From August 2022 to August 2023
Hey, it’s Robofs(740), the Anomaly Unarmed Player who broke "Unarmed" and took it into raids.
Originally, this should have just been a review of the current Unarmed post-rework, but then I remembered that there was another type of forum post that I wanted to make. This is also a month overdue, but at least, I had a good amount of time to test things..
When Sarte’s gimmick was nerfed and became unusable, I wondered if it was a good idea to make a post detailing how it worked. I had someone tell me it was a good idea, but due to my usual indecisiveness, I ultimately did not make the post, after realizing that X or Y was still salvageable from it and told them that I should keep it secret, since Sarte could still make use of it as if keeping a fraction of his former gimmick and becoming more like Orlisarte’s gimmick.
With Unarmed reworked, it's probably fine to talk about it now, and so, this thread will talk about my experience of Unarmed as well as my review on current Unarmed later on.
Table of Contents
- Background / Why I tried out Unarmed
- Orlisarte and Strike Jab (Constant Strike Jab)
- Sarte Part 1 and Accel Burst / Accel Hyper (Burst Strike Jab)
- Sarte Part 2 and Focus on real Unarmed (Lower Reliance on Gimmicks)
- Vent and True Unarmed Pre-Rework (7 Unarmed Spell Bar)
- True Unarmed Post-Rework / Current Unarmed Review (7 Unarmed Spell Bar)
- Overall Thoughts
- Discussion
-- Background --
Joining with a group to the low player count Esshar during its last two to three weeks, before Meranthe's date was even announced, there was a lot to learn about the game and a lot of magic trees to look at. The members of our group all picked different magic types to test it and then began to spar each other to see how it all was, ranking each other from weakest in the group to strongest. This allowed me to see Air, Tempest, Lightning, Earth, Sand, Metal, Nature, Poison, Gravity, and Armed. This is also when I found out how much I liked the combat system of Eternia.
Being the second weakest in my group, I began to look for ways to be more efficient with Twister and another spell, trying out something new so that the more experienced Eternia players would see something new and interesting. This exploration allowed me to become the second best in our group, unable to defeat my friend who was Nature/Poison. The build also became unique enough to where I was confident that I may have been the first to use it, so that I could put on a show for the veterans of Eternia.
Once Esshar ended and Meranthe started, I went around as Brick Walt using an optimized version of my 198 rpl Esshar “Howl of the Banshee-like” build and saw three Unarmed characters as I explored the map of Meranthe. Since I didn’t see Unarmed in E3 and none of my group went it, I was curious.
One of the characters that I had seen fight around Aphros on many occasions was Piers. The other two were Tigreal Solo and Cain Daubney.
Since there were a lot of new spells, new players, and changes from E3, I would always hear that X was performing pretty good, nerf Whims of Wind, etc.
But the thing that stood out to me was that some said that Unarmed was strong until it ran out of steam. Depending on where you were, you could hear about how the Unarmed tree could bring someone down to 50% but then be a sitting duck until their cooldowns came back. But there were also some who thought that Unarmed was doomed and couldn’t do much.
I put that to the back of my mind. I was curious about Unarmed, but I was too secretive about my role as the head of one of Aphros’s three Noble families to have my friends join me at all, meaning that I wouldn’t have someone test Unarmed. The rule about faction discords was there, and I was afraid that an active admin during the last 2 weeks of Esshar would get mad if my group were to group up again.
One day, as I was guarding the entrance to some cave at the start of the wipe as well as farming scales and water crystals solo in order to gear up my retainers for the war against Delphina, I put Strike back onto my bar. My build wasn’t really the greatest for farming mobs, so this was the most efficient dps that I could do.
Not knowing about Ctrl + direction, my character moved into a wall and began facing it as I tried to lead the Suiswarme into a corner to end them all at once without needing to target. Pressing Strike afterwards, is where I found out that Strike can be sent out faster as long as the animation is stopped. I wondered about why this was the case, and I found that using Strike normally cannot keep up with your CDR due to the amount of time needed for the animation to play. The CDR thing, I noticed because I liked using higher agility characters because I like exploring things that are uncommon.
tldr: I really liked the combat system, and I'm the type of person to use uncommon things to see if they can actually be good. Unarmed was on my radar because of its rumors at the start of the wipe.
-- Orlisarte --
Why was that information relevant? Well, when Brick Walt disappeared from Meranthe, my next character, Orlisarte, had an Strike + Unarmed / Poison / Tempest build.
- Strike because I wanted to see if I could make its high potential dps to work.
- Unarmed because I heard it was quite potent as well as that I wanted to try it out to see which area Unarmed really was whether it was Really Good or Really Bad, as well as the fact that I thought Strike could be used well, since Unarmed has to get close to the opponent.
- Poison because if Unarmed and Strike failed me, then I could follow what the strongest in my original group did.
- Tempest because I had heard that slows hindered Unarmed greatly, and I had played Tempest a bit on my 2 to 3 week old Esshar character. However, I did not pick up Tempest until I experienced the pain of being slowed by a Water/Ice Sirenian as well as that Nature wasn't helping me that much, as it disrupted the hyper aggressive flow.
In preparation of the character, I made sure to read Lung's Unarmed Guide and see if there was any information that I could learn from it that wasn't easy to notice, where I found out about how Jab interacts with slows and speedups. When actually starting out on the character, I did my best to understand the different Unarmed moves to a surface degree as well as the Poison tree. Once I did that, I tried to understand how to effectively use Strike. Initially, I thought the way to use it was to slow the opponents down enough to use it. It did alright, but it was from being good. Testing only the non-gimmick Unarmed parts, the spells weren't too terrible, but it was definitely a bit of hard mode. However, I decided to just fully go into Strike Jab to be put apart from the rest of the Unarmed players, leaning into homing dash spells and following up with Strike Jab.
Attempting to use Strike and Jab offensively looked extremely unrefined and missed extremely often, and when I went back to practicing against Crellus, I found a few weird moments where my character would "blink" to a location when using Strike. I tried to figure out why this was the case and realized it was due to the speedups. Following up with a Strike after a speed boost from a speedup on dash given by either Axe Kick, Flying Kick, or Venomous Dash, I was able to raise the hit rate of Strike compared to just wildly using it, but it still looked unrefined when attempting to follow up with Jab.
At some point, I found Piers in-game, and he showed me a bit about Unarmed ICly, as well as a tip to have the Jab seem less unrefined, which was just that the Jab wasn't really sensing the key press immediately and that the button may have to be pressed again. From there, it seemed a lot smoother, but I also noticed something when I began to test more on my own. The Jab animation began to play in the middle of the sped up Strike animation, like an animation cancel.
So the combo would something like Venomous Dash -> Jab x# + Strike x# (to make sure that the key goes off and not that it actually uses 2-5 Jabs and 2-5 Strikes there for Orlisarte) -> Axe Kick x2 -> Jab x2 + Strike x2 -> Flying Kick (GCDE at the time) -> Jab x2 + Strike x2 -> Weighted Punch (speed up away) -> GCD ends -> Venomous Dash -> Jab x2 -> Strike x2.
I positioned my fingers in a way where I could press in between 7 (Strike) and 4 (Jab) on my numpad to press both of them at the same time. I also intentionally placed Jab on 4 to make it more likely for me to press it first. In RPBs, my key presses probably look like 5 4747474747 8 4747474747 9 4747474747 3, and as you can see here, they turned out to be pretty even with 4 (Jab) being sent out first. I didn't intentionally make it 4747, rather I was just pressing the buttons the way I would normally press it, which demonstrates the consistency.
After a while, a realization set in. Strike and Jab weren't doing their tooltip damage and was instead doing double the amount; however, as an Eternia player on their 9th or 10th week in the game with 3 created characters so far, the idea that tooltips couldn't be trusted was a bit ingrained after always hearing that they couldn't be trusted (not realizing that the damage tooltips are actually accurate). Instead of the 5 spell damage (5 x pow) and 4 sd (4 x pow) that Strike and Jab were supposed to do, respectively, they were doing 10 sd and 8 sd.
Due to that, I was always wondering if I was going to get in trouble for using them, but some part of me thought more rpg-game like that sometimes the beginner spell / starter weapon can become strong as a hidden joke. I was still nervous about using them, but I did it anyway, since I was still somewhat new and just thought that someone would stop me when they notice it.
