Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

[Erebeal]

Hmm. I can't honestly remember. I think it had to do with how the passives changed as we... yes! What I'm talking about is how our passives for arts improved as we leveled them, and some pieces became permanent.

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Permanent bonuses only happened on our cultivation arts, FVM, and AM. Cultivation arts are obviously different, and FVM isn't mastered. There is no reason to believe mastering them will give us anything special.

Indeed, if we look at the kinds of bonuses that become permanent the opposite is true. Darkvision. Qi sense. Music attacks. All qualtitative bonuses that really just reflect abilities that one would expect a cultivator of our level to just have. AS and AC don't have these kinds of bonuses.

 

[OneArmedYeti]

Permanent bonuses only happened on our cultivation arts, FVM, and AM. Cultivation arts are obviously different, and FVM isn't mastered. There is no reason to believe mastering them will give us anything special.

Indeed, if we look at the kinds of bonuses that become permanent the opposite is true. Darkvision. Qi sense. Music attacks. All qualtitative bonuses that really just reflect abilities that one would expect a cultivator of our level to just have. AS and AC don't have these kinds of bonuses.

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I believe he's suggesting that since AM had permanent bonuses at it's Green level, AC and ASt likely do as well.

Edit: Although it looks like AM no longer does in the new mechanics.

 

[Theo Promes]

Anyway, since we are kinda on the topic of commander arts, and I've mentioned mine as a "obfuscating Wood Yin support", what do you and others want in a commander art? Seems like a good time to take a sample of thread opinion.

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I'm new here, so take this with a grain of salt, but when I think about Ling Qi on a battlefield, I don't see her charging frontlines. Honestly, I don't see her in massed combat (>100) at all preferably, but if needs must, I'd argue for a special forces approach - hit and run tactics, scouting, decapitation strikes, sabotage. In straight up army battle, probably taking out enemy commanders and some battlefield control.

So in that vein, I think for commander arts, we should look into group movement, group stealth, medium-scale illusions and group attack skills.

Not too sure on the classifications, but I guess Yin is fitting, dark/moon/water/wind?

 

[PrimalShadow]

Some of the facets in play here are that when we start mastering arts and capping them out in Green 2 and 3, we start losing options to raise our Domain Rank, and to train our Attributes like Presence and Skills like Woodwind.

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I don't see this meaningfully mattering.

As long as we continue taking actions, we keep increasing SOME attribute, with meridian cultivation being the sole exception. Different arts just change the spread of what we can cultivate, perhaps for better or perhaps for worse.

 

[BungieONI]

I don't see this meaningfully mattering.

As long as we continue taking actions, we keep increasing SOME attribute, with meridian cultivation being the sole exception. Different arts just change the spread of what we can cultivate, perhaps for better or perhaps for worse.

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I don't understand what you're getting at. Can you outline your reasoning here please?

 

[veekie]

Hmm. I can't honestly remember. I think it had to do with how the passives changed as we... yes! What I'm talking about is how our passives for arts improved as we leveled them, and some pieces became permanent.


I definitely agree with the first and third points(though I can quibble about exact AM placement, it isn't worth it). Not so much with the second.

Based on the notion that it comes from AM, AC and AS, it must build on their central philosophy because it is part of the same general fighting thought process. We both know what this is, so I won't go into it, too deeply at least . But the issue there is that that philosophy implies how Pulse gets its stuff done. A person with all the Argent arts and Pulse has a problem solving process of "Identify problem -> Buff the shit out of my pals -> run with pals to punch the problem". That's the paradigm for which Pulse was forged in. You can say, "But wait! Most cultivators probably have something else, like X." and that is probably true. The problem about talking about that is that the pool for X is so huge that you can't meaningfully discuss it except scenario by scenario. And there are hundreds. And because this is Xianxia, things tend to synergize best when used in their paradigm, unless you can brutalize them into another paradigm.

The entire melee range ideation behind the Argent philosophy of fighting doesn't fit with my image of Bard Ling Qi, who has a good chunk of her survivability coming from Zones of Doom which discourage melee encounters and who was smart enough to get tough enough to survive for when the melee inevitably finds her. If the ideas behind Pulse didn't encourage being with your melee buddies and the general soldiers milieu I would be more receptive to it.

E: The interaction with aura effects is a bit more complicated, and I'm not comfortable discussing it in an edit.

