FSF or FFS for Paralysis?

[averyclosecall]

Hi everyone, I wanted to see if anyone had thoughts on an alternate gesture set for Paralysis. Right now, FSF looks pretty good because it can be chained every second turn, dummies in and out of Fireball (currently an infrequently used spell), and can still cancel other three-gesture enchantments and charms. Most importantly, it helps break up Paralysis chains because S paralyses to D.

Other repercussions are much more likelihood of casting Goblins, and some concern that Amnesia becomes more powerful without -FF being useful. Also, Disease would need to change to DSFSFc.

What do you think? Is this a better alternative than Para-FC or FDF paralysis?

[BioLogIn]

It is still early morning here, so I've kinda sleepy, but how paraFSF can be better than paraFDF? Considering para is rumored to be broken in ParaFDF version, and it doesn't even has the goblin fork FSF has.

[mikeEB]

ParaFDF has two paralysis chains, FDF and FDFD. It still allows casting Para every turn off one hand. The proposed FSF allows one paralysis ever two turns off one hand.

If a player goes FDFFDD, their opponent's other hand is paralyzed on the turn they need to W to counter bolt. If a player goes FSFW, their opponent's other hand is not paralyzed on the turn they need to W to counter fireball OR goblin.

Self-paralyzing FDF to FDFF leaves it with some initiative. Paralyzing FSF to FSFF does not. However, the para mirror looks to my naive analysis like rock-paper-scissors between FSF, FSS and FSW.

Also, note that FSFW is less than optimal when paralyzing an S.

[ourjake]

FDF makes healing a lot easier as well, giving more of an incentive to break the chain (which is what people seem to be going for).

It also opens up the very spell-dense chain (4 spells for 8 gestures, 3 spells in a row) of WPFDFWFd. with something built up on the other hand, or if you have a monster out already it gets intimidating. I think that's actually my usual opening in FDF games.

W/W is a lot more offensive in FDF than in paraFC, with WPFDF making it easier to get off the back foot when you are on the defensive.

if you count on your opponent to dummy the t3 mindspell in expectation of a counter, you are pretty well set up with WPFDFWFd/WWPPSDFdF. It does rely on them dummying to not mess up your flow, but once they do that the para proctects the charm on t5, which protects the blindness back into the para on the other hand.

If they open PS/DP, you can still counter the DPP and keep a counter showing for the Charm with WPPSDFDFFdD/WWWPFDFWFdF. If they go for an Ogre instead of charm, you have a built in Protection and charm immediately after WPPSDD/WWWPF, with a cause heavy in case the manage to cover the charm.

This is not a complete analysis, but i'm at work and i don't have time to do it exhaustively. A lot depends on their reaction to your initial W/W, and you have to remember that you don't have a way to interrupt them and are reliant predicting what they will do and countering it. I haven't even really looked at DS/PS or any other opening gestures.

I don't think the problem is that paraFDF is broken; I think it's a problem of people forgetting what version they are playing and then wondering how they got paralyzed.

on a lighter note: i do like the flavor of people saying "For F**k's Sake" to cast para