The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Cassandra

After the duel between Firo and Sylvia, Cass listened quietly to them break down their match while Zoe was muttering to herself in the background. It was almost comical enough to make Cass laugh about it, like a bad sitcom.

"I still can't believe you landed that one Lightning Strike," Sylvia said. "Were you just guessing, or…"

"I don't know if this will help you or not, but you favor moving to the left, Sylvia. Like, a lot. It was sort of a guess that you would dash to my right side, but backed up with data, I guess?"

"And you just happened to know where I'd end up."

"Most dashes in the game are the same length, with only a few exceptions. That was just game feel." Firo shrugged.

"So you read my dash, targeted the side I favor, and were able to know roughly where I'd land based on distances."

"Yep."

"Fuck, man. That feels bad." Sylvia let out a big sigh.

"One on one duels in Mag Mell operate roughly on fighting game logic. Match ups, playing neutral, all that stuff is there in some form. Match ups in particular are really exacerbated by Mag Mell's design choices, too, like we saw earlier. The rock-paper-scissors game is really strong here in 1-v-1s."

"Playing footsies in an MMO just sounds wrong." Sylvia said flatly.

"To be fair, playing footsies like that only matters when you're playing a class with lots of movement. Like you chose to do. So it's kinda on you, bud."

"I never thought of it like that, but I guess you're right." Cass interjected. "Most classes don't really play around moving a lot of entering and exiting attack ranges, so the concept of 'neutral' isn't very common here. But when you can move around so much, it becomes central to your gameplan."

"Yep. And like with fighting games, if you get too predictable, you lose the neutral game." Firo said. "So, you have to be less predictable, Sylvia."

Sylvia just groaned loudly. "Choosing not to lean left too much is one thing, but now I'm going to overthink it and hesitate a bunch. Fuck."

"Ain't that the truth." Cass said. She didn't play a lot of fighting games, but overthinking things before committing to a move was an issue she had too.

"I'm on my way back. Firo, I'm gonna thrash you." Zoe laughed.

"Bring it on, girl. I just beat the crap out of Sylvia, so by the transitive property…" He shot back, letting the obvious implication hang, despite the fact it clearly didn't actually work after Zoe swapped builds.

"I think you got this, Nyx. Firo's Rune isn't that good." Sylvia said.

"Asshole. I just beat you, so if I'm not good, what does that make you?"

"Unlucky." Sylvia said flatly.

"You ass."

"I lost to a coin flip! If you didn't land that Lightning Strike, I would've killed you before you killed me!"

"It's hardly a coin flip when I bet on, like, 80-20 odds!" Firo shot back with a laugh. "Besides, even if I did miss, I still had Flint Strike off cooldown, and that would've made up the damage difference."

"Bullshit - you needed the stun that came with Lightning Strike to land the Mana Blast that ended the fight."

"I could've landed that without the stun."

"Uh huh." Sylvia said dismissively.

"Alright, boys, chill." Cass said. "You can just have a rematch later."

"Two out of three?"

"Three out of five."

Cass rolled her eyes as the two carried on their friendly argument over the smaller details of their fight. She was pretty sure that the outcome was, indeed, a coin flip like Sylvia had said, but not based on the moment in the fight they argued about. There were several moments during their duel where Firo seemed to simply have a better read on Sylvia than the reverse.

Stolen novel; please report.

She wouldn't go so far as to say that Firo had the better game sense in general or anything like that. It was more that, from what she saw, Firo had won more of the minor decisions that led to his victory. Sylvia's attacks had a natural flow to them that made the attack pattern not necessarily easy to read - especially with all of the movement - but certainly easier to react to. There was a sort of rhythm to follow.

Firo was simply able to exploit that by using high damage attacks as a counter hit each time Sylvia got in close to strike. Had Sylvia simply landed a couple more powerful attacks, or had Firo not been as lucky in his split-second decisions, the fight could've gone very differently.