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I think you're overreading into the theme personally(a Commander art being limited to such range makes it very hard to use AS a commander art, if for no reason beyond being able to affect very small squads owing to how mobile cultivators are, any decent Count Commander art has to affect a pretty large radius because your squad is going to be Boomleaping all over the place and out of your auras otherwise), but it certainly explains the strenuous objections.

I wouldn't give it too much concern until we actually SEE what Argent Pulse does.

 

[BungieONI]

I think you're overreading into the theme personally(a Commander art being limited to such range makes it very hard to use AS a commander art, if for no reason beyond being able to affect very small squads owing to how mobile cultivators are, any decent Count Commander art has to affect a pretty large radius because your squad is going to be Boomleaping all over the place and out of your auras otherwise), but it certainly explains the strenuous objections.

I wouldn't give it too much concern until we actually SEE what Argent Pulse does.

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Well to take your example. If they have Boom Leap, you have Boom Leap, and since you're the commander you're the on ordering them to Boom Leap a large part of the time. And while we use Boom Leap for esoteric mobility, the point of the technique is to get in the face of a target which you pick out ahead of time where you then stay close to them because of Argent Current.

 

[PrimalShadow]

I don't understand what you're getting at. Can you outline your reasoning here please?

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You are talking as if having more arts means we get more attribute training in, or more choice of attribute training in. Neither is true.

The former is false because we get one training roll per AP unless we cultivate meridians, so ANYTHING we do will give the same number of training rolls a turn (except once again meridians).

The latter is false because unless we want to choose what to cultivate based on what it trains, our trains attributes will always be affected by our cultivation plan. Changing arts just changes what those constrains are, and I don't see any reason to believe it will improve that spread meaningfully. If a basis exists to believes such a thing, you would need to do meaningful work to justify it, not just clain that we need arts to train the good stuff. (To put that last point in a different way, I could equally say that you need to AVOID arts so you aren't forced to train less-useful things.)

 

[BungieONI]

You are talking as if having more arts means we get more attribute training in, or more choice of attribute training in. Neither is true.

The former is false because we get one training roll per AP unless we cultivate meridians, so ANYTHING we do will give the same number of training rolls a turn (except once again meridians).

The latter is false because unless we want to choose what to cultivate based on what it trains, our trains attributes will always be affected by our cultivation plan. Changing arts just changes what those constrains are, and I don't see any reason to believe it will improve that spread meaningfully. If a basis exists to believes such a thing, you would need to do meaningful work to justify it, not just clain that we need arts to train the good stuff. (To put that last point in a different way, I could equally say that you need to AVOID arts so you aren't forced to train less-useful things.)

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The first is not what I mean, since I know that isn't true. The second is what I mean, in a way.

And we have in fact been choosing what to cultivate in large part based on what it trains. We have a set of things which are important, and a select number of our arts train those things, so we cultivate those arts and train those things. When our arts run out and are mastered we must find other means to train those important things. Stuff like Sect Jobs and Duties which have Any attached to them.

E: Like, yes, what arts we have rotates through various different attributes or skills. But the central point here is that we want to be cultivating arts, instead of wasting time essentially waiting for more arts to arrive by taking Sect Jobs.

 

[Tarro]

Argent package is upper Count but also has a strong and vocal bloc that will argue until their face is blue because they just fucking hate the Argent stuff, so I don't see us slotting any more of them--even if they have good lessons.

But in terms of potency, they're upper Count, yeah.

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This isn't really true. Argent Mirror is subpar for a green art, and subpar for a Count level perception art. Our perception was (and is) average for a green, which is below average for anyone of a Count house or above. It's specialized and synergistic for a subpar art, which makes it comparable to an actually good art in its area of focus, but its objectively not very good. Argent Storm is bad. It's just flat out bad and we'd basically never use it ever. Movement mechanics were terrible in the dice system, which made it usable, but it was terrible compared to Ji Rong's movement art (100 meters in a single round, because face-punching), SCS, or any other Count+ level arts we've seen. It's not maxed, sure, but even then it's obvious that it's bonuses were and are subpar compared to similar arts we've seen of actual Count+ caliber, even with a green growth. Specific notes of this are its counter being significantly worse than Meizhen's (unfair, sure, but it uses different stats than we've maxed. It'd need to be broken to compensate), it's semiperfect blocking being worse than TRF 4, and Boom Leap being it's only redeeming factor, while simultaneously being suboptimal since it's damage bonus only applied on melee attacks.

Argent Current was stupidly broken in the old dice system, and has been nerfed into the fucking ground by the new mechanics. It gave a DV bonus to our FSS, which was stupid good, and Pressure Crack was a contender for the best single action we've ever seen, including the ducal capstone arts of Meizhen and Liling. The other two parts of Argent Current were terrible, which is par for the course for the Argent series as a whole.