Some time goes by, and I begin to find out that it was an Unarmed "feature" for Strike to get boosted / it was reported in E3, etc., as for Jab... well, I assume it's because it's based on Strike. In any case, it boosted my confidence in using it, but I did feel bad because even though I spent a good amount of time figuring everything out, it felt perhaps too strong at times. Sure, I had matchups where I would get owned for hugging the opponent, but other times, there were spars where I could delete my opponent's health bar.
Every danger, I felt bad for uncovering and using such a potent thing in Dangers, hoping that I didn't perm someone. I also began joining raids to show it off, as if to discreetly get the attention of an admin who could tell me if I should stop, as well as to put on a show for the more veteran players.
Eventually, the build became more refined, and I gained more experience for what to watch out for. There were spars against a few characters who could defeat me a good amount of time due to disrupting my offensive with Cascade, Whip Beam, Minefield, etc. which showed me that there was hope to defeat me, but I never lost in any dangers except to Glufdor.
When I capped Rob's undead, Morgwynn, I felt quite bad, wondering if the build should cease to exist due to its high win rate, and was thankful that there was enough IC to just let them go with a -40, given that Glufdor released me when he first capped me as well as the fact that Morgwynn had released someone they capped in the past. In the back of my head, I also believed that I shouldn't be the one to end Morgwynn there as I was one of those of Dal'thala that had fought her the least, and the -40 would serve to be a "boost" for fellow Dal'thala players to finally take her down should she continue to attack.
While using this build, I heard a lot about how this reminded them of old melee, how the build was scary or extremely weird, and how the playstyle reminded others of a beyblade due to Noxious Cloud and Devouring Winds and how I would bounce away from the opponent and then home back in. Rather than using a lot of skill, it was using knowledge and taking advantage of things to aggressively stick to the opponent and deal damage consistently, for which I'm sorry for.
The raids against Vdalion came along, and since I believed that I had the best chance against Glufdor, even if he countered me, I requested him in both raids, attempting to take the fall instead of someone else. In preparation for these raids, some told me to app for Muscle Armor to avoid being stunned and blocked off by Pyroclasm + Tesla and Explosive Minefield, but applications scare me, as well as the fact that Strike Jab was already a "signature" of its own. Having it be tolerated was satisfactory enough for me, even if the real reason (which I still don't know but it doesn't matter) turned out to be due to a lack of information on the other side and staff's end.
When I fell to Glufdor after putting a show for the spectators, I felt a bit weird hearing the title Unarmed King, as while I was Unarmed, I was actually "Unarmed". The main Unarmed spells that I used at the end were Axe Kick, Flying Kick, Jab, and Weighted Punch. Strike doesn't really count, meaning that I wasn't using Titan Fist, Lariat, Titan Fist, Iron Body or Assault. Titan Fist and Lariat had quite a lot of cool spell chains that haven't been explored and were more skill-based compared to my Homing Combos that I used. The fact that I was using a gimmick that was slightly unfair made me feel that the title was unearned.
I know a lot of people thought it was a cool and unique build, but I was still unsure of the fairness of it.
In any case, using it and not hearing a "Stop," had me explore a Strike Jab idea that I had at some point in Orlisarte's time for my next character (Sarte).
tldr: Discovered the art of Strike Jabbing, refined it, was worried because it was on the border of being legal, didn't get told to stop, and was called Unarmed King [Elzara] Captain Beyblade.
Thoughts of Unarmed Moves during Orlisarte's Time
- Honestly, I can't say much here because I was using a gimmick, but I did think there was potential in the other Unarmed moves. Then again, this was my third character, and I was still a bit of a newish player. Strike Jab was extremely potent, and I told everyone who asked me "How to play Unarmed" to look at Lung's Unarmed Guide, as I kept the exact things of Strike Jab secret. I didn't really want others to copy me exactly, and since I saw a lot of potential in Unarmed, I wanted someone to explore other things about Unarmed. The Orlisarte Strike Jab build needed more knowledge rather than skill due to the homing nature of the build, and someone copying it with the knowledge could become a powerhouse of sorts against anyone who didn't have a tool against it, which is a scary thought if there were to have multiple people with the build.
-- Sarte's Burst Strike Jab --
Remembering on how Strike has a chance of Silence when using Blue Shroud, Omega Shroud, or some signature auras, I decided that I wanted to attempt that next. It would be even more unique compared to Orlisarte's build. While originally I was going to make a Beastkin, I was asked if I wanted to play an undead version of Orlisarte and agreed to do that instead of the Beastkin idea.
Sarte was created and the build idea was set. Unarmed / Energy / Time, and I would also see how far I could go before needing to use the crutch known as Tempest: Silver Surge.
Lacking Wild Nature, the only speedup that I could use for the build was Time: Accelerate. For this build idea, I had noticed on Orlisarte that Jab was receiving a higher CDR than usual, as if it was being applied twice like how the Jab damage was also doubled. Thus, the idea was to achieve a high cooldown reduction, then use Accelerate to gain a speedup, and follow with as many Strikes and Jabs that I could use in that time. Due to information stated earlier, Strike and Jab's animation speeds can get boosted by speedups, and thus, using Accelerate could allow for the spells to be used almost instantly as long they were off cooldown.
Starting with Omega Shroud and it's about 10% silence chance, my CDR was allowing me to achieve 4 Strikes and 4 Jabs in one Accelerate. While fun, after testing, the silence chance was still quite unreliable and was just a joke gimmick, not being able to do too great in rpbs to justify using Energy compared to using an agility Aura and better spells. Sometimes, you could achieve 4 silences in a row, and other times, it might not activate at all for 90% of the fight.
Once I lost to Kuzen, I decided to fully go into Agility and boost my CDR to see just how far Accelerate + Strike and Jab CDR could go. I dropped all of my spells in Energy except for the Attunement and Energy Shield and picked up Silver Surge. I took Camouflage Aura due to its Agility Boosts and saw how the 8 hit Accelerate combo rose to 12 hits and then maxed at 16 hits (8 Strikes, 8 Jabs) once I hit a higher RPL and had a higher maximum agility.
Due to my low Power in exchange for higher Agility, fights with this build weren't too one-sided, and since a majority of my damage depended on Accelerate and Silver Surge being active, if they could disrupt the Accelerate through an invulnerability or stun, then I wouldn't do too much until it came off cooldown, which was around 12 seconds. Time Jammer, White Squall, Glacial Lance also stopped it completely. The need to stick close to the opponent still enabled the opponent to use strong spells in retaliation and match the damage at times. Then again, the Spell Damage value of Strike and Jab made up for the lower power, being 10 SD and 8 SD respectively.
However, this wasn't the best that this build could have been. This was only utilizing the speedup from Accelerate. If Sarte had access to Wild Nature or Poison Aura's speedup, then he would have been able to do this 16 hit combo two more times.
Through more testing, I had found out that CDR stopped increasing the amount of Strike Jabs used during Accelerate, and I realized that Accelerate wasn't fast enough to fully remove the animation for the two spells and use the full amount of cooldown reduction. This was when I figured that I could use the Thief Stance's active and Accelerate at the same time to boost the amount of attacks that could be used during the duration by speeding up the Strike and Jab animation further, boosting the maximum amount of moves from 16 hits to 24 hits.
I used this against a Crellus and then immediately banned myself from using this in any real rpbs outside of special circumstances, calling it the forbidden move known as Accel Hyper (Sarte was RP'd as a Sentai / Power Ranger / special-move yelling character that sometimes made me cringe writing it). Orlisarte could defeat a Crellus in 11 seconds, and Sarte's kit and 16 hit combo could defeat a Crellus in 8 to 9 seconds. But this... could defeat a Crellus in 4 to 5 seconds. There were two times that I did unseal it and use it. I used this against Myrrah Aetris in Round 2 to RP demonstrate on how advanced Sarte was compared to Orli(sarte) as my main goal was to just be a better Orlisarte after ICly hearing a few things about Orlisarte, and I did use it against Stede Vane because he was having an easy time against me, since Sear, Minefield, and Mistform made it really difficult to land the burst. I barely claimed Round 2 and then lost Round 3.
Being hard to keep my own secrets, I gave hints here and there about how the build was achieved, and this later lead to me telling a few people on how exactly it worked as the resistance to keep it secret had weakened. Two of them were to be rivals of sorts, but the plan didn't happen that well as a third person I told on sort of a whim began making waves. Apparently, there were a few other copycats outside of the three that I that I told, but once you find out how it's achieved, it's not difficult to replicate it.
