Moondancer Non-beast Kill Methods

Riluna

This isn't a log, but a request for some.

I'm looking for anything that shows that beastmastery is not in fact required for a toadcurse, but that we can do it with our guild skills alone. I'm aware there's a means to kill with Astrology's meteor, but I'm specifically looking for one-on-one toadcurse solutions.

Sleeplock is the most viable suggestion I've heard, and I've found it possible to do and maintain without beastmastery sleepcloud only when the subject allows it by just standing there. Under any resistance (actual combat), it quickly becomes nigh impossible, since any number of things (prone, broken limbs, paralysis, etc. etc.) stop the hexes on that critical moment of pixie attack, completely destroying both the sleeplock and the buildup to toad, all in an instant.

It seems theoretically possible that jinx might somehow be able to be used for this purpose, but I'm not sure how it would actually be done outside of a particularly long string of bad luck for the victim. I'd love to see a log with a jinx kill.

And I've heard rumors that there have been Moondancer Healers able to pull it off in the past, but I've not the faintest clue how, nor have I ever seen such a thing. If such a log exists, please, please show me.

Any of these methods would be helpful to see, to help me learn. If you've got one that has some method I'm not even aware of, even better! Theorycrafting also would help, but I'd prefer to see a log. I ask only that it be a Moondancer with a successful toadcurse (whether they ultimately got the kill or not), and without beast support. Whether the MD is you or your opponent, both are equally helpful.

Lerad

I'm not sure pulling off sleep without beast is "impossible" in real combat. It'll be a lot harder, for sure, since beast sleepcloud/spit is literally a free sleep proc on the target for no balance, and thusly eliminating the need to even use your ents. Without the beast, though timing double sleep with your ents is still definitely possible. Shadowdancers need to perform their final twist pretty much right before their ent ticks in order to burst mana damage down enough for the toad. They have a longer window than sleep hexes, because the final twist also stuns, but the underlying theory remains the same:

You need to make timer echoes, so you know exactly when your ents are going to tick. Pulling off the pooka/sleep isn't too difficult. It's the follow up which is iffy. Once your target is asleep, you'll have to pray that you get in your aeon before they wake up, before you can succumb etc. If they're lucky with the wake, you may well have to wait for your pooka again. Some things can help increase your chances, like a vapours/anorexia right before the sleep, but it's more power heavy and you need even better combat instincts and awareness on your ent timings.

The tactic itself can kill experienced combatants just by their pure bad luck, but it can also deny you a kill on a mediocre combatant just by their pure good luck. It's lame, it requires the effort to code in timer echoes (or get a sleep beast) before a wiccan can have a decent chance to try it over and over in combat, but once that's done, that's all the wiccan needs to do: wait for pooka/power, and then try it when ents tick. If it fails, rinse and repeat until it succeeds. Lame as it is, and luck dependant as it is, it requires far less brain power and strategizing to pull off than trying to affstack via hexes/jinx. Which is difficult, for sure.

Not sure how viable a hexes-only offense is after the latest hexes buffs, though. You might want to give it a look up and see. I'm not sure if anyone has been experimenting with the changes, but there's potential there, I guess.

Riluna

Yes, that's the sleeplock theory I've been working with for a while now, and it sounds good on paper, but I've never been able to make it work. I can't find somebody who's even seen it, actually, though most people say it works in theory.

Timer echoes aren't enough (I've got them, and had them for a long time). Timed triggers aren't enough. Reviewing my own duels, I find that even if my timing is perfect (which it has to be, to get all three sleeps at once), any number of afflictions or enemy actions stop me by making the hex throw fail on the one moment I need it most.

Do you have any thoughts about what I could do to slow down the opposing offense enough to be aff-free enough to throw my hexes, and simultaneously on-bal/eq for the pixie strike?  Even once, not just over and over.

Lerad

I'm not 100% sure of wiccan combat mechanics, but what I know is that they are burst orientated. The sleep tactic is a good example of that. You have to wait for pooka, and then pull off the combination. Outside of that burst, the wiccan isn't too threatening in a 1v1. Staying on bal/eq is simple: just don't use eq/bal abilities when your timer is ticking down to nearly the end. Not being afflicted when you need to throw is a matter of how fast you can cure and your luck.

The longest cured hinders are regen prones or certain specific monk combos (more than 4s of unable to do anything at all). Warriors can't reliably stack regen prones unless they've already successfully built some wounds and are not unlucky (this is assuming you have a working stance/parry system) and the longest monk hinder I know of is the Tahtetso double ankle combo, which usually means you die unless you green anyway, so you won't be looking at trying to pull off an offensive move when they're doing that to you. (You'll be looking at trying to stay alive and get the hell away.)