Basically, only Argent Current was actually upper count level, and it isn't anymore, since Pressure crack went from both a damage buff and hit buff equal to the yellow-green dice border to a measly +10 or so to hit and pen, which doesn't even cover the C/B divide.

Also, they're all arts built around being someone that punches people in the face, which we aren't. Yes, it says 'Balanced' on the tin, but only the cultivation arts are really good for a combatant that doesn't focus on melee range physical-heavy combat.

 

[BungieONI]

This isn't really true. Argent Mirror is subpar for a green art, and subpar for a Count level perception art. Our perception was (and is) average for a green, which is below average for anyone of a Count house or above. It's specialized and synergistic for a subpar art, which makes it comparable to an actually good art in its area of focus, but its objectively not very good. Argent Storm is bad. It's just flat out bad and we'd basically never use it ever. Movement mechanics were terrible in the dice system, which made it usable, but it was terrible compared to Ji Rong's movement art (100 meters in a single round, because face-punching), SCS, or any other Count+ level arts we've seen. It's not maxed, sure, but even then it's obvious that it's bonuses were and are subpar compared to similar arts we've seen of actual Count+ caliber, even with a green growth. Specific notes of this are its counter being significantly worse than Meizhen's (unfair, sure, but it uses different stats than we've maxed. It'd need to be broken to compensate), it's semiperfect blocking being worse than TRF 4, and Boom Leap being it's only redeeming factor, while simultaneously being suboptimal since it's damage bonus only applied on melee attacks.

Argent Current was stupidly broken in the old dice system, and has been nerfed into the fucking ground by the new mechanics. It gave a DV bonus to our FSS, which was stupid good, and Pressure Crack was a contender for the best single action we've ever seen, including the ducal capstone arts of Meizhen and Liling. The other two parts of Argent Current were terrible, which is par for the course for the Argent series as a whole.

Basically, only Argent Current was actually upper count level, and it isn't anymore, since Pressure crack went from both a damage buff and hit buff equal to the yellow-green dice border to a measily +10 or so to hit and pen, which doesn't even cover the C/B divide.

Also, they're all arts built around being someone that punches people in the face, which we aren't. Yes, it says 'Balanced' on the tin, but only the cultivation arts are really good for a combatant that doesn't focus on melee range physical-heavy combat.

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Point here for sure, though the narrative impact is hard to judge, and could boost them up if used cleverly.

 

[DeAnno]

Point here for sure, though the narrative impact is hard to judge, and could boost them up if used cleverly.

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Any art's narrative impact can be boosted by being cleverly used. And I would argue it'll be harder for us to use Argent Arts cleverly because they play so against Ling Qi's themes, elements, preferred ranges, attack modes, really everything. The only impact you can play specifically with them is bending over backwards to try to "impress" people that we're using them, which is rather like injecting yourself with your boss' DNA to try to improve his opinion of you.

 

[BungieONI]

Any art's narrative impact can be boosted by being cleverly used. And I would argue it'll be harder for us to use Argent Arts cleverly because they play so against Ling Qi's themes, elements, preferred ranges, attack modes, really everything. The only impact you can play specifically with them is bending over backwards to try to "impress" people that we're using them, which is rather like injecting yourself with your boss' DNA to try to improve his opinion of you.

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There is this too, and I agree.

 

[Erebeal]

Argent Storm is bad. It's just flat out bad and we'd basically never use it ever.

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Uh, AS is perfectly good. Right now it's at level 3, or mid yellow. Comparing it to green arts is kinda unreasonable. I would be unsurprised if Boom Leap was similarly capable of covering 100m at green.

It doesn't fit us, personally, very well - but it's an excellent art for a melee bruiser.

 

[AbeoLogos]

which is rather like injecting yourself with your boss' DNA to try to improve his opinion of you.

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I mean. Cai Renxiang might actually be excellent materials, considering the amount of White-tier craftswork that has gone into her. I say go for it.

 

[Erebeal]

I mean. Cai Renxiang might actually be excellent materials, considering the amount of White-tier craftswork that has gone into her. I say go for it.

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Sooo... Like one of them Zheng blood-sister rituals then?

 

[Thor's Twin]

So, I'm going to lay my own thoughts on the table regarding Argent Storm, Argent Current, and Argent Pulse. I am intensely skeptical that they will be of very much use to us as we develop our build and will take away action points from things that we could be used to accomplish things that will be much more useful immediately and in the longer term. I apologize if this has already been discussed, but here are the reasons why I believe that the Argent arts will not be useful to us.

