by Bowdownbe4me Mon Apr 29, 2013 12:30 pmI respect the idea of setting rules for the sake of evening out the battlefield, but my feeling is that people all too often would rather see a rule in place than to learn the counter to the tactics which give them trouble.jaythibodeau wrote:Some of the time, such as with this Spear argument, I see people saying too quickly that I should just find a counter to it. What I was trying to do, was discuss its strengths and why it having so little flaws made it cheap. It's all nice and dandy to discuss how to stop a Spear, but there's nothing wrong with discussing its strength over the other weapons. If it's not as good as I make it out to be, prove me wrong then. That's the exact reason I'm even arguing about it here anyways. Discussing it is a way for me to validate my view of the weapon. For all I know, I could be wrong. But I won't know that until someone proves me wrong. Neither will the person complaining about something being cheap. If you don't think that certain tactic is unfair, prove why.
Everything is "fair game" in a game (meaning that it's ok to use it), since it's, well, you know, in the game. But does that make it a balanced part of the game that everyone should just "deal with"?
Nope.
I honestly and truly was once of the same mindset: "spears are op because they can flip poke ad infinitum." But as I found from taking part in the GameFaqs Tournament, there *are* actually hard counters to most of the supposedly "cheap" tactics.
Even TWoP + dead-angled WotG has a relatively easy counter: If you're caught in the TWoP, hold block, unlock, and turn to face the opposite direction that your opponent faces when he/she casts WotG. This can easily be done on reaction, and supposing you are using (or quickswapped to) a decent magic resist shield, there shouldn't be a problem.
(That's just an example of something that most people find cheap).
In the GameFaqs tournament, it was explicitly an "anything goes" affair, and I would honestly say that the person who won out in the end was the person who knew most about the intricacies of the game mechanics. He and I had practiced extensively beforehand to learn how to handle what would inevitably be thrown at us.
Regardless, each community is different and draws a different crowd. But my point isn't that you shouldn't set these rules, as the folks in one's community tend to be like-minded and if you would want to ban certain tactics, then most they would likely agree to some extent. But rather, my point is that in the end, if you choose to ban these tactics or continue to assume they have no real counter, then you *are* limiting your potential. (Depending on the community mentality, that may not matter in the slightest).
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And I really can't help myself, but as for the spear vs rapier:
The reason the rapier has great potential against a spear user is because when two turtles face each other, neither has any reason to wail into the others' shield. Supposing the rapier user turtles any time he/she is anywhere near the range of the spear user, then the spear user can do *nothing* to damage the rapier user (and the same applies in reverse). This means that the spear's range becomes insignificant, as no matter how well the spear user maintains their distance from the rapier user, they have no play to make which can cause any damage from that distance. (This whole time the rapier user is turtling). From here the spear user has no option but to change tactics and either use another tactic entirely (magic, pyro, different weapon) or move in for the backstab (or a mixture of the two). If they fish: counter fish has the upper hand. If they pyro: BK shield nullifies it, and if you want, stack 61 poise and poise bs any pyro that they can throw at you. If they try spear pokes: 1. They're not being very smart because they're committing to an attack which has no chance of dealing damage, and 2. you can bait this behavior and poise bs or roll bs.
You're totally right though, if you want to beat a skilled spear user it will become an exercise in patience. But once you get them to realize that max distance pokes are entirely worthless against your turtling, you are forcing them into using other tactics which can be punished.
And your argument that spear users can do the same thing: somewhat true, but: 1. spear pokes can be roll bs punished, and 2. when it comes down to whose bs is going to win the match, it makes a hell of a difference having that crit bonus.
