Report 1668

Special Report #1668
Skillset: Kata Skill: Yet-Another-Poisons-Report
 Org: Shofangi Status: Rejected Dec 2007
Furies' Decision:
Not at this time, we can consider if this is necessary after current changes are
tested.
Problem: Monk aff-rate is difficult to get a good hold on due to the RNG of
poisons. For a monk with access to two arm actions of a given aff type the aff
rate before surge is 2-4 afflictions depending on RNG. 2 afflictions is too low
to build any aff pressure without boosting but 4 massively outpaces curing. In
addition to this the combination of mantakaya and niricol means that a monk with
dust afflictions on arm actions can build 2-4 dust affs and greatly hinder the
target from attacking back. This report seeks to remove or lower the possibiltiy
of monks achieving 4 afflictions of the same type in a form and/or to eliminate
the mantakaya/niricol combo.
Solution #1: Cause monk armed attacks to "attempt" the poison first, and only
 if it doesn't rub or is shrugged would the actual arm affliction
 come through.
Solution #2: Dramatically lower the poison transfer rate on afflicting arm
 attacks. Special arm attacks (ideally gated by surge/another
 stance) could poison normally and still afflict.
Solution #3: Disallow monks from using mantakaya.
Player Comments:
---[Wobou on 4/4 @ 14:38 writes]:
An example of this would be kumati in shofangi, which causes rigormortis on the
chest. If my shofa has mantakaya on it, and the rub is successful, and it's
successfully unshrugged then that strike would only cause paralysis. However if
the poison does not rubbed, or is shrugged, or if the blade was wiped, then the
rigormortis affliction would come through. This allows monks the flexibility to
use poisons whenever they'd like without increasing the aff rate and more
importantly allows us to a) grant monks armed moves of the different aff types
without unbalancing things and b) allows us to more finely tune the number of
afflictions per form.
---[Lerad on 4/8 @ 02:36 writes]:
As a note, this effectively LOWERS monk aff rate. Which I'm fine with on a
conceptual basis, but I actually do not feel is needed. At the moment, I won't
support this, because I'm concerned that the current aff rate is already at a
balanced place with the removal of all early stance afflictions plus the locking
of aff-kicks to Surge. I don't believe this is needed at the moment. In the
current status quo, I have not had concerns raised of hemorrhaging rate - if it
is at a balanced (or near balanced) state, then further changes to aff rate is
not needed.
---[Wobou on 4/8 @ 10:15 writes]:
My main concern right now is niricol+mantakaya frankly, and my understanding of
the solution that was approved for the paralysis report is that it's not going
to address the issue that for a monk it's almost always a good idea to use
niricol + mantakaya with two dust arm actions if you have them. I am not as
convinced as you are that we are at a balanced place currently, being able to
cause 2-4 dust affs a form is fairly strong and in my opinion difficult to
balance because the range is so high, on the low end we only build aff pressure
at boosting, and on the high end (4 affs) we easily outpace curing. The only way
I can think of to deal with this is either a) make poisons far less reliable on
afflicting strikes (which lowers the aff rate like this current solution 1 does)
or b) make it so that monks cannot envenom mantakaya (or niricol) to see what
impact that has. Which I'm going to add as solutions to this report.
---[Lerad on 4/10 @ 13:55 writes]:
I think the niricol+mantakaya problem is valid, yes. A solution aimed at that is
something I can support. However, I disagree that 2-4 affs is a concern. I think
it's fine that the low end (2 affs) does not pressure cure balance - and in
return, the high end (4 affs) can do so easily. That's the nature of RNG, and if
you're lucky enough to get a streak of high end output, you're also going to be
getting streaks of low end output - and with what Kalikai explained on the
forums, the RNG is now much more likely to fall on the low end than high end
because of the lack of access to wounds. 4 affs is going to be fairly rare, and
I think that is fair. Lowering aff rate to ONLY 2 affs, max, at the lower
stances is simply far too low. As it is, I feel like the poison proc rate (see
previous statement about Kalikai's explanation on forums) need to be boosted so
that 3 affs are at least going to be fairly common, because otherwise, the rate
is too low. As it is, none of these solutions really solve the niricol+mantakaya
problem anyway. Only solution 3 directly targets niricol+mantakaya, and there's
always beast spit for mantakaya even for solution 3. I'm opposed to any solution
that has the side effect of lowering the current aff rate - which is both
solutions 1 and 2.
---[Shedrin on 4/14 @ 03:15 writes]:
I've said similar things before, but I don't think it's necessarily poisons that
are a problem, but you've probably got a better read on the class than me. I
think the overwhelming affliction output can be addressed in other ways.
---[Wobou on 4/14 @ 12:44 writes]:
I realize that I didn't explicitly say this, but the advantage of
removing/reducing RNG in its role in our aff rate is that we can more precisely
calibrate the number of afflictions we do per form meaning that we could do
things like add afflicting kicks or afflicting stances back in for certain aff
types/certain stances and know that over the course of 5 stances that we're
delivering exactly (or closer to exactly) x dust/ice/lucidity/steam affs. Right
now you have to add +0-2 probability to each form which in most cases pre surge
is a 100% range (since you can only do 2 affs "natively" anyway so you do 2 at
minimum and 4 at maximum) which make our aff output pretty highly dominated by
RNG. Tldr, if we ever want toys pre-surge again I think we'll have to deal with
poisons in some way, even if it doesn't totally solve the manta+niricol issue.
That said it looks like manta+niricol is being solved by the paralysis report
after all and we're already moving in the direction of stances not having
afflictions early so it may be too late for this sort of idea either way.
---[Shuyin on 4/18 @ 04:24 writes]:
I'm not entirely sure this is relevant given the proposed changes to mantakaya -
changing the effect from hindering to one that delays tumble. Else, solution 1
is fine.
---[Lerad on 4/19 @ 13:14 writes]:
With the upcoming changes to Mantakaya, I believe waiting and seeing before
making more changes like this is a better choice. I'm not really keen on adding
"toys" back to pre-surge, but if nerfing poisons (solution 1) leads to the
ability to give affliction kicks pre-surge, it might be a possible route. Flat 2
affs and no more for the pre-surge forms is, I feel, too low for an archetype
that is so dependent on affs being leftover to even build any progress to their
instakill.