Oh, yes. Undelivered fights and arena newsletters. The bane of the day. We all suffer from it. Without e-mail access to RSI, it can be really, really painful. The RSI staff are convinced that the issue is all caused by shenanigans at the Phoenix-area USPS. Will it be fixed soon? Pray!
Mister, let's start with all your questions about skills and what they mean and do. We all wanna know! In the last Noblish newsletter, which hopefully you have your reprint by now, and, if not, keep asking, Assur did a yeoman's job of explaining them all. What a guy! So when you get that newsletter, read about "irapfd" (That's init, riposte, attack, parry defense, and decise to me!)
Off hand questions? Of course. Put a shield in the off hand and the warrior is likely to fight more defensively using that off-hand shield. But he will only do so if necessary. Putting a weapon in his off-hand is not as likely to cause the warrior to think defensive and he may, indeed, decide to attack with the off-hand especially if he is highly coordinated or ambidextrous. (Since attacking with the usually lesser off-hand and lesser off-hand weapon is less valuable than attacking with the primary weapon and hand, most good offensives do not utilize an off-hand implement.)
Those were quite intelligent observations on your part, Mister.
Do rippers (parry riposte style) sometimes let the offensive attack after riposte slip away? They surely do! Why? Perhaps no one knows exactly, but the reason may be one of these:
Send a diplo to Mannequin of Second Bananas in DM47. He is a close friend, the owner of Daydream Believer and several clones, and a perceived expert on rippers. Perhaps he will shed more light on the subject. P.S. I, too, seldom run rippers with AL or OE above mod.
Can a warrior be too small for a favorite weapon, you ask? Can a watermelon attract flies? Can Lebron James dunk with authority? Was Vince Lombardi a great coach? Of course a warrior can be too small for a favorite weapon! But supposedly, there are no size penalties if this occurs. It is not so uncommon in ADM to see tiny warriors running around with big weapons and whoopin' butt!
Thanks for making a noob feel welcome, you say? Well, sure. But you have to realize most of us doing this Duel stuff are noobs right along with you. It is great to have company!
The "best" warriors for Primus? Need you ask? Aimers, aimers, aimers. Not much else. Indeed, the RSI staff, recognizing this, offers a stylemaster skill potion in the Primus tournaments to encourage other and all styles to participate. Long, long ago, the parry lunge style was considered optimal; then came the era of lungers; now is the time for aimed blows, and that time does not look to end at all soon. Getting an aimed blow alive up through DM can be difficult, but once they become immortal.... If one were to ask MY opinion of the order of value of styles in the immortal ranks, it would be:
Nuff said?
Continuing with additional questions under the Gods and Heroes large set of questions. All the questions related to skills and their workings, I shall refer you to the above, which refers you to Assur's recent fine article on Noblish. He explains skills as best as is known.
Your 9-9-10-15-12(+1)-11-19 ripper? Where do I start? An interesting, but not at all bad, design. First, the 19 deftness. Not much reason to have anything other than 17 or 21 at that level. (For any design.) Since I do not know your starting numbers, I cannot comment much else on design. Style--looks like a ripper to me! If the deftness were 21, well, then it would look more like a conventional aimer. Bumping will seems like a fruitless task to us. Not that it doesn't help, but you are too worried about will. It would not at all be uncommon for aimers or rippers to work well with 9 will. They both have low endurance burns. If we had a 9-9-10-15-11-11-19 design, it would probably be, in this order, ST, PR, maybe PL. As to running the ripper style, see my comments way above. This ripper looks like it should run somewhat offensively, something like Jorja has indicated. It probably does not have the hit points (con), nor can it carry heavy armor, to run defensively as you seem to wish. If I HAD to run it defensively, it might look like:
SC/- backup DA APL/L 4-4-4-4-4-4-7 4-4-4-4-4-4-7 4-8-8-8-8-8-5 P - open...."10-10-5-7-14-9-15 to 10-10-5-13-16-9-21 PL. I will bump WL to 17, ST to 11, and (maybe) WT to 15. I could've made this an AB or a PR, but since he probably won't do a lot of damage, I wanted him accurate. Also, the low skill base for the AB frightens me."