First off, it seems that the argent arts have some incredible synergy for a melee bruiser. Getting into the thick of things and destroying your opposition in a flurry of strikes and counter strikes while keeping key targets near you so that they can't escape. Argent Pulse will likely advance on this by enabling even stronger offensive pressure as you lead a charge into enemy lines. While they seem to be very good for what they do, Ling Qi doesn't operate like that. The best use of her support and mobility characteristics would probably be to hit and support a buckling section of the fight to bolster the troops fighting there and sap the enemies, or leading an infiltration squad to disrupt enemy movements, communications, and supplies. Ling Qi does not seem to be a lead from the front type of person and there are better uses for her stealth, mobility, zone control, and support abilities then leading from the front.

Furthermore, I don't believe Ling Qi's support capabilities is best developed by getting offensive support tools which I believe Argent Pulse to be. Looking at the field of our potential allies whom we could support, the weakest one is Gu Xiulan. Gu Xiulan doesn't need any more help in dishing out damage, she needs help staying alive long enough to dish out all that damage. Additionally, while Shen Hu and Bai Meizhen are only marginally supported by defensive buffs, Cai Rexiang would probably gain substantially from defensive buffs. We know that Cai Rexiang has offensive support buffs of her own, which makes it so that the longer she can use them the more valuable those buffs become, especially if we are teamed up with Meizhen or Shen Hu.

Looking at the tools we have currently and how group buffs help us in the strategy we have successfully employed, it would seem that group defensive buffs assist in the attrition/tarpit strategy that we employed in the tournament. Allowing the fight to drag out longer enables our music to become even more impactful because we didn't have to keep casting it repeatedly. It's persistent effects mean that the longer our allies (or summons) can last the more the music drains them, damages them, and confuses them.

Speaking of summons, with the new possibility of merging meridians I am optimistic that we will be able to slot in a potent summoning art to assist us in battle. I like the idea of summoning creatures to be a tar pit to our opponents as well as a distraction enabling us to hide in the mists and whittle them into surrendering. A group defensive buff allows our summons to take more hits meaning that they can tarpit, slow down, and distract an opponent easier and more efficiently.

While offensive group buffs are probably good, the combination that Cai Rexiang already has them and they don't assist in the attrition style gameplay we have developed signifies to me that defensive group buffs would be better. Since I have a strong suspicion that Argent Pulse is a group offensive buff along with Argent Current (and I have never been too impressed with Argent Storm) means that I have a strong hestitation to spend action points on this branch of arts.

 

[OneArmedYeti]

I have an idea.

Let's raise our hand at the end of the next Elder lecture related to combat arts and ask if Argent Pulse is useful for rear line commanders in loose formation.

 

[AbeoLogos]

Uh, AS is perfectly good. Right now it's at level 3, or mid yellow. Comparing it to green arts is kinda unreasonable. I would be unsurprised if Boom Leap was similarly capable of covering 100m at green.

It doesn't fit us, personally, very well - but it's an excellent art for a melee bruiser.

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I'd like AS to be good, but it kind of has been conspicuously mediocre in every iteration of system or art revision. Even now, if you look at its keywords it falls short in a qualitative/conceptual way. I'll cut Balanced and the elements, but here:
Argent Mirror: Composure, Empathy, Perceptiveness, Reflection, Resolve; 2 attributes, 2 skills, 1 concept
Argent Current: Presence, Unity, Unarmed, War; 1 attribute, 2 skills, 1 concept
Argent Storm: Dodge, Dexterity, Motion, Wits; 2 attributes, 1 skill, 1 concept

So it doesn't actually look that bad laid out like that, and I'll get to that, but first I'll note that AM also has the 'Argent' keyword where the other two don't, and it's likely it picked it up at completion. Arts likely pick up keywords as they level, so nothing here is definite. However, AC not having a keyword for an attribute that lets it... actually do things is most likely an oversight, an error, rather than intentional. Because come on. It's all about busting through enemy defenses, so Strength makes sense here(FSA has both str and dex keywords, for comparison). So now AC has the lead, admittedly with a 1 level advantage, but when we get to conceptual keywords, Motion is just... lame. We've seen it on literally every art that provides movement buffs of any kind, even a pure Heart art. Motion is the least special keyword imaginable. Finally, it's weird that AS doesn't have an Armor keyword, despite having an armor passive and an armor tech, though it's an area the art is likely to get better at in the 2 levels remaining.

