Seven Samurai Progress

[FoxBat]

Let's have a proper thread instead of that mysteriously named one...

There are any number of things we can tweak build-wise for Vizunah (my rangers kept dying far too much), but really, exploiting the spawn mechanics should be enough. In the 2nd clearing, flag all heroes by the center hole, while the humans kill all but one on each side. Then leave those guys behind, and just continue wiping the center hole till they stop coming. I'd choose ranger to leave alive since they seem to be the most innocuous. Then pick one hole and wipe that till it's done, ad infinitum.

For the third clearing, I'd leave 1 alive on the stairs, 1 on the far side, and keep wiping the center again.

[WarBlade]

There are a few discussion points to table I think.

1. Vizunah Square is evil for melee characters. It was historically pretty much impossible for meleers to hench before flags came into play and even now it's still a tough nut for meleers to crack. Whatever ranged attacks we can bring we should be considering for some of the party.

2. Hexes hurt. Our defences are minimal with a couple of Mesmer skills, Hexbreaker (stance), Hexeater Signet being prime choices. I can't see Purge Signet being all that desirable, but with adrenaline builds it shouldn't be ignored. There is also the Lieutenant's Insignia for Warrior primaries.

3a. Target priority needs to be agreed on. The usual strategy is kill 2 out of 3 of each pack and then move on to the next pack. This was mentioned in chat, but quite often someone would start banging on the third one, kill it and pop another spawn. We can delay the new spawns by leaving a hard target alive for a bit, so let's stick to that plan.

3b. Ritualists are priority #1. Elementalists are high priority and I'd say the new Ray of Judgement puts Monks high on the list also. Mesmers, who I normally don't worry too much about here, are hexing us into oblivion and need to be gutted.

4. The peasants. Peasants shouldn't be good fighters, so I'd like to see spear attributes heavily restricted on them. Leadership and Command just feel totally wrong to me, but Motivation strikes me as something that they should have in spades. Are we not motivated to protect them? How do they motivate us? I say their songs should be music to us as we fight and therefore we should be using a Motivation healer build or two on them.

5. Mission critical NPCs were a problem. Aside from potentially Motivational peasants and one Ranger trap we have a few healing signet options. We need to explore those targeted heals/protections some more.

[FoxBat]

- Motivation would make the mission vastly easier than the peasants damaging things, unless you want to specify some additional restrictions. I suggested normal without those amenities because you can pretty much steamroll with a good chant setup, particularly if you get everyone shouting into a chorus of restoration. (Of course peasents are really only around for 2 missions....) Although none of the chants or echoes are going to be effective on the 2 NPCs anyway (echoes will mostly only trigger from GftE), so you're basically down to signets. Maybe if they had a cap of 9 in every attribute, leave 100 points unspent, or something (or both!). And does no leadership mean, not even the energy bonus for paras?

- if I'm on Zed's side again, I think I'll go command as well. Since he's bringing SYG anyway we can chain it, and an extra copy of Never Surrender isn't totally wasteful, as the entire party isn't always below 75% at the same time. Soldier's Defense is nice, but most of the threatening damage was degen and eles.

- /Me is only avaliable to you warriors (at the moment), so up to you to mess with hexbreaker/hex eater

- Technically we had 8 samurai by the end. I don't like the idea of turning people away if we can get that many there. If we want to keep the "7 samurai" flavor, why not let an 8th human play peasant?

- I was surprised to see two assassins there, considering the spell restrictions eliminate most of their good sword-augmenting options. (AND said players have warriors I'm pretty sure...) That makes me rethink the dagger-spec-sub-for-sword option I mentioned earlier. I was about to recant it when I browsed the dagger gallery, as the justification was to mimic Musashi Miyamoto's katana+wakazashi style (which isn't used in the movie, but hey it's samurai...) But the only daggers that look remotely close to a sword/katana are Shiro's Blades (and maaaybe tengu daggers but not really.) There's also thunderfist's knuckles for bare-handed fighting. Maybe let assassin primaries have this option as long as they pick one of the above blades? Particularly how do the assassins feel about it?

- Anyone bothered by pet masses? IWAY wasn't quite as awesome as I hoped with so few warriors, and any amount of chant healing would make it mostly redundant anyway. But hawk brought up that it is a little odd flavor-wise and I have to agree. Then again I'd hate to take away the most common of R/W builds.

[Seijin]

The damage I had wasn't bad, what was bad was having to back out of fights due to no healing. I thought conditions would be spread so I could use that signet that sins have, but not enough conditions were spread fast enough to use it as a heal. Then i switched to heal sig. That didn't work when mobs came. No way to back out of a fight, something was always hitting me making heal sig worthless as it only replaced the amount of health I lost as I used it.