My thoughts on your comments. The low WT makes it a difficult design. But accentuate the DF and WL and this becomes an 11-10-5-11-17-9-21 AB for us Consortiumites. The best design for "not doing much damage" is an aimer, which is probably the only style that can get away with little damage. You are correct that some styles have a higher starting skill base than the aimer, but we think the aimer we designed is a pretty sweet little arena warrior.
"Which is why my second guy's an AB. 9-11-14-10-9-3-14 to 9-13-14-16-9-3-20. Burner, as well, even with 9 WL (DF to 21, WT to 15). I JUST saw Jorja's rhythm and Blues article (AFTER I've designed these guys) and I won't think that this dude's gonna be able to run L/L; I wanted high WT and DF and run him hard, 8-8-x, like a striker. With his (hopefully) decent damage output, a few shots to the head and he should win. I think."
We think... Making a "burner" with a starting will of 9 is a difficult task which even we Consortiumites seldom try. Not that there is a thing wrong with a 9 WL as we often design warriors to exactly that. If I had wanted to retain the 9 will, then this warrior would have been an 11-15-14-15-9-3-17 piker (PS) or, even more likely, an 11-11-14-15-7-17 striker. But given those starting numbers an 11-11-14-15-15-3-15 is calling us and it would be, in this order, LU, SL, WS, PL. As an additional comment, "running your AB hard, 8-8-x, like a striker" is not likely to get him moving as he has such a low skill and decise, and he is the likely one to get two head shots and out. The warrior you designed will have to rely on defense, first, to then steal the initiative. Can it?
"Another burner: 7-9-9-9-14-9-13 to 10-9-9-14-17-9-16. DF, WT, and ST get a bump each. Kinda modeled, in theory, after a few of Jorja's graduated rippers. So the explanation for this is his article. (Translation: it's Jorja's fault if this guy sucks). This is a PR."
All at once this thought grabs me! You seem too focused on burners! Now realize that comment is coming from a Consortium fellow, and The Consortium is probably the king of burner-builders! Nothing wrong with making your design a ripper. I sorta like it! Were we to have made it a ripper, it would have been 10-9-9-15-17-9-15, or preferably 11-10-9-15-17-9-13 because it is stronger and can take one more hit before needing to riposte. We would, then, have fought this guy very much as we listed above, but have added more armor such as ASM/S. What we really,really would probably have done is to make this an 11-9-9-15-17-10-13 slasher.
" Another burner: 9-10-7-12-13-9-10 to 14-10-7-16-17-9-16. After a bump to WT and ST, she'll use a BA and (probably) heavy armor. I'm still waiting for a definitive PS article. I've seen one in the DM93 turn 378 newsletter, but there's no way I'm running this guy 10-10-10 Decisiveness every minute. This guy's a PS by the way."
Hmmmmm. Why not run him 10-10-x-D in the first minute? It would certainly fit my thinking. As to a definitive piker article... even if there were one, it would be inaccurate or incomplete because no one has figured out how to SPECIFICALLY quantify the illusive, ambivalent piker. Pikers are different from minute to minute and from design to design. Pikers are personal. Pikers take that loving feeling to interpret. Live with it! However, why place such pressure on oneself by selecting the piker style? Leave that for even the most-daring experts. If we had to make this a piker, it would likely look like a striker and run like a striker. 11-10-7-17-17-10-11 with that last point optional, but probably on ST for me. Indeed, this warrior is a lovely, no-need-to-burn 13-10-7-17-17-9-11 whatever. Our order of preference would be-- SL, BA, ST, LU, PL. Really, don't burn such a lovely.
And on to your final design, a non burner! Wow! What got into you?! "And a striker, no bumps on this one: 6-10-16-17-9-7-5 to 9-10-16-21-9-8-11. Mainly because SOMEONE's got to have a winning record on this squad."
My thoughts? Well done! I can only offer compliments and agreement. If I had to make another choice, I would certainly retain the 21 wit, and go 11-10-16-21-9-10-7 ST, limiting myself to the SH/HA/SS/BS combo, which are really pretty fine weapons. But, then, your 9 ST design is limited in weapons also.
So there you have it. The last bit of advice you will get from me, the one and only Smithy of The Consortium clan. If you want to talk to me more, come and compete in DM31. You will find me there, at least in the near future.
Salutations.
Smithy, Useful Weapons, Consortium affiliated