Have High Agility, have a speedup like Accelerate, have Strike and Jab, and well, anyone could have been as strong as Sarte.
It was a knowledge check, really.
It wasn't surprising that nerfs began to hit, but I did panic at one point because I knew that Vdalion was a bit on edge with necromancers and that I wouldn't be able to fight Vdalion properly if a fight were to break out. Though Glufdor was gone at that point, I couldn't defeat him even if I used all of my tricks, so I was worried about what I could do.
However, the nerfs were reasonable. If I was using Level 1 of the build, Level 2 was being used by someone else, and nobody was using a Level 3 that required someone to be Beastkin thankfully.
Eventually, the ability to do it was just removed completely, and by that point, I was no longer a part of Vdalion and became busy due to IRL for a good amount of time.
tldr: High agility, Jab's doubled CDR, and a speedup was fun with a ~10% chance to Silence when using Strike or Jab, but it wasn't that great compared to just using an aura with agility. Made some people think it was incredibly cool and unique and then others angry that it was even a thing. The gimmick was found to be too potent and was nerfed and then removed. This gimmick most likely also prompted the recent Unarmed rework (Removal of Jab). Could hardly call myself an Unarmed master oocly even if others did because I did not practice anything else too deeply.
-- Sarte's Focus on Real Unarmed --
After the removal of Sarte's gimmick, when I had time, I began practicing to use Titan Fist and Lariat, in order to focus on non-gimmick Unarmed. It honestly wasn't bad at all (with my access to Silver Surge), but it took a while to figure out if I were to use Unarmed + Air, Unarmed + Energy, or Unarmed + Time. In any case, I could hit hard with the Unarmed moves. I began practicing a small Time Beam -> Titan Fist combo, but I didn't do it too often, leading to its success rate being low. When the time came to use it against Jokul on the day of Sak'noth's ascension to Imperfect, it didn't go that well.
So I began practicing and searching for my next cool Unarmed combo for an hour every other day, finding one that flowed relatively well. Using it against Wra'gul and Xarxes, I was able to do decently against them and could sometimes take wins, even if Sarte was gaining negative DR due to age and had no access to food buffs, losing 10 IC years of potential anti-Vdalion content due to my inactivity. This did mean that it was possible for me to win dangers, if I wanted to even search for them. Though over time, Xarxes did adapt and made it incredibly difficult for me to take a win.
Compared to Orlisarte and Vdalion Sarte, I could say that I was truly using Unarmed with this new Unarmed spell chain. There was still a small optimization that could be done, but I didn't attempt to fix it. Then, I lost both important raid dangers for Sarte, and he was finally ended. Using 6 Unarmed Spells, I did hope that I could call myself an actual master of Unarmed at that point.
Flying Kick was no longer GCDE, which honestly didn't matter too much since you only have like .5 seconds saved with GCDE. Spin Throw was alright but somewhat frustrating to land. Demonstep was bugged so I tried not to use it. Lariat gained stepcast. Weighted Punch's -DR actually applied when -DR was fixed in general. Things were looking better for Unarmed.
-- Vent Pre-Rework --
Originally made to be a casual Alt character that could be used for Unarmed things as well as finally making a beastkin character, I eventually lacked the time to use a "main" character. When this character was made, I had decided to see how strong "pure" Unarmed or having a mostly Unarmed bar could be with the addition of Wild Nature (Speedup + Slow Immune + AP increase). As you can tell, Slow Immunity is my crutch for Unarmed. If I were to play without it, I suppose I would play more defensively.
The first thing was to make and practice a new Unarmed combo chain. Taking the start from the combo that I used on Sarte, I further optimized its consistency to make it different and more unique in a way. Something interesting to note is that this chain of Unarmed spells could have actually been made during the time that Weighted Punch turned GCDE, but the main weakness of it is that it relies on drag ticks and sending the opponent into the wall of the box will decrease the amount of damage it could do by quite a lot. I did try to practice Ctrl steering to get away from the wall, but it wasn't really something that I could consistently do in an actual match.
The next thing that I did was practice Demonstep which was given a 1 second duration and no longer bugged. I figured that Demonstep could make up for any mistakes that I might make, as well as assist in engaging the opponent, and it did.
I'm not the most social person in or out of Eternia, so sparring Dal'thala that week of the rework was the first time that I really interacted with my opponents and fought more characters than my usual 3 sparring partners. Those in Dal'thala saw how potent this 1 mastery point, 208 RPL character was, and my reason for not joining any important conflict was, well.. My activity wasn't really at a certain standard, as I was either too busy for anything major. Since I don't put myself out there that much, I didn't have too many connections for it to really make sense for my character to join certain events/raids anyway.
Anyway, pre-rework, while Unarmed was somewhat strong due to Demonstep and my attempt at getting the most out of Titan Fist (Which is really good! I understand why some Unarmed players don't like it that much, but when it works, it really works), something that I found a bit frustrating were the animation locks/"windups". Though Axe Kick and Weighted Punch had good value for closing gaps or creating them (untargeting someone and using Axe Kick as a second dash or using Weighted Punch's niche speedy backstep feature), I had trouble taking down the last 1% of an opponent's health bar (skill/build issue). In the time that I might use Axe Kick to take someone down, they could use an near-instant move like Power Smash. Flying Kick's hitbox starts on your character and extends behind them compared to Lariat that starts in front.
Honestly, I think Demonstep is what carried my character's spars during this point in time.
-- Vent Post-Rework / Current Unarmed Review --
With the reasoning behind the rework being to remove the GCDE "spam" of Unarmed, turning Strike Jab into just Strike, and removing the mini-lightspeed of Unarmed, if I had to say honestly... I was fine with it. Sure, I might need relearn things, but I thought it would be helpful in making Unarmed easier in general. At first, I wasn't that into Follow-Up, as it "replaced" Jab and had lowish damage with a highish cooldown. I didn't care too much about the condition behind it, as I only used Jab under certain circumstances anyway. After a day of thinking (not really testing because I was busy the week the update launched), I was like, "Huh, if I think of Follow-Up as a Mini-Mighty Blow, then it isn't that bad, is it?" But I still didn't really find a good reason to use it. The teleport on it could help you avoid waves, but eh.
With the low cooldown gap closer, Axe Kick, being removed and Weighted Punch being replaced with Disarm, it was very awkward getting used to the new moves and removing certain habits. Though I wasn't too active for the first week of the Unarmed rework, I did my best to adapt and figured out how to land my spells, able to win a few matches, but it was still really unpolished.
Before I get to talking about each spell, I will say that, in a way, Jab and Axe Kick were both limiters/crutches/training wheels. Jab is mostly used to set things up, and with good positioning/skill it is doable to go without it. As for Axe Kick, while it could be said to be a 14 SD spell rather than just a 7 SD spell due to its low cooldown and was great for closing gaps as well as creating them by untargeting your opponent and using it to "dash" away, the homing, while it helped line up Titan Fist, lasted quite a while and made you more predictable if you were to attempt to use it every time it was off cooldown.
Now for my thoughts on each spell in the current Unarmed tree.
Flying Kick
- Stayed the same other than becoming the Opener (again). 18 second cooldown, 15 SD. 2 l x 3 wide that starts behind you. Locks you in an animation that persists after hit. Strong slow. Single Target.
Thoughts: Low cooldown, hits hard. Competes with Lariat for a slot on the bar, as they both are somewhat similar. Flying Kick just has the worse hitbox, making it more difficult to land. While I've stopped using it recently in favor of the other Unarmed spells that are easier for me to use, I don't think it's a terrible spell, and it's pretty good to use.
Disarm (GCDE)
- Pre-Rework: Weighted Punch, which used to cause -DR.
- Rework: Disarm: 26 second cooldown, 10 SD. Homes into your opponent and locks your character in an animation. Upon hit, the animation ends early and drops the sprite of the opponent's weapon causing them to lose the stats of the weapon for ~20 seconds or until they walk over it. Single Target.
- Post-Rework Nerf: Drops the sprite of the opponent's weapon for ~10 seconds instead of ~20.
Thoughts: There's a few mindgames that you can perform by camping their weapon and holding block. The range is the same as Weighted Punch and functions pretty much the same way, but it helps reduce damage rather than increase damage. Disarming a 50 power weapon could be seen as reducing the power of their spells by 15%.
