out of actions.
My feeling is, however, that we can use different combinations of them in different situations. FVM is ideal in larger engagements where there are enough people for the mass debuffs to really shine, and low level opponents for us to shut down and bully. PLR I suggest works better in the smaller scale engagements where FVM falls off in effectiveness. With its new perfect dodge charges, and lockdown abilities, it is potentially really strong where there are a smaller number of dangerous enemies we need to defend against and manage. FSS ofc makes things dead, and this is often ideal.
Laying out the general scenarios:
- Duel: PLR + FSS
- with only one (or two) enemies, FVM really doesn't have enough targets to work well - though admittedly the darkness can maybe be a useful buff. PLR is likely stronger defensively though, and LW can potentially be a very useful tool. Use PLR as our field effect, and then move to the killin'
- Small scale group combat with limited friends: PLR + FSS or FVM + PLR depending on how many friends we have
- This continues in small scale group content where it is still, perhaps, unclear how useful FVM is. In these situations, we are likely to be fighting multiple strong opponents, and LW's CC is likely to be much more useful than FVM. Whether or not we should be using FSS or FVM on top of PLR, however, depends on how many friends we have. Broadly, if we only have like one friend or so, then the marginal value of our DPS contribution is probably relatively high, and we want to kill things. However, if we have a good number of friends - imagine, for example, taht we had Xiulan, Renxiang, and Meizhen with us - then the marginal value of our DPS might be significantly lower, it it may be better for us to focus fully on support (thus PLR + FVM).
- Large scale combat: FVM + FSS
- In larger scale fights, where we're wanting to control small armies with our awesomeness, FVM is obviously ideal. Most of the time, I think, we'd probably want to be using FSS for it's rad aoe to start cutting the enemy numbers down. That being said, there may be the odd situation where, for example, our allies have the dps covered and it's better for us to focus on trying to CC enemy officers, so PLR shouldn't be entirely ruled out.
That being said, whenever we have time to really set up beforehand, it's hard to say we shouldn't bring up FVM all the way.
That's my thoughts on our current setup anyway. PLR ofc really needs more training, and this balance will all be messed with once we get BKSD and UGM online, but it may provide a useful roadmap for thinking about how we want to approach things?