Some rants about on FFF and paraFoD

[taliesin]

Citanest: According to nawglan's archive, I hate Para more than you! Your overall Para usage makes up 6.5% of your spells used in archived games - Tali's is just 4.3%.

nawglan: But FDF is much, much worse. It comes down to two hands doing F and D all the time and hammering Lightning and Para out over and over.

vilhazarog: It would pose some problems - Amnesia would become even more brutally painful than it is now, and as it would take three turns to recover from an F, it would weaken Maladroit and make dummying out of a summon very hard.

My current thinking is that FFF should go, that DPP should be modified (playtesting required, but I could see it possibly being improved by being a disruption where the hands were carried over but swapped on the next turn, or, weaker, that next turn the victim would be restricted to choosing from the same gestures as the turn before, but on an individual hand basis, like Fear), and that we should get a couple of shiny new F spells to keep the gesture from uselessness. The game's been tinkered with a few times over the years already to improve playability (SPF! What was Bartle thinking?!) and a good number of the people here have significantly more understanding of the game than many of the people who made these previous changes. I'm confident that if we put our minds to it, we could come up with improvements that would keep it fresh for many years to come.

[xade]

FDF!!! Rocking!

However, there is one major mistake with it's implementation... DFD *shouldn't* cast para.

Para is FDF. not DFD...

I mean, yes, you still have this nasty gem WPFDFFDD... but hey, you can't throw a para *every* turn anymore...

[Citanest]

taliesin said:

Citanest: According to nawglan's archive, I hate Para more than you! Your overall Para usage makes up 6.5% of your spells used in archived games - Tali's is just 4.3%.

I think that reflects my early days under the guise of Citanest, when I was a terrible para abuser, and viewed the aim of the game to be executing a ParaFoD as fast as possible.

The archive is down at the moment, but see our first game as a prime example ;D

[awall]

I'm going to weigh in here with a factoid that nobody else has brought up yet. My final three opponents in the tournament were Toyo, xade, and Spacca. My games against them looked as follows:

Toyo: 1-1-1. My win came via paraFoD. His didn't.
xade: 1-1-1. My win came via another paraFoD. His didn't.
Spacca: 2-1-0. My first win came via paraFoD, my second win didn't, but only because I made a personal vow that I would get at least one win without resorting to it.

Am I a better warlock than my opponents? I don't believe so. If I hadn't used paraFoD, I doubt I would have even made the final round, much less defeated Spacca.

Since then, I've tried to shy away from paraFoD whenever I can. I'm not completely unwilling to use it, and I still will if the opportunity presents itself (obviously I won't complain if it's used against me), but I vastly prefer winning with monsters or lightning or whatnot.

There was talk a while back of replacing FFF with another disruption, possibly FFP, as well as making a few other changes. I agree with taliesin that the game has reached a point where it's about time for another round of balance tweaking, and given how many expert players we have here today, I think we should be able to do a solid job. If anyone else would care to revive that discussion, I'll try to pitch in at least a little bit.

[xade]

heh, so what you're saying is that Slarty rates paraFOD wins higher that non-paraFOD kills...

[BioLogIn]

About this one:

taliesin said:

I suspect there are not ten players on the ladder who know the weave which really punishes going for the Delay Invis. There are plenty of players who think that going for the ogre and going Invis second is much stronger than taking the Delay Invis, and this is not the case.

I suspect you've not been reading Slartucker's refuge again ) That's Polichinelle's secret:

Slartucker said:

...
However, summoning two ogres and moving into charm leaves no real answer for a player who delays:

DPPPSFWPSD
PSDDPPSFW

Or did you meant that there are not ten players on the ladder who actually read it? Trurly sad then.

[nawglan]

Yes, I know that FDF in it's current implementation has it's problems. However, paired with ParaFC, it makes a decent variation.

I do agree that FDFD should not be para. FDFDF would be 2 para strings, with 1 turn in between.

[taliesin]

biologin said:

Or did you meant that there are not ten players on the ladder who actually read it? Trurly sad then.

I suspect that less than ten active ladder players have either memorised the strategy or use that page as reference, yes. I base this on seeing games by relatively high-ranked players such as this one:
games.ravenblack.net/warlocks?num=63452&full=1

The Refuge is a fantastic resource, and most, perhaps all, of the people who know everything on it very well are formidable players, but it's less used than it might be.

