Shattered Kingdoms

A pair of tanso chain-mesh ki straps looks more accurate than a slender epee of inky metal.
A pair of tanso chain-mesh ki straps looks less lethal than a slender epee of inky metal.
A pair of tanso chain-mesh ki straps looks slower than a slender epee of inky metal.

How is it that my epee bounces off people's armor and ki straps cut through everything. I can't even recall a time a ki strap did bounce off armor and did zero damage. I am starting to think there is a bug between ki straps and fist skills and how damage is calculated for them.

Shut the Fist down and ban all these bug abusers, please.



More seriously, there is clearly something strange going on in the code with Fist stuff. Even my kama-spec'd human merc would deflect off PCs all the time, and kama is even more damaging than sai/straps/epee.

I genuinely don't think I've ever seen a ki strap attack deflect, not even from a sprite.

Meanwhile a sprite with a sai literally doesn't do damage.

I don't have a dog in the ki straps fight. I've never built a pair, I'm not the First patron, and I don't play a Fist. I certainly can't fix a coding issue if one exists.

However, here is a recent bit of combat that shows them being deflected, POV Aethas.

Meissa is clearly a Fist spy.



More seriously, I will say....

I'm assuming the dwarf is Alaprun. Who has a 15 AP shield or something absolutely absurd, on top of I assume at least 5 AP on the helmet.

I have no idea how the code works, but I would love to see somebody trying to hit him with a sai or epee (which are similar damage weapons to ki straps).

TLDR we should obviously just shut down the Fist cabal until Dulrik has time to investigate this.

It's the only reasonable option.

EDIT : In the name of complete and utter fairness, I'm willing to put on the table that we also close the Crucible until further notice as well.

EDIT2 : On a slightly more serious note, the Hammer + MC are way more balanced against each other. When you throw in the Fist, things are completely out of whack. I don't think anybody can actually, genuinely disagree with me on that.

It's kind of weird to think about how the Hammer vs MC and Fist vs Crucible are slated to be the 'comparable' things, except the Fist skillset seems particularly designed to absolutely [REDACTED] on the MC (formation break to get rid of shield wall, and the ability to just out right break shields and breastplates in the first round of combat).

Meanwhile the Crucible offers literally nothing to any matchup anywhere.

I'd actually love to see ki-straps get a boost and see more of them around, BUT, that would have to go hand-in-hand with other stuff, like perhaps every other Cabal getting their own version of Astral Armour, and maybe a better selection for Tribunal armour (and locking that [REDACTED] up again, but that is another rant for later!)

Good point. My greatsword deflects off Alaprun's armor too. Which makes the dmg output equal to a greatsword or better, where as my epee deflects the entire time. Also notice how many parry, dodges or shield blocks happen. <none>