Grapple (GCDE)
- Stayed the same. 19 second cooldown. 2 l x 5 wide. Roots both yourself and the opponent. You can only cast an Unarmed move during Grapple, and if it connects with your opponent, then they are freed from the root. Single Target.
Thoughts: I don't really have anything that great to say about Grapple. There's niche things that can be done with it, but for the most part, it's better to just attempt to land an Unarmed Spell with skill rather than use Grapple to set it up. Personally, I don't find it that great, but there's probably someone.
Titan Fist (GCDE; Charge)
- Stayed the same. 28 second cooldown, up to four 5 SD ticks (potentially 20 SD total). Homes to your target. Upon hit, drags and stuns. Can hit multiple targets.
Thoughts: Whoever can use this spell well, rules Unarmed imo. There's quite a few Unarmed Players that don't like using this spell because it can be difficult to land for all 4 ticks, but if you think of it like a "Pyroclasm" or just any other Sear-type spell, it's really not that bad. The stun and drag helps buy time and distance.
Lariat
- Pre-rework: 25 second cooldown, 11 SD + up to six additional 1 SD drag ticks. Upon hit, drags and stuns. Locks your character in an animation that persists after hit. Can steer with Ctrl. Will hit the drag ticks as long as your character doesn't stop moving. Can hit multiple targets.
- Rework: It feels like all of the Dash-Drag spells gained better tracking and automatically changes direction without needing to hold Ctrl.
Thoughts: Moves the same way as Flying Kick but doesn't provide Speedup on Dash like Weighted Punch/Disarm, Flying Kick, and Axe Kick. It has a better hitbox than Flying Kick, making it more easy to land, but when the opponent hugs the wall, it can be annoying to adjust your position to avoid losing damage. The stun and drag helps buy time and distance.
Assault
- Stayed the same. 30 second cooldown. Up to three 4 SD ticks. "Phantom Strikes."
Thoughts: This is my second least used Unarmed Spell, as I prefer using the other Unarmed Spells over this. It's not bad, but I don't really need it.
Demonstep (GCDE)
- Pre-Rework: ~22 second cooldown. .75 to 1 second duration. Negates damage during the duration and sets the cooldown to 0 seconds upon successfully negating damage using this. Slight period of time that prevents Demonstep from being recast.
- Rework: 33 second cooldown.
- Post-Rework Nerf: Set the cooldown to 2 seconds when successfully negating damage.
Thoughts: If you believe that each mistake is a -1 and everything correct is a 0, then a successful Demonstep is a +2. It's that good in my opinion. If you mess up and don't land every tick of Titan Fist or Lariat, this will clean up your mistake if you can use it well. The speedboost is not to be slept on either. Even if the cooldown refreshes to 2 seconds, it's really good and was honestly a needed nerf in my opinion. Though, Demonstep makes it so that I am not afraid of RPL differences and stats. My main fear is their build just countering mine.
Spin Throw
- Pre-Rework: Don't remember the cooldown, but I feel like it was less than 30 seconds. 10 [Throw] + (.5 x 8) [Spin] + 5 (Wall) = 14 SD or 19 SD. Roots both you and the opponent. When targeting an opponent, it will try to avoid catching other targets. Single Target. 3x3.
- Rework Buff: 31 second cooldown. 15 [Throw] + (.5 x 8) [Spin] + 5 (Wall) = 19 SD or 24 SD. 4 l x 4 wide.
Thoughts: Receiving a damage buff or range buff was nice, but obtaining both, it feels like it might have been too much? Maybe that's just me, but I've seen "Unarmed has everything" or "Nerf Unarmed" after my spars and this was the easiest thing for me to suggest nerfing, since Lariat and Titan Fist are basically unchanged.
Follow-Up (GCDE)
- Pre-Rework: Jab
- Rework: Follow-Up: 26 second cooldown, 10 SD. GCD. Teleports you to the your opponent as long as you have cast an Unarmed Spell recently (3 seconds?), deals damage, and knocks them back about 2 tiles.
- Rework Buff: Changed to 22 second cooldown, 8 SD. Gained GCDE. Single Target.
Thoughts: With it being GCDE now, it found a spot back on my bar, mostly used to correct my movement or to gap close. However with the initial complaint of Jab being Lightspeed, GCDE Follow-Up fits that as well. Compared to Jab, it doesn't care about your character's movement speed, and there's a few "Lightspeed-like" combos that you can follow-up Follow-Up with. There's a niche use for dodging waves, but it can be difficult to use.
Iron Body
- Pre-Rework: Was removed.
- Rework: Returned unchanged. 26 second cooldown. ~4 second duration.
Thoughts: For when Demonstep is on cooldown, having a secondary invulnerability is nice to have. Even before Demonstep was created, Iron Body found use in surviving terrible situations for Unarmed, such as Magma Fist or having multiple stacks of slow. An invulnerability is an invulnerability, meaning it can find good use with the right mindset, and while it and the magma invulnerability are considered the worst ones, as conditions can still be applied during them / you can be comboed, let's be honest that whip combo was going to hit you anyway as you rush in melee. With all of the Cosmic AoE tiles being thrown about, it's nice to have for when Demonstep is gone.
Murderous Surge
- Pre-Rework: Faceless Only. 18 second cooldown. Four ticks of 4 SD over time. Attacks in front and teleports you away in a direction of your choice.
- Rework: Unarmed Master. 18 second cooldown. Four ticks of 4 SD over time.
- Rework Nerf: Cooldown raised to 24 seconds.
Thoughts: Murderous Surge is amazing. If Demonstep didn't exist, this would easily be the best spell of Unarmed. It makes me wonder if I should have gone Faceless all that time ago, but I was on the path of only using 1 character at a time and trying to be on every major nation. Aphros -> Delphina -> Vdalion -> Abendrot/Ebonhold/Deephold/etc. -> ???. The teleport always trips up the opponent, and you can bait the opponent to cast a spell as you line it up and dodge using the teleport.
Lost spells with no rework counterpart
- Axe Kick
- Gentle Cleanse (Stance)
- Tactician (Stance)
-- Overall Thoughts --
Unarmed is currently really strong (as I say this as a Slow Immune player), with my 7 Unarmed Spell bar. Then, if you focus on all of the Spell Damage values of the Unarmed Spells, you get..
- Follow-Up: 8
- Disarm: 10
- Assault: 12
- Flying Kick: 15
- Murderous Surge: 16
- Lariat: 11 to 17
- Titan Fist: 5 to 20
- Spin Throw: 19 or 24
While Murderous Surge, Lariat, Titan Fist, and Spin Throw can be interrupted in the middle and can be stopped from using their maximum amount of spell damage, Unarmed has five spells that can go to 15 or above, which is a high amount.
On top of that, Demonstep exists, allowing Unarmed to be good both offensively and defensively.
Since I don't share the usual weakness of Unarmed of being slowed, X person might say that it only works because I'm immune to slows and have a speedup, which I do have due to Wild Naturem, but Armed also hates slows and doesn't have too many players using Slow Immunity for it. If there is a problem with being slowed, Assault could be used during the duration of the Slow. Spells from actual magic trees could also be used to help make up for Unarmed's weaknesses.
The removal of Axe Kick helped get rid of my bad habits, and I no longer have a problem with Unarmed feeling like it has "windups".
Murderous Surge feels really fun to use.
At some point, I do feel like someone will complain about Follow-Up and how it's like Jab or Lightspeed and isn't affected by slows, since Unarmed was reworked and Jab was removed due to that reason. Currently, there's a Follow-Up into Spin Throw combo that works instantly unless they get knocked back diagonally, so it does worry me a bit. Though, if you ask me if I can live without Follow-Up, I can.
Being a month late for a Day 1 Review, I'm sure that all the Unarmed players most likely adapted and are doing amazingly somewhere, and this "review" was unneeded. Though, I decided to just make this post anyway. For those wondering about where I've been, I've just been busy with a summer course and preparing for a final exam that happens to be on my birthday, and when I'm free, my non-Eternia friends tell me to join them on BG3. So while I would like to get online and do something, it's just difficult to find the time to do it.
Since I feel that enough time has passed, here's a bunch of old recordings of Orlisarte, Sarte, and Vent in the order that they were filmed. There's quite a bit missing, since I didn't feel like editing every single recording along the way or I just didn't record. If someone happens to dislike that a certain video is in the playlist, let me know and I will make the video private instead of unlisted.