Most other hinders can be cured within a couple of seconds, like a web writhe or a blind/slickness combo where you might want to cure the slickness before blind (depends on your system priorities) etc. This means that to intefere with your sleep alias, your opponent also has a small window to hit you with their hindering combo, can't be too early, can't be too late. If they manage it, you'll have to forgo that tick and wait for the next. And while you have a timer echo, your opponents probably don't - it's unlikely you will be consistently and always hindered during the window you need to hit the alias. The only thing you need to do is to be able to survive until the window opens up.

Stratagems and good old macro-spamming helps. Other than that, practice in the arena.

Placeus

Riluna said:

... and simultaneously on-bal/eq for the pixie strike...

This sounds like you set your ents to be aggressive and try to fit in with their timers.   If you order them to be passive their timer will pause, then start ticking again when you order them to attack.  If you know the time between the pixie's attacks (did that recently get reduced to 10 seconds?) you can order it to attack yourself, wait 9.75 seconds, then order it to be passive.  

Now you know it will attack very soon after you order it to kill someone and can be confident that "order placeus metawake off;order pixie kill placeus;doublewhammy placeus sleep sleep" will work.    This wont solve all your problems, but it might make getting the triple sleep easier.

 

Edit: sorry for the necro

Kio

Hexes:

Have vapors and sleep on your palm. Third is optional.

Draw: sleep, sleep, sleep, vapors, impatience anorexia

Do:

1. Vapors (to blow allheale)

2. Faeriefire (to fill the blackout immunity and be able to sleep when your target wakes up)

3. Whammy Vapors/Sleep (to silently strip insomnia - vapors will cause a blackout and hide the second hex in a whammy)

4. Aeon under blackout (to silently strip quicksilver)

5. Order metawake off + whammy Sleep/Sleep (see note at the bottom)

6. Aeon (to stick aeon)

7. Whammy impatience/anorexia

8. Wait for them to wake up. The moment they do, throw a single sleep.

9. Succomb (if you haven't been able to stick it yet)

10. Perpetuate the sleeplock until you can toad using sleep and aeon.  It will NOT be hard to do.

Note about step 5: Most people will not check their defenses to put up insomnia when it is stripped under blackout. A good player will know you are a wiccan and assume it has been stripped. If that is the case, time your double sleep with a pixie tic. A better bet is to time your pixie to hit them 1.5 seconds after you whammy vapors/sleep. They will put insomnia up during the blackout and it will get stripped by your pixie afterwards, but while they are still blacked out.

Healing:

1. Buy a sleep enchant.

2. Faeriefire your target.

3. Aurawarp your target to help stick succomb. If you don't know how aurawarp works, ask.

4. Aurashift neurosis onto your target. This will passively strip insomnia every eight seconds.

This one is literally all about timing.  You need to track your aurashift tics.  By shifting it at the right time, you can guarantee neurosis to to hit about two seconds before pixie. Right after your aurawarp tics, you need to order metawake off and point your sleep enchant. If you've done it perfectly, pixie will hit and strip kafe. Now, you want to wait a moment until they wake up. The moment you do, sleep them again. You're waiting so the next chance they have to wake up, they're in homeostasis.

Here's the thing about MD Healers: you have ONE goal.  Keep them from eating reishi three out of every five seconds at predictable intervals.  By using the sleepenchant + pixie, you're doing well.  Alternate methods will work varying on the target.  You can spam aeon right before the three seconds and sleep, as well.  You can also time shieldstuns for the three seconds if your pixie will hit during homeostasis.

The balance of Healing for wiccans is that it takes little skill to stay alive (you really only have to know what auras to radiate and when to deepheal).  However, killing as a Healer takes patience, practice, and precision.

Riluna

I greatly appreciate the input. Ordering pixie to kill at the hex combo is a good idea that I hadn't considered, thanks for that.

With that, some of your ideas might indeed work, @Kio. I look forward to my next opportunity to try them. The only part of what you're saying that I do not understand is your idea to spam aeon. Our aeon (wane) is a four second balance, and that's hardly spammable. It's so long, in fact, that #7 on your hexes strategy isn't actually viable (not a problem, my impatience/anorexia tends to come much earlier). By the time I recover balance from wane, they're already waking up, unless I've been hitting them with sleep a lot beforehand, and it's my sixth or seventh try.

So I'm not sure how you mean to put that into the Healing combo. Could you please clarify? My other question is how to keep somebody around long enough under aurawarp that it will even tick, and how to tell when homeostasis is active. (I thought it was random? Is it regular intervals? Not a Healer currently, so I can't test.)