I wanted AS to be good, because Ling Qi deserves nice Wind things, but it's never been a good boy.

 

[Tallamee]

Question of the hour is: Is Ling Qi really getting built to be a combat commander?

From what I can observe, the answer seems to be 'not particularly'. Mostly, I figure this because us players can see that most of our actual interactions out of tournament rings has been of a decidedly CIA styling. Ling Qi spies, she infiltrates, she does a lot of things that take a dedicated stealth specialist to do. Things which Ling will likely find few comrades to command in the process of doing. Her work is unlikely to involve leading underlings in the execution of tasks very often, if ever.

Meanwhile Gan Guangli (presuming he does not fuck up his next assignment from Cai Shenhua) and Cai Renxiang both are looking to be capable at field command, and possessed of quality command Arts of their own.

When I think of Command Arts that match Ling Qi, TRF comes to mind alongside FVM. Arts that suit her purposes, and have some command utility on the side.

 

[Neshuakadal]

I have an idea.

Let's raise our hand at the end of the next Elder lecture related to combat arts and ask if Argent Pulse is useful for rear line commanders in loose formation.

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I have a question for you. What do you see when you look the argent arts? What do you see them bringing to the table in regards to increasing Ling Qi's strength?

 

[PrimalShadow]

central point here is that we want to be cultivating arts, instead of wasting time essentially waiting for more arts to arrive by taking Sect Jobs

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That's kinda... obvious, though? If we run out of things to cultivate we will want to go grab something else to do, whether that is a successor to our current core arts, something that we think will fill the role of a core art in the future, or at the very least an auxiliary art of some sort. I don't think anyone is suggesting that we kill time some way or another.

 

[Erebeal]

Motion is just... lame. We've seen it on literally every art that provides movement buffs of any kind, even a pure Heart art. Motion is the least special keyword imaginable. Finally, it's weird that AS doesn't have an Armor keyword, despite having an armor passive and an armor tech, though it's an area the art is likely to get better at in the 2 levels remaining.

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I'd say that AS should also have the "manly brawling" keyword, but since we'd never bother with that... eh.

 

[veekie]

Question of the hour is: Is Ling Qi really getting built to be a combat commander?

From what I can observe, the answer seems to be 'not particularly'. Mostly, I figure this because us players can see that most of our actual interactions out of tournament rings has been of a decidedly CIA styling. Ling Qi spies, she infiltrates, she does a lot of things that take a dedicated stealth specialist to do. Things which Ling will likely find few comrades to command in the process of doing. Her work is unlikely to involve leading underlings in the execution of tasks very often, if ever.

Meanwhile Gan Guangli (presuming he does not fuck up his next assignment from Cai Shenhua) and Cai Renxiang both are looking to be capable at field command, and possessed of quality command Arts of their own.

When I think of Command Arts that match Ling Qi, TRF comes to mind alongside FVM. Arts that suit her purposes, and have some command utility on the side.

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Her overall style is very very loosely defined, but there is a lot of player interest in running a summoner/beastmaster type commander, which she has Zhengui and Hanyi slated to go in eventually, and probably some summoning fodder once yrs solves the Summoning Art Dilemma.

Its a pretty useful approach for a bard, because it lets you run the polymath thing into pretty high levels by delegating capabilities to spirits and summons, letting your Support focus do the work of lifting lesser companions to be up for any task.

 

[BungieONI]

That's kinda... obvious, though? If we run out of things to cultivate we will want to go grab something else to do, whether that is a successor to our current core arts, something that we think will fill the role of a core art in the future, or at the very least an auxiliary art of some sort. I don't think anyone is suggesting that we kill time some way or another.

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The point is that we want to cultivate arts and train attributes with them so much over sect jobs and other stuff, in order to stay relevant in challenges and events, that other options are heavily disincentivized and your position of "well no losing the arts doesn't matter" is basically saying to us with this position "Hey let's kill time with something else."

Question of the hour is: Is Ling Qi really getting built to be a combat commander?

From what I can observe, the answer seems to be 'not particularly'. Mostly, I figure this because us players can see that most of our actual interactions out of tournament rings has been of a decidedly CIA styling. Ling Qi spies, she infiltrates, she does a lot of things that take a dedicated stealth specialist to do. Things which Ling will likely find few comrades to command in the process of doing. Her work is unlikely to involve leading underlings in the execution of tasks very often, if ever.