Unarmed Journey
Also, since this is a thread, I apologize if parts feel a bit disorganized, as I typed about whatever I felt. I wondered if I should have posted this as a Discord Suggestion Thread, but I feel as though I wrote too much for that. Forum helps makes posts more organized rather than letting it out like a stream like Discord, so maybe it's a good thing?
-- Discussion --
To fellow Unarmed players (or to victims of Unarmed), what do you think about Current Unarmed? Too strong? In an alright place? Then, comparing it to the current Armed, what do you think?
To be honest, I'm stuck in that mindset of feeling bad for winning and feeling bad for losing, and I can't tell if I'm just skilled or if Unarmed is too strong, as it has an incredible defense and strong offense. I've heard "Unarmed has everything" or "Nerf Unarmed," as well as 3 different places on Vent telling me "I'm glad that you're on our side / not against us." (Also that one comment of Xarxes killer). For reference, Vent is 212 RPL and has a post-Aura pow of 303 with Wild Nature boosting that to 331, I think.
I will suggest that Unarmed should not get buffed from here.
P.S. I remembered someone say that they want to see Unarmed cook about a month ago. My reply is that I was expecting a ban or warning for using Orlisarte and Sarte and didn't, so they let "Unarmed" go for two of my characters (also another reason why I felt like I shouldn't app for anything).
I'll probably regret writing something in this post, but since I wrote this on and off for several days, it was bound to happen.
Hey, it’s Robofs(740), the Anomaly Unarmed Player who broke "Unarmed" and took it into raids.
Originally, this should have just been a review of the current Unarmed post-rework, but then I remembered that there was another type of forum post that I wanted to make. This is also a month overdue, but at least, I had a good amount of time to test things..
When Sarte’s gimmick was nerfed and became unusable, I wondered if it was a good idea to make a post detailing how it worked. I had someone tell me it was a good idea, but due to my usual indecisiveness, I ultimately did not make the post, after realizing that X or Y was still salvageable from it and told them that I should keep it secret, since Sarte could still make use of it as if keeping a fraction of his former gimmick and becoming more like Orlisarte’s gimmick.
With Unarmed reworked, it's probably fine to talk about it now, and so, this thread will talk about my experience of Unarmed as well as my review on current Unarmed later on.
Table of Contents
- Background / Why I tried out Unarmed
- Orlisarte and Strike Jab (Constant Strike Jab)
- Sarte Part 1 and Accel Burst / Accel Hyper (Burst Strike Jab)
- Sarte Part 2 and Focus on real Unarmed (Lower Reliance on Gimmicks)
- Vent and True Unarmed Pre-Rework (7 Unarmed Spell Bar)
- True Unarmed Post-Rework / Current Unarmed Review (7 Unarmed Spell Bar)
- Overall Thoughts
- Discussion
-- Background --
Joining with a group to the low player count Esshar during its last two to three weeks, before Meranthe's date was even announced, there was a lot to learn about the game and a lot of magic trees to look at. The members of our group all picked different magic types to test it and then began to spar each other to see how it all was, ranking each other from weakest in the group to strongest. This allowed me to see Air, Tempest, Lightning, Earth, Sand, Metal, Nature, Poison, Gravity, and Armed. This is also when I found out how much I liked the combat system of Eternia.
Being the second weakest in my group, I began to look for ways to be more efficient with Twister and another spell, trying out something new so that the more experienced Eternia players would see something new and interesting. This exploration allowed me to become the second best in our group, unable to defeat my friend who was Nature/Poison. The build also became unique enough to where I was confident that I may have been the first to use it, so that I could put on a show for the veterans of Eternia.
Once Esshar ended and Meranthe started, I went around as Brick Walt using an optimized version of my 198 rpl Esshar “Howl of the Banshee-like” build and saw three Unarmed characters as I explored the map of Meranthe. Since I didn’t see Unarmed in E3 and none of my group went it, I was curious.
One of the characters that I had seen fight around Aphros on many occasions was Piers. The other two were Tigreal Solo and Cain Daubney.
Since there were a lot of new spells, new players, and changes from E3, I would always hear that X was performing pretty good, nerf Whims of Wind, etc.
But the thing that stood out to me was that some said that Unarmed was strong until it ran out of steam. Depending on where you were, you could hear about how the Unarmed tree could bring someone down to 50% but then be a sitting duck until their cooldowns came back. But there were also some who thought that Unarmed was doomed and couldn’t do much.
I put that to the back of my mind. I was curious about Unarmed, but I was too secretive about my role as the head of one of Aphros’s three Noble families to have my friends join me at all, meaning that I wouldn’t have someone test Unarmed. The rule about faction discords was there, and I was afraid that an active admin during the last 2 weeks of Esshar would get mad if my group were to group up again.
One day, as I was guarding the entrance to some cave at the start of the wipe as well as farming scales and water crystals solo in order to gear up my retainers for the war against Delphina, I put Strike back onto my bar. My build wasn’t really the greatest for farming mobs, so this was the most efficient dps that I could do.
Not knowing about Ctrl + direction, my character moved into a wall and began facing it as I tried to lead the Suiswarme into a corner to end them all at once without needing to target. Pressing Strike afterwards, is where I found out that Strike can be sent out faster as long as the animation is stopped. I wondered about why this was the case, and I found that using Strike normally cannot keep up with your CDR due to the amount of time needed for the animation to play. The CDR thing, I noticed because I liked using higher agility characters because I like exploring things that are uncommon.
tldr: I really liked the combat system, and I'm the type of person to use uncommon things to see if they can actually be good. Unarmed was on my radar because of its rumors at the start of the wipe.
-- Orlisarte --
Why was that information relevant? Well, when Brick Walt disappeared from Meranthe, my next character, Orlisarte, had an Strike + Unarmed / Poison / Tempest build.
- Strike because I wanted to see if I could make its high potential dps to work.
- Unarmed because I heard it was quite potent as well as that I wanted to try it out to see which area Unarmed really was whether it was Really Good or Really Bad, as well as the fact that I thought Strike could be used well, since Unarmed has to get close to the opponent.
- Poison because if Unarmed and Strike failed me, then I could follow what the strongest in my original group did.
- Tempest because I had heard that slows hindered Unarmed greatly, and I had played Tempest a bit on my 2 to 3 week old Esshar character. However, I did not pick up Tempest until I experienced the pain of being slowed by a Water/Ice Sirenian as well as that Nature wasn't helping me that much, as it disrupted the hyper aggressive flow.
In preparation of the character, I made sure to read Lung's Unarmed Guide and see if there was any information that I could learn from it that wasn't easy to notice, where I found out about how Jab interacts with slows and speedups. When actually starting out on the character, I did my best to understand the different Unarmed moves to a surface degree as well as the Poison tree. Once I did that, I tried to understand how to effectively use Strike. Initially, I thought the way to use it was to slow the opponents down enough to use it. It did alright, but it was from being good. Testing only the non-gimmick Unarmed parts, the spells weren't too terrible, but it was definitely a bit of hard mode. However, I decided to just fully go into Strike Jab to be put apart from the rest of the Unarmed players, leaning into homing dash spells and following up with Strike Jab.
Attempting to use Strike and Jab offensively looked extremely unrefined and missed extremely often, and when I went back to practicing against Crellus, I found a few weird moments where my character would "blink" to a location when using Strike. I tried to figure out why this was the case and realized it was due to the speedups. Following up with a Strike after a speed boost from a speedup on dash given by either Axe Kick, Flying Kick, or Venomous Dash, I was able to raise the hit rate of Strike compared to just wildly using it, but it still looked unrefined when attempting to follow up with Jab.
At some point, I found Piers in-game, and he showed me a bit about Unarmed ICly, as well as a tip to have the Jab seem less unrefined, which was just that the Jab wasn't really sensing the key press immediately and that the button may have to be pressed again. From there, it seemed a lot smoother, but I also noticed something when I began to test more on my own. The Jab animation began to play in the middle of the sped up Strike animation, like an animation cancel.
So the combo would something like Venomous Dash -> Jab x# + Strike x# (to make sure that the key goes off and not that it actually uses 2-5 Jabs and 2-5 Strikes there for Orlisarte) -> Axe Kick x2 -> Jab x2 + Strike x2 -> Flying Kick (GCDE at the time) -> Jab x2 + Strike x2 -> Weighted Punch (speed up away) -> GCD ends -> Venomous Dash -> Jab x2 -> Strike x2.
