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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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Thor's Twin said:
At least that was the argument used against having armor affect debuffs.
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Hmm.. interesting, thank you.

Was the introduction of scaling of buffs discussed? Like, consecutive buffs provide diminishing returns, or the other way, buffs start with miniscule benefits and are easy to dispell but each consecutive one gets better and better until it spirals out of control. That way debuffs, while mitigated by armor, stay consistent throughout the course of the fight, while the buff chain either hits the ceiling or has trouble starting.

Sorry if I'm bringing back someone's worst nightmare, but I missed the main discussion.
 
As much as I would like to stack more drain in our build, I don't think the sword is the place to do it. We need more ability to focus damage on fewer targets.

[X] Began to sing a more coherent song that echoed her own
 
Varder said:
Hmm.. interesting, thank you.

Was the introduction of scaling of buffs discussed? Like, consecutive buffs provide diminishing returns, or the other way, buffs start with miniscule benefits and are easy to dispell but each consecutive one gets better and better until it spirals out of control. That way debuffs, while mitigated by armor, stay consistent throughout the course of the fight, while the buff chain either hits the ceiling or has trouble starting.

Sorry if I'm bringing back someone's worst nightmare, but I missed the main discussion.
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I'm not really prepared to discuss this in length, but to my recollection no. However, there are significant problems with that idea. Already stacking the same buff doesn't work (AC is the exception that proves the rule, and only if multiple people are there), it merely refreshes the duration. Otherwise, you can get insane results like stacking Grinning Cresent Dancer ad nausuem so that no one can ever hit you, ever. Which means that for any type of work to be done on the concept of consecutive buffs providing diminishing returns, there would need to be work done on what it means to be a "consecutive" buff. Like, SCS and TRF both provide amazing defensive buffs, but are they consecutive? They both do it in different and distinct ways which makes it troubling to say that one would diminish the effect of the other.

The same could be said for the other example you gave, or the inverse of diminishing. But ultimately, it would be a ton of work for... little to no point. The goal of the mechanics switch was to make combat more streamlined and less focused on pure mechanics. This would be going full throttle in reverse on that notion.
 
Of course, an argument against the focused damage is that if fights wear on then it becomes more likely that our sword will be broken - it isn't exactly super tough. And at that point it can't do anything.

In contrast, "eerie" is both more useful while we're setting up, but its debuffs should (I assume) last and give us aid even if its gone.

The damage one does kinda push us towards going for DPS faster... or perhaps deliberately holding our sword back and tanking theirs until we're reading to unleash our power (which is more risky than it was in the old system given that domain weapons actually have solid power now).

Certainly if we start playing around with stealth (crossed fingers) then the damage one is actually kinda a bad fit since it getting blown up while we're hiding and dragging things out it doesn't really help...
 
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[X] It's cry grew ever more eerie

I'm voting for this for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that I like the mechanic of qi drain, or wearing down the opponent until there is no ability for them to fight back.

The second reason that I'm voting for this choice is that this is the choice that best assists any of our allies or spirit beasts who are using spiritual attacks against a foe. Zhengui comes to mind with his fairly bad spiritual offense, but also the potential of binding Hanyi. More realistically, however, this blade would assist either Cai or Meizhen should we be fighting with them, as well as assisting in our ability to deal damage once we hit a target with a damaging spell.

The third reason is that this is a more persistent effect that needs to be dealt with. The offensive buff only applies when a target is struck by a damaging technique. The most consistent of these would be Dissonance, but an increase in Dissonance damage and penetration would not be much of an increase given its low damage already. Other than dissonance, it must be a technique that we cast, which means that unless we are attacking the offensive buff will not be active. I prefer an ability for a flying sword that is active all the time rather than an ability that majorly depends on us acting.
 
Erebeal said:
Of course, an argument against the focused damage is that if fights wear on then it becomes more likely that our sword will be broken - it isn't exactly super tough
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actually this works against the other direction as well.