Meanwhile Gan Guangli (presuming he does not fuck up his next assignment from Cai Shenhua) and Cai Renxiang both are looking to be capable at field command, and possessed of quality command Arts of their own.

When I think of Command Arts that match Ling Qi, TRF comes to mind alongside FVM. Arts that suit her purposes, and have some command utility on the side.

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So, I'm going to lay my own thoughts on the table regarding Argent Storm, Argent Current, and Argent Pulse. I am intensely skeptical that they will be of very much use to us as we develop our build and will take away action points from things that we could be used to accomplish things that will be much more useful immediately and in the longer term. I apologize if this has already been discussed, but here are the reasons why I believe that the Argent arts will not be useful to us.

First off, it seems that the argent arts have some incredible synergy for a melee bruiser. Getting into the thick of things and destroying your opposition in a flurry of strikes and counter strikes while keeping key targets near you so that they can't escape. Argent Pulse will likely advance on this by enabling even stronger offensive pressure as you lead a charge into enemy lines. While they seem to be very good for what they do, Ling Qi doesn't operate like that. The best use of her support and mobility characteristics would probably be to hit and support a buckling section of the fight to bolster the troops fighting there and sap the enemies, or leading an infiltration squad to disrupt enemy movements, communications, and supplies. Ling Qi does not seem to be a lead from the front type of person and there are better uses for her stealth, mobility, zone control, and support abilities then leading from the front.

Furthermore, I don't believe Ling Qi's support capabilities is best developed by getting offensive support tools which I believe Argent Pulse to be. Looking at the field of our potential allies whom we could support, the weakest one is Gu Xiulan. Gu Xiulan doesn't need any more help in dishing out damage, she needs help staying alive long enough to dish out all that damage. Additionally, while Shen Hu and Bai Meizhen are only marginally supported by defensive buffs, Cai Rexiang would probably gain substantially from defensive buffs. We know that Cai Rexiang has offensive support buffs of her own, which makes it so that the longer she can use them the more valuable those buffs become, especially if we are teamed up with Meizhen or Shen Hu.

Looking at the tools we have currently and how group buffs help us in the strategy we have successfully employed, it would seem that group defensive buffs assist in the attrition/tarpit strategy that we employed in the tournament. Allowing the fight to drag out longer enables our music to become even more impactful because we didn't have to keep casting it repeatedly. It's persistent effects mean that the longer our allies (or summons) can last the more the music drains them, damages them, and confuses them.

Speaking of summons, with the new possibility of merging meridians I am optimistic that we will be able to slot in a potent summoning art to assist us in battle. I like the idea of summoning creatures to be a tar pit to our opponents as well as a distraction enabling us to hide in the mists and whittle them into surrendering. A group defensive buff allows our summons to take more hits meaning that they can tarpit, slow down, and distract an opponent easier and more efficiently.

While offensive group buffs are probably good, the combination that Cai Rexiang already has them and they don't assist in the attrition style gameplay we have developed signifies to me that defensive group buffs would be better. Since I have a strong suspicion that Argent Pulse is a group offensive buff along with Argent Current (and I have never been too impressed with Argent Storm) means that I have a strong hestitation to spend action points on this branch of arts.

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To key off both of you because there's a facet here to Ling Qi which I think is relevant to both of your points. Ling Qi is a boardclearing device(I'd say nuke, but she's slow for that epithet), in the sense that if you put her on a battlefield swarming with soldiery, that soldiery is going to be removed in horrible horrible fashions in a combat relevant time frame.

And you are entirely right Tallamee, Ling Qi has not been designed as a commander in the same way that Renxiang and Gan have. At least for myself the interest is in the support command idea, wherein she makes her forces harder to remove, like Thor's Twin is describing. This interest is somewhat common amongst other people, just look at the last few pages. Now the reason that command is a thing for me is because as a feudal lordling/vassal her role in the system is to literally lead armies or armed forces either her own or sections of Renxiang's.

Her overall style is very very loosely defined, but there is a lot of player interest in running a summoner/beastmaster type commander, which she has Zhengui and Hanyi slated to go in eventually, and probably some summoning fodder once yrs solves the Summoning Art Dilemma.

Its a pretty useful approach for a bard, because it lets you run the polymath thing into pretty high levels by delegating capabilities to spirits and summons, letting your Support focus do the work of lifting lesser companions to be up for any task.

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AE might actually have use, finally. It's worms are still shite I think(?)(Haven't taken an indepth look), but they are gaining other abilities, the most recent one being gaining coatings of slime for armor.

E: Doubt it though.