I positioned my fingers in a way where I could press in between 7 (Strike) and 4 (Jab) on my numpad to press both of them at the same time. I also intentionally placed Jab on 4 to make it more likely for me to press it first. In RPBs, my key presses probably look like 5 4747474747 8 4747474747 9 4747474747 3, and as you can see here, they turned out to be pretty even with 4 (Jab) being sent out first. I didn't intentionally make it 4747, rather I was just pressing the buttons the way I would normally press it, which demonstrates the consistency.
After a while, a realization set in. Strike and Jab weren't doing their tooltip damage and was instead doing double the amount; however, as an Eternia player on their 9th or 10th week in the game with 3 created characters so far, the idea that tooltips couldn't be trusted was a bit ingrained after always hearing that they couldn't be trusted (not realizing that the damage tooltips are actually accurate). Instead of the 5 spell damage (5 x pow) and 4 sd (4 x pow) that Strike and Jab were supposed to do, respectively, they were doing 10 sd and 8 sd.
Due to that, I was always wondering if I was going to get in trouble for using them, but some part of me thought more rpg-game like that sometimes the beginner spell / starter weapon can become strong as a hidden joke. I was still nervous about using them, but I did it anyway, since I was still somewhat new and just thought that someone would stop me when they notice it.
Some time goes by, and I begin to find out that it was an Unarmed "feature" for Strike to get boosted / it was reported in E3, etc., as for Jab... well, I assume it's because it's based on Strike. In any case, it boosted my confidence in using it, but I did feel bad because even though I spent a good amount of time figuring everything out, it felt perhaps too strong at times. Sure, I had matchups where I would get owned for hugging the opponent, but other times, there were spars where I could delete my opponent's health bar.
Every danger, I felt bad for uncovering and using such a potent thing in Dangers, hoping that I didn't perm someone. I also began joining raids to show it off, as if to discreetly get the attention of an admin who could tell me if I should stop, as well as to put on a show for the more veteran players.
Eventually, the build became more refined, and I gained more experience for what to watch out for. There were spars against a few characters who could defeat me a good amount of time due to disrupting my offensive with Cascade, Whip Beam, Minefield, etc. which showed me that there was hope to defeat me, but I never lost in any dangers except to Glufdor.
When I capped Rob's undead, Morgwynn, I felt quite bad, wondering if the build should cease to exist due to its high win rate, and was thankful that there was enough IC to just let them go with a -40, given that Glufdor released me when he first capped me as well as the fact that Morgwynn had released someone they capped in the past. In the back of my head, I also believed that I shouldn't be the one to end Morgwynn there as I was one of those of Dal'thala that had fought her the least, and the -40 would serve to be a "boost" for fellow Dal'thala players to finally take her down should she continue to attack.
While using this build, I heard a lot about how this reminded them of old melee, how the build was scary or extremely weird, and how the playstyle reminded others of a beyblade due to Noxious Cloud and Devouring Winds and how I would bounce away from the opponent and then home back in. Rather than using a lot of skill, it was using knowledge and taking advantage of things to aggressively stick to the opponent and deal damage consistently, for which I'm sorry for.
The raids against Vdalion came along, and since I believed that I had the best chance against Glufdor, even if he countered me, I requested him in both raids, attempting to take the fall instead of someone else. In preparation for these raids, some told me to app for Muscle Armor to avoid being stunned and blocked off by Pyroclasm + Tesla and Explosive Minefield, but applications scare me, as well as the fact that Strike Jab was already a "signature" of its own. Having it be tolerated was satisfactory enough for me, even if the real reason (which I still don't know but it doesn't matter) turned out to be due to a lack of information on the other side and staff's end.
When I fell to Glufdor after putting a show for the spectators, I felt a bit weird hearing the title Unarmed King, as while I was Unarmed, I was actually "Unarmed". The main Unarmed spells that I used at the end were Axe Kick, Flying Kick, Jab, and Weighted Punch. Strike doesn't really count, meaning that I wasn't using Titan Fist, Lariat, Titan Fist, Iron Body or Assault. Titan Fist and Lariat had quite a lot of cool spell chains that haven't been explored and were more skill-based compared to my Homing Combos that I used. The fact that I was using a gimmick that was slightly unfair made me feel that the title was unearned.
I know a lot of people thought it was a cool and unique build, but I was still unsure of the fairness of it.
In any case, using it and not hearing a "Stop," had me explore a Strike Jab idea that I had at some point in Orlisarte's time for my next character (Sarte).
tldr: Discovered the art of Strike Jabbing, refined it, was worried because it was on the border of being legal, didn't get told to stop, and was called Unarmed King [Elzara] Captain Beyblade.
Thoughts of Unarmed Moves during Orlisarte's Time
- Honestly, I can't say much here because I was using a gimmick, but I did think there was potential in the other Unarmed moves. Then again, this was my third character, and I was still a bit of a newish player. Strike Jab was extremely potent, and I told everyone who asked me "How to play Unarmed" to look at Lung's Unarmed Guide, as I kept the exact things of Strike Jab secret. I didn't really want others to copy me exactly, and since I saw a lot of potential in Unarmed, I wanted someone to explore other things about Unarmed. The Orlisarte Strike Jab build needed more knowledge rather than skill due to the homing nature of the build, and someone copying it with the knowledge could become a powerhouse of sorts against anyone who didn't have a tool against it, which is a scary thought if there were to have multiple people with the build.
-- Sarte's Burst Strike Jab --
Remembering on how Strike has a chance of Silence when using Blue Shroud, Omega Shroud, or some signature auras, I decided that I wanted to attempt that next. It would be even more unique compared to Orlisarte's build. While originally I was going to make a Beastkin, I was asked if I wanted to play an undead version of Orlisarte and agreed to do that instead of the Beastkin idea.
Sarte was created and the build idea was set. Unarmed / Energy / Time, and I would also see how far I could go before needing to use the crutch known as Tempest: Silver Surge.
Lacking Wild Nature, the only speedup that I could use for the build was Time: Accelerate. For this build idea, I had noticed on Orlisarte that Jab was receiving a higher CDR than usual, as if it was being applied twice like how the Jab damage was also doubled. Thus, the idea was to achieve a high cooldown reduction, then use Accelerate to gain a speedup, and follow with as many Strikes and Jabs that I could use in that time. Due to information stated earlier, Strike and Jab's animation speeds can get boosted by speedups, and thus, using Accelerate could allow for the spells to be used almost instantly as long they were off cooldown.
Starting with Omega Shroud and it's about 10% silence chance, my CDR was allowing me to achieve 4 Strikes and 4 Jabs in one Accelerate. While fun, after testing, the silence chance was still quite unreliable and was just a joke gimmick, not being able to do too great in rpbs to justify using Energy compared to using an agility Aura and better spells. Sometimes, you could achieve 4 silences in a row, and other times, it might not activate at all for 90% of the fight.
Once I lost to Kuzen, I decided to fully go into Agility and boost my CDR to see just how far Accelerate + Strike and Jab CDR could go. I dropped all of my spells in Energy except for the Attunement and Energy Shield and picked up Silver Surge. I took Camouflage Aura due to its Agility Boosts and saw how the 8 hit Accelerate combo rose to 12 hits and then maxed at 16 hits (8 Strikes, 8 Jabs) once I hit a higher RPL and had a higher maximum agility.
Due to my low Power in exchange for higher Agility, fights with this build weren't too one-sided, and since a majority of my damage depended on Accelerate and Silver Surge being active, if they could disrupt the Accelerate through an invulnerability or stun, then I wouldn't do too much until it came off cooldown, which was around 12 seconds. Time Jammer, White Squall, Glacial Lance also stopped it completely. The need to stick close to the opponent still enabled the opponent to use strong spells in retaliation and match the damage at times. Then again, the Spell Damage value of Strike and Jab made up for the lower power, being 10 SD and 8 SD respectively.
However, this wasn't the best that this build could have been. This was only utilizing the speedup from Accelerate. If Sarte had access to Wild Nature or Poison Aura's speedup, then he would have been able to do this 16 hit combo two more times.
Through more testing, I had found out that CDR stopped increasing the amount of Strike Jabs used during Accelerate, and I realized that Accelerate wasn't fast enough to fully remove the animation for the two spells and use the full amount of cooldown reduction. This was when I figured that I could use the Thief Stance's active and Accelerate at the same time to boost the amount of attacks that could be used during the duration by speeding up the Strike and Jab animation further, boosting the maximum amount of moves from 16 hits to 24 hits.