While Cass wasn't necessarily ready to say that Firo's ability to correctly guess where Sylvia would move next was actually skill more than well-informed luck, it still brought to mind the Sun Tzu quote about knowing your enemy.

"Alright, kid, let's get in that ring." Zoe said, when she finally got Nyx back through the building's door.

"Kid? Nyx, I'm not that much younger than you."

"Five years is five years, buddy. Also, I feel like having graduated college versus still in college is a pretty big one, too." Zoe said haughtily as Nyx jumped into the ring.

"Alright, now I really want to wipe the floor with you."

"I'd love to see you try."

"Do these two always argue?" Sylvia asked, clearly joking around.

"No, but they are giving off some serious sibling energy right now, aren't they?" Cass laughed.

"Did you say sibling?" Zoe said, her voice suddenly ice cold, despite the clear mirth hidden under the ice.

"You know, I don't think I'd mind an older sister like Nyx." Firo said, his tone suddenly very warm, in sharp contrast to Zoe's. Cass watched the countdown for the duel between them go down as he continued, "She seems really nice and reliable. I bet she'd be a great older sister."

Zoe let out a sweet "Aww," as the countdown hit zero for the fight to begin and Firo immediately took the initiative to [Blink] forward and make the first move. The "Aww" quickly shifted to a stream of curses at Firo for the sudden attack.

However, even on the back foot right out of the gate this time, Nyx didn't crumble the way she had against Sylvia.

No longer built around the group PvP meta [Hex] focused build, Nyx fought back against Firo going toe to toe in melee. With her skills shifted to the melee half of [Athame], Nyx was able to not only land more of her own attacks, but several of her skills and spells reduced the incoming damage from Firo.

[Athame] was the melee focused [Dedication] for [Tenebrae], the shadow magic focused DPS [Path], while the more traditional shadow magic focused caster version was the [Hex]. Both [Dedications] utilized spells that were labeled as [Hex] type magic, that were usually a middling damage DoT effect with an additional debuff attached.

The actual [Hex] [Dedication], however, had more complex versions of the standard [Hexes] that would confer weird effects to the target, such as stopping the target from performing the same skill twice in a row, or reduce the damage from specific types of skills, such as anything with a secondary effect.

In PvE, a [Hex] could practically break several of the game's NPC enemies by virtue of their weird effects, but by and large most enemies could function under the typical [Hex] debuffs. Which often led to [Hex] players speccing for raw DoT damage - and the [Dedication] was marvelous at it, probably acting as the best DoT focused damage dealer in PvE content.

In PvP, though, [Hex] was one of the [Dedications] that had the widest skill gaps among players. DoT damage was not as good in PvP as it was in PvE because the fights often didn't last long enough for the DoTs to show their true strength. Instead, PvP [Hex] players usually opted to play with their skills focused on the weird curse effects.

And a good [Hex] could dismantle an entire enemy team if they played well. They'd need a friend to show up to do the damage to actually win the fight, but the best [Hexes] were feared for their ability to stop a team from functioning with their weird debuffs.

On the other side of the coin, [Athames] fell into a bit of a weird spot. Their design clearly had a solid foundation. They had a bit of a witch-y feel to them with themes around the ritual knife they were named for, with spells that had all manner of effects from DoTs to [Lifesteal] effects and everything in between. Being focused thematically on the [Athame] as its weapon also led the developers to give it several knife combat skills, similar to a rogue or assassin type class might have. Altogether, it should have been a very thematically strong [Dedication].

In practice, [Athame] players typically fell into one of three camps. Many complained about the entirely disjointed feel of the [Dedications] skills, and how it seemed like none of their abilities fit together in a meaningful way, even taking altering skills into account. There were also a meaningful number of players that felt like the disjointed skills were more akin to a wide ranging toolbox that gave them lots of weird tools to work with despite not having a cohesive gameplan.

And finally, there were plenty of people in the middle that played the [Dedication] simply for the vibes. Cass knew that Zoe counted herself among the last group, mostly because she saw both sides of the argument. And she liked the witch-y vibes.