Assuming we can get our domain weapon to hit at least once on a strong enemy, this would mean we got past their spiritual defense. Most of our damage has other effects which will either make repeats much easier, or help the battle swing our way. On the other hand, the drain to spiritual defense and Qi of eerie weapon makes it more reliant on health (i dont think a zero health weapon can still show effects) though it doesnt need to attack to achieve its desired outcome, it also wouldnt help much reguardingsingle target enemies unless we want it (the weapon) to be targeted instead. Remember, enemy would have domain weapons as well.

Tldr, low health on weapon helps neither side. We either get boost to early battle (which is needed for our build) or we wait for the debuffs to stack to ridiculous levels (domain weapon will need to be semi protected to last as long) though it would show greater returns even if only due to the time taken.
 
Thor's Twin said:
So, some interesting things to observe here in regards to our stats and our domain effect. Here is our domain:

And here are the relevant stats from @Erebeal's current calculations.




Assuming these calculations are correct, there is a couple of things to note.
First off, 2/3 of these stats are at the C rank. Armor reaches B rank only when there is Low light and is higher against specific types of attacks (sound/poisons). Which means that there is some good work we can do in raising these specific attributes (should we choose too).

However, CDE will grant a +10 to combat perception when we equip it, which will allow our Combat Perception to enter B rank territory. Given that our spiritual avoid and armor both have a skill at D rank (Fade and Fortitude respectively), it will take only some amount of effort to raise them to C, which should help get both of them into B category. The importance of getting these attributes to B is that it means that any one of our 4 dot friends with C or lower in any of the three categories will get the +1 rank. This can pull these stats from middling for our friends into respectable.

As of right now, our domain can raise a friend's stats in these three categories from poor to middling. Which is decent, but raising any of their middling stats to respectable will probably have a bigger impact. Especially if they have some of these stats at C rank already.
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Not sure if the armor the domain talks about is spiritual or physical. Anyway, our spiritual armour is B rank, while our physical armour has fortitude D (so will soon increase). Likewise, our s.avoid will soon increase thanks to low fade, ENM, CDE and PLR.

More amusingly, though, is the question of when this would be of help. Suyin and Lanlan are the more likely options. Zhengui doesn't benefit from more s.avoid and will have higher armour than us. Perception between bound spirits is weird and is arguably shared for relevant purposes. Meizhen... well, Meizhen is just better than us, so won't be helped by Ling Qi.


EternalObserver said:
Oh, Has CDE not been equipped yet?

*looks through the stats*
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Thor's Twin said:
The plan did not call for equipping CDE yet, and so it has not yet been equipped.

Although if I'm counting the meridian's correctly, then we should be able to do so if we had so decided. Might have been a miscommunication regarding meridian requirements for arts.
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When we looked through the archive HDW needed 2head and 1 heart at level 1, and a second heart at level 3, with the capstone needing a third head. Currently HDW seems to be 1 head and 2 heart instead, with a second head at level 5. I am not sure if it's a design change or no, but if it's a design change we should be able to equip CDE.
 
Man, I need to reread. I can't quite recall when exactly did we have LQ learn these music arts.
 
Thor's Twin said:
Other than dissonance, it must be a technique that we cast, which means that unless we are attacking the offensive buff will not be active.
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I'm not sure how you got to the conclusion that this is a bad thing.
The "coherent" SBM triggers when Ling Qi hits the target. Yes, dissonance hits get buffed, and noone really cares about those, but if the spelunking adventure proved anything is that we're not killing worthy foes with debuffs and Qi drains, but with Hoarfrost. And right now even the latter doesn't hit all that hard.
How many time did we have to use to kill that Green 1 antlion, or in the fight against the deep ones ?
 
Ayashi said:
I'm not sure how you got to the conclusion that this is a bad thing.
The "coherent" SBM triggers when Ling Qi hits the target. Yes, dissonance hits get buffed, and noone really cares about those, but if the spelunking adventure proved anything is that we're not killing worthy foes with debuffs and Qi drains, but with Hoarfrost. And right now even the latter doesn't hit all that hard.
How many time did we have to use to kill that Green 1 antlion, or in the fight against the deep ones ?
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It's the inevitable reality of cultivators, the higher the realm of cultivators engaged in a fight, the longer fight goes. It's given and would be only worse later.
 
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