I used this against a Crellus and then immediately banned myself from using this in any real rpbs outside of special circumstances, calling it the forbidden move known as Accel Hyper (Sarte was RP'd as a Sentai / Power Ranger / special-move yelling character that sometimes made me cringe writing it). Orlisarte could defeat a Crellus in 11 seconds, and Sarte's kit and 16 hit combo could defeat a Crellus in 8 to 9 seconds. But this... could defeat a Crellus in 4 to 5 seconds. There were two times that I did unseal it and use it. I used this against Myrrah Aetris in Round 2 to RP demonstrate on how advanced Sarte was compared to Orli(sarte) as my main goal was to just be a better Orlisarte after ICly hearing a few things about Orlisarte, and I did use it against Stede Vane because he was having an easy time against me, since Sear, Minefield, and Mistform made it really difficult to land the burst. I barely claimed Round 2 and then lost Round 3.
Being hard to keep my own secrets, I gave hints here and there about how the build was achieved, and this later lead to me telling a few people on how exactly it worked as the resistance to keep it secret had weakened. Two of them were to be rivals of sorts, but the plan didn't happen that well as a third person I told on sort of a whim began making waves. Apparently, there were a few other copycats outside of the three that I that I told, but once you find out how it's achieved, it's not difficult to replicate it.
Have High Agility, have a speedup like Accelerate, have Strike and Jab, and well, anyone could have been as strong as Sarte.
It was a knowledge check, really.
It wasn't surprising that nerfs began to hit, but I did panic at one point because I knew that Vdalion was a bit on edge with necromancers and that I wouldn't be able to fight Vdalion properly if a fight were to break out. Though Glufdor was gone at that point, I couldn't defeat him even if I used all of my tricks, so I was worried about what I could do.
However, the nerfs were reasonable. If I was using Level 1 of the build, Level 2 was being used by someone else, and nobody was using a Level 3 that required someone to be Beastkin thankfully.
Eventually, the ability to do it was just removed completely, and by that point, I was no longer a part of Vdalion and became busy due to IRL for a good amount of time.
tldr: High agility, Jab's doubled CDR, and a speedup was fun with a ~10% chance to Silence when using Strike or Jab, but it wasn't that great compared to just using an aura with agility. Made some people think it was incredibly cool and unique and then others angry that it was even a thing. The gimmick was found to be too potent and was nerfed and then removed. This gimmick most likely also prompted the recent Unarmed rework (Removal of Jab). Could hardly call myself an Unarmed master oocly even if others did because I did not practice anything else too deeply.
-- Sarte's Focus on Real Unarmed --
After the removal of Sarte's gimmick, when I had time, I began practicing to use Titan Fist and Lariat, in order to focus on non-gimmick Unarmed. It honestly wasn't bad at all (with my access to Silver Surge), but it took a while to figure out if I were to use Unarmed + Air, Unarmed + Energy, or Unarmed + Time. In any case, I could hit hard with the Unarmed moves. I began practicing a small Time Beam -> Titan Fist combo, but I didn't do it too often, leading to its success rate being low. When the time came to use it against Jokul on the day of Sak'noth's ascension to Imperfect, it didn't go that well.
So I began practicing and searching for my next cool Unarmed combo for an hour every other day, finding one that flowed relatively well. Using it against Wra'gul and Xarxes, I was able to do decently against them and could sometimes take wins, even if Sarte was gaining negative DR due to age and had no access to food buffs, losing 10 IC years of potential anti-Vdalion content due to my inactivity. This did mean that it was possible for me to win dangers, if I wanted to even search for them. Though over time, Xarxes did adapt and made it incredibly difficult for me to take a win.
Compared to Orlisarte and Vdalion Sarte, I could say that I was truly using Unarmed with this new Unarmed spell chain. There was still a small optimization that could be done, but I didn't attempt to fix it. Then, I lost both important raid dangers for Sarte, and he was finally ended. Using 6 Unarmed Spells, I did hope that I could call myself an actual master of Unarmed at that point.
Flying Kick was no longer GCDE, which honestly didn't matter too much since you only have like .5 seconds saved with GCDE. Spin Throw was alright but somewhat frustrating to land. Demonstep was bugged so I tried not to use it. Lariat gained stepcast. Weighted Punch's -DR actually applied when -DR was fixed in general. Things were looking better for Unarmed.
-- Vent Pre-Rework --
Originally made to be a casual Alt character that could be used for Unarmed things as well as finally making a beastkin character, I eventually lacked the time to use a "main" character. When this character was made, I had decided to see how strong "pure" Unarmed or having a mostly Unarmed bar could be with the addition of Wild Nature (Speedup + Slow Immune + AP increase). As you can tell, Slow Immunity is my crutch for Unarmed. If I were to play without it, I suppose I would play more defensively.
The first thing was to make and practice a new Unarmed combo chain. Taking the start from the combo that I used on Sarte, I further optimized its consistency to make it different and more unique in a way. Something interesting to note is that this chain of Unarmed spells could have actually been made during the time that Weighted Punch turned GCDE, but the main weakness of it is that it relies on drag ticks and sending the opponent into the wall of the box will decrease the amount of damage it could do by quite a lot. I did try to practice Ctrl steering to get away from the wall, but it wasn't really something that I could consistently do in an actual match.
The next thing that I did was practice Demonstep which was given a 1 second duration and no longer bugged. I figured that Demonstep could make up for any mistakes that I might make, as well as assist in engaging the opponent, and it did.
I'm not the most social person in or out of Eternia, so sparring Dal'thala that week of the rework was the first time that I really interacted with my opponents and fought more characters than my usual 3 sparring partners. Those in Dal'thala saw how potent this 1 mastery point, 208 RPL character was, and my reason for not joining any important conflict was, well.. My activity wasn't really at a certain standard, as I was either too busy for anything major. Since I don't put myself out there that much, I didn't have too many connections for it to really make sense for my character to join certain events/raids anyway.
Anyway, pre-rework, while Unarmed was somewhat strong due to Demonstep and my attempt at getting the most out of Titan Fist (Which is really good! I understand why some Unarmed players don't like it that much, but when it works, it really works), something that I found a bit frustrating were the animation locks/"windups". Though Axe Kick and Weighted Punch had good value for closing gaps or creating them (untargeting someone and using Axe Kick as a second dash or using Weighted Punch's niche speedy backstep feature), I had trouble taking down the last 1% of an opponent's health bar (skill/build issue). In the time that I might use Axe Kick to take someone down, they could use an near-instant move like Power Smash. Flying Kick's hitbox starts on your character and extends behind them compared to Lariat that starts in front.
Honestly, I think Demonstep is what carried my character's spars during this point in time.
-- Vent Post-Rework / Current Unarmed Review --
With the reasoning behind the rework being to remove the GCDE "spam" of Unarmed, turning Strike Jab into just Strike, and removing the mini-lightspeed of Unarmed, if I had to say honestly... I was fine with it. Sure, I might need relearn things, but I thought it would be helpful in making Unarmed easier in general. At first, I wasn't that into Follow-Up, as it "replaced" Jab and had lowish damage with a highish cooldown. I didn't care too much about the condition behind it, as I only used Jab under certain circumstances anyway. After a day of thinking (not really testing because I was busy the week the update launched), I was like, "Huh, if I think of Follow-Up as a Mini-Mighty Blow, then it isn't that bad, is it?" But I still didn't really find a good reason to use it. The teleport on it could help you avoid waves, but eh.
With the low cooldown gap closer, Axe Kick, being removed and Weighted Punch being replaced with Disarm, it was very awkward getting used to the new moves and removing certain habits. Though I wasn't too active for the first week of the Unarmed rework, I did my best to adapt and figured out how to land my spells, able to win a few matches, but it was still really unpolished.
Before I get to talking about each spell, I will say that, in a way, Jab and Axe Kick were both limiters/crutches/training wheels. Jab is mostly used to set things up, and with good positioning/skill it is doable to go without it. As for Axe Kick, while it could be said to be a 14 SD spell rather than just a 7 SD spell due to its low cooldown and was great for closing gaps as well as creating them by untargeting your opponent and using it to "dash" away, the homing, while it helped line up Titan Fist, lasted quite a while and made you more predictable if you were to attempt to use it every time it was off cooldown.