Thanks for the help, I need it.

Shedrin

Aurawarp is 3s off, and then 2s of cure blocking. It doesn't last too long and they can just run away of course, so it's tricky to use. How to keep them around: Put up Shafts, stick pigwidgeon on them, spam as much hindering on them as you can and pray to Mother Moon for luck.

Placeus

Another trick you can use with hexes is to pooka your opponent into gusting you out of the room to trigger hexen soles.   This is a balance-free way of getting two extra hexes to fire.   

If the enemy is in a room with a corner, you can write a macro that walks you in the opposite direction to a successful gust.  The corner means that if you resist the gust (hexen soles still fires on resisted attempts at forced movement), you don't walk out of the room mid combo.

e.g. run into a room and use:  order placeus point gust at riluna w;e;order pixie kill placeus;doublewhammy placeus blah blah

should net you 4 hexes and pixie hit in a short interval, speeding up the next steps in your kill sequence.

(I have pooka and hexes envy)

Kio

1. Does wane double-aeon, or does it strip quicksilver first?  If it double-aeons, 4s is quite fine, really.  Just shuffle things around.  Whammy vapors/sleep, whammy sleep/sleep (which will be under blackout), and wane. Afterwards, resleep them when wake, then impatience/anorexia.  Once you stick succomb, your only goal will be to keep them sleeping while succomb and banshee tic on them.

2. Thank you, Shedrin. After re-reading it, I thought it sounded wrong.

Aurawarp is constant, Riluna.  It begins ticking after the same length of time (which I believe is five seconds), and ticks every five seconds.  This means that, when you cast it, you can set a timer to track when they have homeostasis.

Also, using your pooka to gust you away will not help a hexen obtain a sleeplock.  You must use pooka to strip metawake.  Proper use of vapors in whammies, coupled with Mugwump's 21% EQ reduction, is what makes Hexes so strong.  Currently, Hexes is incredibly broken for Mugwumps of all archetypes.  It needs fixed terribly.

Enyalida

Needs a speed floor!

(Also, shafts is pretty bluh.)

Silvanus

When I went from Geo to Nihilist, I decided to give Hexes a try. I sparred Revan probably around 100 times.

As a viscanti, Revan killed me. Consistently.

As an aslaran, I killed Revan sometimes, but he got away.

As a mugwump, Revan didn't last a minute.

That was a year and a half ago, and nothing has changed. If you want to kill as a Hexen, you have to be Mugwump.

EDITTED TO ADD:

Its really hard to hide things under Blackout as a non-Mugwump. An Aslaran can pull it off, but thats +1 eq recovery.

Riluna

Wane double-aeons sometimes. And that's the only reason I've ever been able to pull off a sleeplock. I'm not sure the exact numbers but it seems something like 1/3 or 1/4.

Thanks for the ideas. If it's alright, may I contact you IG for practice? That might help more to see where I'm going wrong.

Enyalida

The double wane is based off moon phase, iirc.

Kio

Riluna said:

Wane double-aeons sometimes. And that's the only reason I've ever been able to pull off a sleeplock. I'm not sure the exact numbers but it seems something like 1/3 or 1/4.

Thanks for the ideas. If it's alright, may I contact you IG for practice? That might help more to see where I'm going wrong.

Kio would not help you, I'm afraid.  However, the important thing to remember is your goal and pattern of combat.  SDs are burst combat.  We survive long enough to build up to our critical blow, then during that critical blow the smallest thing can go wrong and ruin everything.  MDs are the opposite.  MDs are steady, damage over time combat.  You start with your succomb, then the rest of your everything is focused on keeping your target from eating reishi.  The longer you keep up the pressure, the easier it is to pick it up and keep going.  Very rarely will you be set back to stage one.

Oh.  And get a snoefaasia.  Pigwidgeon + snoefaasia + shafts will be your best friend in keeping someone locked down.  And also Nature Vines.  And also shieldstun.

The key with wiccan combat is your micro, not your macro (things like execution, timing, and opponent def/aff tracking).  Everything needs to fall into place just exactly so, but once you get used to doing it, it becomes second-nature.  Wiccans also are probably the slipperiest archetype in the game, possibly second only to Druids.  MDs get a super cheap prismatic barrier and SDs get a pretty unrestricted magical movement that goes through walls (yes, it has restrictions, and yes, they are easily spammable).

Hiriako

Wane is a 33% chance of double aeon during the waning moon. There is nothing clear to point out when it doubles.