The PvP meta build that Nyx had been using previously was tricky to fight during team battles because it excelled at doing lots of burst damage while remaining hidden. [Athames] had a stealth skill that allowed them to be invisible so long as they didn't move or take damage, but they could cast while hidden. That would allow them to target one enemy among the opponent team, layer them with five or six [Hexes] at a range very quickly, cast [Propagate] to spread the [Hexes] to all of the nearby enemies, then hit each of them with [Hex Shatter] to do a big burst of damage to eat enemy.

It worked well in group fights because they could stay hidden, had a shortcut to fast damage to a lot of targets, and didn't need the actual DoT effects of the [Hexes] to make their damage work.

Conversely, that approach didn't work in a duel because the [Athame] couldn't hide and cast without moving, because their single opponent would know where they were, and then suffered on the damage scale because they lost a massive chunk of the damage calculations because of the lack of [Propagate] shortcutting their way to big damage.

Basically, the math just wasn't in their favor.

However, Nyx's normal [Athame] build that she favored was a little more unusual, and one that she had made to cater to her tastes. [Athames] had access to an unusual skill that was typically viewed as a downtime skill, best used when a boss was not targetable, or moving between groups of enemies called [Permeate]. It had no cooldown, and made the [Athame's] next [Hex] an instant cast, but stored it in the character's weapon, and triggered it on the next melee attack.

Its purpose, as designed, was to allow an [Athame] to cast a free spell during downtime without a target. However, with Nyx's love of assassin types, she had made it an integral part of her build. [Permeate], in making the [Hex] an instant cast with no need to target also meant that the user could move while casting, keeping them mobile.

Zoe also loved high actions-per-minute classes in games that kept her engaged on hitting lots of buttons. Utilizing [Permeate] so much, with its lack of a cooldown, meant she had lots of buttons to hit, and she could move however she wanted, only darting in and out to land melee hits when she wanted. Admittedly, [Permeate] could only store one [Hex] at a time, but it still gave her so much combat flexibility that she accepted that.

"Stop! Moving! Damn it!" Firo shouted, clearly getting annoyed with Nyx's constant jumping around. Cass could relate - whenever she fought Nyx one on one, she also got frustrated by the constant jumping and moving that she did. It also didn't help that she knew Zoe wasn't actively trying to avoid anything, but was just mindless hitting random directions and jumping while concentrating on her skill and spell usage.

It made her movements about as truly random as they could be, which was a pro and con for her. Sometimes it was too random to track, but other times she'd hit left and right too quickly and barely move at all, leaving her open. Assuming the opponent didn't overcompensate and target too far one way or the other.

It was absolutely infuriating to play against.

And then there was what Nyx was actively doing to you as well. [Athame] may not have had as convoluted [Hexes] as a [Hex], but they were still quite restricting, and Nyx had them altered to be either as annoying to deal with as possible, or as high damage as possible.

Then there was [Hex Shatter] to worry about. If Nyx played her skills right and managed to land most of her [Hexes] quickly before the longer timers ran out, she could usually end the fight with a single [Hex Shatter] after six or seven [Hexes] were applied, thanks to the DoT damage and the damage done through her melee attack skills.

To his credit, Firo put up an admirable fight. Being entirely unprepared for Nyx's style of [Athame] left him at a pretty severe disadvantage in the first fight and Zoe took advantage of that. Nyx was sitting around 50% of her total HP when she finally triggered [Hex Shatter] on a 50% HP Firo, wiping him out.

Firo was muttering about a rematch when Sylvia whistled. "Damn. Want another round with me, Nyx? That build looks like fun!"

Zoe sounded rather chipper as she accepted the rematch with a laugh, then blew out a happy breath. "Damn, I like this build so much better!"

Cass just giggled to herself while waiting for her next turn. She knew exactly how she would dismantle Zoe's [Athame] when they took their turn together.