[BioLogIn]

Ok, I see. Too bad if you're right on this point... Although in your example Iuewen is hardly a high-ranked player, so xade could have ground to assume Iuewen doesn't know about this weave.

[succat]

I'm still relatively new to Warlocks, I suppose, and am learning as I go, and with that said, I feel like like I'm still exploring the limits of paralysis. I agree with BioLogIn on some points, having been accused myself of playing with a style that is somehow 'cheaper' when I use a lot of paralysis to win. And I do use a lot of paralysis, and I have won a bit of games through that style, but I've also lost games too by being too one dimensional, or predictable, with that same style. But, I thought that the object of the game was to win by any means necessary, and yet now that I seem to be doing better as a player, I seem to be getting more flak as if I'm somehow not playing by the rules anymore. When I was losing it wasn't a problem, but now it is? Maybe I'm the only one, but I love it when someone uses a 'frowned-upon-style-of-play' against me. Why? Because it forces me to think about what I can do to get out of it, and combat their game plan. I will encourage any player to use whatever style of play that helps them win regardless of how it looks. Maybe it doesn't look pretty having a row of F's, but if it can help you win more games, so be it. In my beginning days I lost a lot of games to para/FoD. But it forced me to learn the game better, be more wary, and now I use it quite often, and I use it the most against new players because it's the quickest way to win. Obviously, against a skilled player, I normally won't rush right into an FoD, and I've also learned the hard way that I didn't do so well opening up immediately with paralysis against skilled players either. So, I've adapted my style as I've grown because overall I want to win. And winning is what the object of the game is, or at least, so I thought. And unless the mechanics of the game are changed, why should people complain about the styles used within it? Instead, wouldn't it be more beneficial to figure out ways to deal with people's playing styles that you don't like? Beat them at their own game, or just play more intelligently, and then you will win and they will lose, and they will have to find something about your game plan that they don't like.

[Citanest]

You are right succat, para is fine to use to win games - I don't mind losing the odd game to a PFoD here and there. But the more you start enjoying sophisticated plays and clever ways of doing things, the more you realise para allows none of them, whether casting it or fighting it.

Top players probably don't mind you winning with para, but they probably do mind when you use it for the whole game and don't really gain much by doing it.

[xade]

Succat, I've definitely won, and lost my fair share of games against you, but I don't think I've ever thought of you are a Para guy. Bio, he's a para guy, and I generally expect that going into battling him, but you, I don't think you're any more para-happy than the next guy... (at least when you play me anyways. )

So meh, play your game, enjoy what you play, and FoD as much as is humanly possible... just so long as you're still having fun.

(Although as someone said in a previous post, it is fun when you pull off something "tricky" )

[Derfel]

It's fine to use FFF (FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF) in a game. But to make comments about your "skillz" after throwing nothing but FFF (ad naseum) on one hand is a bit questionable I would think.

[xade]

derfel said:

It's fine to use FFF (FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF) in a game. But to make comments about your "skillz" after throwing nothing but FFF (ad naseum) on one hand is a bit questionable I would think.

WTF MaTTE??? I gotz mad skilz wif me FFFFFFF.

u just cant handel it!!!
n00b!

[succat]

Citanest, you have given me good advice before regarding para, and I listen to you because you obviously know what you're talking about, and you have the elo to prove it. Like I said, I'm still learning and growing, and I look for ways to win, not to necessarily be clever or have fun, although I do have fun when I win . And i do feel clever when i win , even if I win in a straightforward way with a nice string of FFFFFFF's and a Giant, or something. But again, a skilled player, take Toyotami for instance, will know how to deal with someone that just para's or even relies totally on monsters. I have seen him turn games around, in which I thought for sure that I had him in a corner with a monster and/or para... and xade.. Xade seems to be one guy that doesn't even let me get into my game plan, which is why I love playing him, because I have to work harder, and try to counter what he's doing. In the match with Toyotami, which he displayed earlier in this post, I more or less wanted to see if it was possible to beat a player of his caliber at para/FoD. You could probably make the argument, Citanest, that I didn't gain much throughout the whole game with my lackluster style of play, but if you fast forward to the end of that game, I somehow managed to get the Win, so that's why I'm not concerned with how ugly the game play looks, if it works, great, and if not, then I will learn in time as I adapt to the the style of play that gives me, in my opinion, a higher rate of success.