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Post by Slartucker on Apr 26, 2006 14:49:52 GMT -5
With FFWD, you're right, but I'm not sure that's a good thing. The game balance relies massively on F being an ugly gesture. Making F a more flexible point of departure would make every spell with an F in the middle a better option. I'd prefer something like fWWD, which have much more interesting interactions with spells and spellflow.
With FFwd, the spell is practically uncastable. Honestly.
That's ridiculous. That's like saying that if you gesture DF, by the time your opponent can react to the threat of DFFDD, you're already on the second D and heading for home. Yet it's usually just new players who don't look ahead enough to see the bolt coming. Warlocks is all about looking ahead and seeing what might happen. The idea that you can't react to a threat until it's already at your front door is simply not true.
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taliesin
Ronin Warlock
Grand Master
Posts: 156
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Post by taliesin on Apr 26, 2006 17:52:05 GMT -5
You can employ the Dxx class of spells with Time Stop, too. Actually doing this is pretty rare. Why? Because in the time you've set up Time Stop, your opponent usually has gained a fair chunk of initiative, and you don't really have the option to attack any more. Which I'll point out is specifically not a problem with FFwd. Dude, let me try to explain this further for you. Time Stop's usefulness is limited, because by the time you've set up a five-gesture spell, your opponent has reacted. The same will be true of FFWD to a slightly lesser extent. This makes SPPFD and a Dxx on the other hand rarely workable, the kind of thing you only pull off against a good player if he's got a big monster summoned to hit on you during that final turn and probably a PSDF homing in on you. And if you could get to that position without your opponent disrupting you, you'd go for the hugely more potent D/P invisibility with Delay Effect threat. FFwd doesn't fix the issue of FFWD being not-as-useful-as-you'd-think - it excerbates it wildly. It makes the spell almost entirely useless. I agree. And it is. The difficulty of casting time stop is the unwieldy SPP entrance. That doesn't blend in to anything nicely. You kid, right? SPP is a nice smooth dummy from a SPFP threat. It segues nicely out of Invisibility. It accepts a paralysis or amnesia on the second turn. But it's five gestures long. By the time you hit that second P, you're wide open. No, you're not. If you have any skill at all in setting-up spells, your opponent is scrambling desperately to block the Antispell he thinks is coming in next turn. Only if you lack enough control to get to the SPFP of an Antispell is this even an issue... You either clap, probably breaking your own spell flow, or you proceed through the FD, giving them time to bring up a counter of some sort. Clapping is pretty useless, because it's clapping. Every spell in which you clap (save Haste and Disease) tends to lose you great chunks of initiative. But SPPFD is a very potent spell, pretty much indispensable to the advanced tactician. With the FF start, you can easily break to a fast-foward from any of the common spells with F in them, and by the time your opponent can react, you're already on the w and heading for home. I think Slartucker's response handles this adequately. If you think that an experienced player won't see it coming, well... you need to play more, that's all I can say. Most of the spells that incorporate a double F also call for a counterspell two turns after it (e.g. DFFDD/DSFFFc). From a single F, you're in the same boat as starting a three-gesture spell from scratch; not exactly speedy or hard to react to. The only place where it poses a significant new threat is at the end of a paralysis chain. And we don't want to encourage paralysis chains, for obvious reasons (i.e. they make the game tedious and suck a lot of the skill out of it). Even with wd as opposed to WD, it's still a lot easier to cast than time-stop, and I'd argue easier to cast than invisibility, because the FF doesn't restrict your other hand at all. Unlike Time-Stop, however, you cannot guard yourself with your other hand on the penultimate gesture, or set up an attack. Unlike Invisibility, you're finishing with double Ds instead of double Ss; this downgrades your options for continuing to Blindness level, i.e. much weaker. It's not just the getting of the spell off that matters, it's being able to do something useful with it. It's worth taking a disruption, maybe even a few damage, to get into Invisibility. The same is true for Time Stop because you can complete the spell on your other hand in the Time-Stopped turn before the disruption takes effect, and your gestures are hidden in any case so you can switch tactics without letting your opponent know. But Fast Forward is a much weaker spell effect. A disruption pretty much wrecks it. Taking a couple of damage to get it off will in many cases be a deal-breaker.
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