Basically what we're doing is saying R/W, W/X, and P/W are the only playable characters here. I've played so much warrior I'm tired of warrior. I only use my warrior to gain titles and gain HoM stuff now. Thats why I wanted to try A/W, something a little different. I totally understand the restriction of not wanting magic and stuff. But honestly, this isn't the world the seven samurai were in (you know, the real world). They weren't facing magic and therefore they had none. They used the tools they had available to them. Thats my opinion. If we're restricting everything else, how can we say they can have pets? We're only "exploiting" dead pets for IWAY. I don't really see the "honor" in that.

[FoxBat]

The damage I had wasn't bad, what was bad was having to back out of fights due to no healing.

A/x from dagger spec would at least let you bring troll unguent (+ natural stride), or one of the pet-related heals. Otherwise, open the support chant healing pandoras box from other chars, or yeah, bring another character.

We're only "exploiting" dead pets for IWAY. I don't really see the "honor" in that.

You're right. Peasant corpses would be more appropriate.

[Seijin]

Okay, just some more thoughts.

Here's the main issue I have. We want to be just like the seven samurai so we restrict certain things. We restrict some things because they were not available to the seven samurai, yet we use other things that weren't available as well. Such as pets (well they could have had pets, but I doubt they could res their pets and I would think it dishonorable to use them as fodder just for other skills), and signets. If we're going to restrict stuff to what they might have had, we should stick to skills, stances, and shouts. Hell, they only had one life, maybe we should only have one life.

I can deal with the swords only if i have to and I can deal with no shields, but samurai could use small arms, polearms/spears, and bows. I say allow us to spec in daggers, swords, bows, and spears (no using wands or staffs) and whichever we spec in, it must have a minimum of 11 in the attribute. As a restriction, all professions must still take on Warrior secondary so they cannot combine other professions. Warrior primaries may take on any secondary they wish.

As for the mystic stuff:

• no targeted offensive magic or hexes (something like symbol of wrath is ok as its not targeted nor is unholy feast)
  
• no healing spells that have the ability to be used to heal allies (with exception to hard res)
  
• self heal only spells may be used
  
• wards and buffs may be used
  
• self enchants only (cannot be able to cast them on others)
  
• no spirits
  
• no weapon spells
  

So this seriously restricts caster classes without totally knocking them out of the picture, except maybe rits. You can now bring in a monk to do a little healing with sig of rejuv and blessed signet, and who can also smite with signets if they so wish, but they cannot use spells that can be used to enchant or heal others, nor can they use direct smite spells. They are also limited since they must be Warrior secondary and spec 11 in swords.

Open up the paragon primaries to use all their skills.

Whatever rules are given to the peasants are fine by me.

No PvE skills or consumables is fine by me.

If you're going to be really strict about the rules, I say restrict pets and sigs as well. If you want a challenge, thats a challenge.

Now for elites (samurai's specialize in combat, don't they?)

• non-warrior primaries must be an elite from the weapon you spec in
  
• warrior primaries may use any elite from their entire skill set and any elite from their secondary as long as it follows the rules of mystic stuff
  

So if you have a R/W specced in bows, the person may only choose a markmanship elite. But a W/R may choose any elite from either profession.

This opens things up for the following combos:
W/X
A/W
R/W
Mo/W
D/W
P/W

While mesmers, rits, and necros may not be used much.

[soul]

The assassins had no problem with damage, only defense. I guess allowing daggers could remedy that a bit. Personally don't have easy access to the two mentioned daggers, though.

There are some skills that are considered spells by the game, but may not necessarily be. e.g. Blinding Powder, Caltrops. "Way of X" seem more like fighting styles than enchantments, though that's pretty debatable. I guess allowing exceptions like non-spell names would violate KISS.

Edit: Now that I see Sejin's post.. I like the ideas myself, though opening up spell use that much may make it too easy. I like the sword restrictions, but reading a bit on Samurai it does say they used daggers, bows, spears and katanas.

[Hawkmoon]

After reading the other posts, I'll chime in with a few random thoughts.

We all agree that healing is a major problem. And I think we'd all agree that we don't want this variant foray to turn into another Nudist-style Sanctum Cay ordeal, where it takes us months to get through a mission, leading to frustration and people dropping out in response. Hey, it's a game, it's supposed to be fun, right?

I'd suggest that we allow at least one of the samurai paragons to run a full-on Motivation build. My justification for this is that in the movie, the leader of the samurai, Kambei, had to motivate the others to take on the task of defending the villagers. Additionally, Heihachi (the one found chopping wood) was always making jokes to raise his comrades' spirits - that can count as motivation as well.

Agree with the idea to let samurai specialize in spear or bow - they are specifically mentioned as weapons that the samurai were expected to be proficient in. I also have no problem with daggers that look kind of like short swords, but I'm not familiar with all the different types, and dunno what folks have available...

Personally, I'd rather ditch the pets - they just don't fit the theme at all.

Traps of all sorts do seem to fit the theme, since the samurai in the movie used them extensively. Assassin skills like Caltrops also fit the theme, even if it is called a "spell" (I blame A.net!).

How about we hold off on elites until we beat Nahpui Quarter? Our "Ascension" could be the justification for our increase in formidableness.

Let's see how we do with some paragon motivation healing options. If we find that we still are short on healing, I think we could rationalize throwing in a monk "villager" by recognizing that in the movie, the villagers sustained the samurai by giving them food - health is the equivalent in GW, right?

[FoxBat]

We weren't far from beating that mission- if we follow the spawn exploitation Warblade outlined, we could've beat it using those very same builds. I'm all for tweaking rules so people have more fun/better flavor, but I don't think it is needed to lower the mission difficulty.

I personally liked that healing was a problem- the only heals I had on my bar were measly 3 IWAY regen and fall back! Keeping NPCs alive is a slightly different thing- the more we heal ourselves, the better chance mehnlo or togo might heal themselves too, instead of us. So I can see a single (SINGLE) samurai picking up chants/echos. (If you want to be funny like Occhi, force a high axe spec. ) The other way to do this is allow an 8th peasant (with restricted spear spec?) onto the team.

For the two-team missions, I was considering this setup:

Side one, seven samurai + one peasant (the guy that recruited them). They would go with Mhenlo from foreign.

Side two, 7 peasants and 1 "elder". (2 humans... or possibly 1 human with 2 accounts, 1 account leaves granting 6 heroes) The peasants can go crazy with motivation chants/echoes (all the singing at the end?) but are limited to 9 spear spec, and can't bring shouts or other kinds of chants/echoes. The "elder" (a human) may use any type of shout, but can't put any points into weapon mastery. So the peasants will have high survivability (keep dumb heroes alive), but they won't help the samurai side too much (party-only chants, limited damage. Chorus of resto works on all allies though.)

Now on weapons. If you throw in "polearms" aka certain scythes, then you'd have every physical class represented. My one issue with this is right now, the sword minus shield restriction is the single most "samurai" point of flavor. If we remove that, all we are basically left with is "no magic"... aka Barbarians. Paragons will go back to chucking spears to power shouts, bow rangers will be virtually identical to standard play, etc. It's true the samurai are versatile and bows in particular were featured in the movie, but the Katana remains the primary and defining weapon. If the primacy of swords is thrown out, I feel we need something else to reinforce samurai identity. Perhaps something like at least 4 of the 7 must be using swords, but that could lead to arguments over who has to sword.

We could ease the sword requirement down to 9, the bare minimum for competency; a bit harsher would be to limit base weapon attributes to be no higher than sword. Since this chains everyone to /W, we'd look at some self-defense "spell" options for sins/dervs later. In either case, you could ignore sword altogether at the cost of some attribute points, but my hope would be this encourages more dual-weapon builds. For example, bows have great utility regardless of damage; they can spread poison and interrupt/daze everywhere, while you go charging in with the sword once the opponents are whittled down to few for added damage. An assassin can bring a long-recharging dagger chain to spike out select targets, and pressure with the superior sword damage between recharges (although yeah I know, "good" sins are generally gonna stick with a 4s recharge chain.) Paras can spear things from afar to get charged up, then rush into combat, and when their health goes low, back out and start spearing again.

Now as for "spells." The assassin skills arguably are not that out of flavor. I suggest banning either enchantments or shadow steps as a nod to the no-magic world; whichever one is left will give sins plenty of survival options. You can argue that things like "shroud of distress", "critical defenses", "way of x" skills just represent the sin's skill at dodging or weapon use, or that shadow steps reflect their ability to sneak in and get out (which happens often in the movie- and really, this is the GW mechanic proxy for "stealth.") We don't have any dervs at the moment, but I'd suggest simply banning enchantments- that leaves them with a few self-heal options, none of which feel nearly as "magical".

Finally on signets. While sig of rejuv might feel out of place, you'd basically be stuffing warriors in the self-healing hole that sins are currently in. As a rules simplification we could just nuke the non-physical classes entirely, they are basically useless as primaries anyway- then there's no need to ban "spells", just whichever restriction ends up going on assassins/dervs. (Simplest to cover all classes would be "no enchantments")

Also while the samurai gradually dying off due to lack of rez sigs is perfectly in flavor, that's going to lead to very un-fun situations; people sitting on the ground the entire time while others press on ahead, and taking copious amounts of defense that makes most places yawn-inducing so you're insulated in the hard spots. But if we want to ban the hard rezzes (sig of return/DPS) as a nod in this direction, I think that's fine.

I can live without my pets....somehow.

[Seijin]

Fun is a relative concept. Without viable self heals or a dedicated healer healing me, I start to get into the non-fun mode as my DP quickly went up to 60% by mid mission and even if I did get rezzed i only had about half health and was dead within another 30seconds before I could heal myself. I don't see how thats helpful at all or even fun because I basically am dead most of the time. I say open up options for self-heals to include self cast only heals and enchants or defenses...if you want to keep all other spells out (wards etc.) that's fine by me.

Also I think there is a shadow step that is not considered a spell. I think it is a stance. (Shadow Walk)