Now for my thoughts on each spell in the current Unarmed tree.
Flying Kick
- Stayed the same other than becoming the Opener (again). 18 second cooldown, 15 SD. 2 l x 3 wide that starts behind you. Locks you in an animation that persists after hit. Strong slow. Single Target.
Thoughts: Low cooldown, hits hard. Competes with Lariat for a slot on the bar, as they both are somewhat similar. Flying Kick just has the worse hitbox, making it more difficult to land. While I've stopped using it recently in favor of the other Unarmed spells that are easier for me to use, I don't think it's a terrible spell, and it's pretty good to use.
Disarm (GCDE)
- Pre-Rework: Weighted Punch, which used to cause -DR.
- Rework: Disarm: 26 second cooldown, 10 SD. Homes into your opponent and locks your character in an animation. Upon hit, the animation ends early and drops the sprite of the opponent's weapon causing them to lose the stats of the weapon for ~20 seconds or until they walk over it. Single Target.
- Post-Rework Nerf: Drops the sprite of the opponent's weapon for ~10 seconds instead of ~20.
Thoughts: There's a few mindgames that you can perform by camping their weapon and holding block. The range is the same as Weighted Punch and functions pretty much the same way, but it helps reduce damage rather than increase damage. Disarming a 50 power weapon could be seen as reducing the power of their spells by 15%.
Grapple (GCDE)
- Stayed the same. 19 second cooldown. 2 l x 5 wide. Roots both yourself and the opponent. You can only cast an Unarmed move during Grapple, and if it connects with your opponent, then they are freed from the root. Single Target.
Thoughts: I don't really have anything that great to say about Grapple. There's niche things that can be done with it, but for the most part, it's better to just attempt to land an Unarmed Spell with skill rather than use Grapple to set it up. Personally, I don't find it that great, but there's probably someone.
Titan Fist (GCDE; Charge)
- Stayed the same. 28 second cooldown, up to four 5 SD ticks (potentially 20 SD total). Homes to your target. Upon hit, drags and stuns. Can hit multiple targets.
Thoughts: Whoever can use this spell well, rules Unarmed imo. There's quite a few Unarmed Players that don't like using this spell because it can be difficult to land for all 4 ticks, but if you think of it like a "Pyroclasm" or just any other Sear-type spell, it's really not that bad. The stun and drag helps buy time and distance.
Lariat
- Pre-rework: 25 second cooldown, 11 SD + up to six additional 1 SD drag ticks. Upon hit, drags and stuns. Locks your character in an animation that persists after hit. Can steer with Ctrl. Will hit the drag ticks as long as your character doesn't stop moving. Can hit multiple targets.
- Rework: It feels like all of the Dash-Drag spells gained better tracking and automatically changes direction without needing to hold Ctrl.
Thoughts: Moves the same way as Flying Kick but doesn't provide Speedup on Dash like Weighted Punch/Disarm, Flying Kick, and Axe Kick. It has a better hitbox than Flying Kick, making it more easy to land, but when the opponent hugs the wall, it can be annoying to adjust your position to avoid losing damage. The stun and drag helps buy time and distance.
Assault
- Stayed the same. 30 second cooldown. Up to three 4 SD ticks. "Phantom Strikes."
Thoughts: This is my second least used Unarmed Spell, as I prefer using the other Unarmed Spells over this. It's not bad, but I don't really need it.
Demonstep (GCDE)
- Pre-Rework: ~22 second cooldown. .75 to 1 second duration. Negates damage during the duration and sets the cooldown to 0 seconds upon successfully negating damage using this. Slight period of time that prevents Demonstep from being recast.
- Rework: 33 second cooldown.
- Post-Rework Nerf: Set the cooldown to 2 seconds when successfully negating damage.
Thoughts: If you believe that each mistake is a -1 and everything correct is a 0, then a successful Demonstep is a +2. It's that good in my opinion. If you mess up and don't land every tick of Titan Fist or Lariat, this will clean up your mistake if you can use it well. The speedboost is not to be slept on either. Even if the cooldown refreshes to 2 seconds, it's really good and was honestly a needed nerf in my opinion. Though, Demonstep makes it so that I am not afraid of RPL differences and stats. My main fear is their build just countering mine.
Spin Throw
- Pre-Rework: Don't remember the cooldown, but I feel like it was less than 30 seconds. 10 [Throw] + (.5 x 8) [Spin] + 5 (Wall) = 14 SD or 19 SD. Roots both you and the opponent. When targeting an opponent, it will try to avoid catching other targets. Single Target. 3x3.
- Rework Buff: 31 second cooldown. 15 [Throw] + (.5 x 8) [Spin] + 5 (Wall) = 19 SD or 24 SD. 4 l x 4 wide.
Thoughts: Receiving a damage buff or range buff was nice, but obtaining both, it feels like it might have been too much? Maybe that's just me, but I've seen "Unarmed has everything" or "Nerf Unarmed" after my spars and this was the easiest thing for me to suggest nerfing, since Lariat and Titan Fist are basically unchanged.
Follow-Up (GCDE)
- Pre-Rework: Jab
- Rework: Follow-Up: 26 second cooldown, 10 SD. GCD. Teleports you to the your opponent as long as you have cast an Unarmed Spell recently (3 seconds?), deals damage, and knocks them back about 2 tiles.
- Rework Buff: Changed to 22 second cooldown, 8 SD. Gained GCDE. Single Target.
Thoughts: With it being GCDE now, it found a spot back on my bar, mostly used to correct my movement or to gap close. However with the initial complaint of Jab being Lightspeed, GCDE Follow-Up fits that as well. Compared to Jab, it doesn't care about your character's movement speed, and there's a few "Lightspeed-like" combos that you can follow-up Follow-Up with. There's a niche use for dodging waves, but it can be difficult to use.
Iron Body
- Pre-Rework: Was removed.
- Rework: Returned unchanged. 26 second cooldown. ~4 second duration.
Thoughts: For when Demonstep is on cooldown, having a secondary invulnerability is nice to have. Even before Demonstep was created, Iron Body found use in surviving terrible situations for Unarmed, such as Magma Fist or having multiple stacks of slow. An invulnerability is an invulnerability, meaning it can find good use with the right mindset, and while it and the magma invulnerability are considered the worst ones, as conditions can still be applied during them / you can be comboed, let's be honest that whip combo was going to hit you anyway as you rush in melee. With all of the Cosmic AoE tiles being thrown about, it's nice to have for when Demonstep is gone.
Murderous Surge
- Pre-Rework: Faceless Only. 18 second cooldown. Four ticks of 4 SD over time. Attacks in front and teleports you away in a direction of your choice.
- Rework: Unarmed Master. 18 second cooldown. Four ticks of 4 SD over time.
- Rework Nerf: Cooldown raised to 24 seconds.
Thoughts: Murderous Surge is amazing. If Demonstep didn't exist, this would easily be the best spell of Unarmed. It makes me wonder if I should have gone Faceless all that time ago, but I was on the path of only using 1 character at a time and trying to be on every major nation. Aphros -> Delphina -> Vdalion -> Abendrot/Ebonhold/Deephold/etc. -> ???. The teleport always trips up the opponent, and you can bait the opponent to cast a spell as you line it up and dodge using the teleport.
Lost spells with no rework counterpart
- Axe Kick
- Gentle Cleanse (Stance)
- Tactician (Stance)
-- Overall Thoughts --
Unarmed is currently really strong (as I say this as a Slow Immune player), with my 7 Unarmed Spell bar. Then, if you focus on all of the Spell Damage values of the Unarmed Spells, you get..
- Follow-Up: 8
- Disarm: 10
- Assault: 12
- Flying Kick: 15
- Murderous Surge: 16
- Lariat: 11 to 17
- Titan Fist: 5 to 20
- Spin Throw: 19 or 24
While Murderous Surge, Lariat, Titan Fist, and Spin Throw can be interrupted in the middle and can be stopped from using their maximum amount of spell damage, Unarmed has five spells that can go to 15 or above, which is a high amount.
On top of that, Demonstep exists, allowing Unarmed to be good both offensively and defensively.
Since I don't share the usual weakness of Unarmed of being slowed, X person might say that it only works because I'm immune to slows and have a speedup, which I do have due to Wild Naturem, but Armed also hates slows and doesn't have too many players using Slow Immunity for it. If there is a problem with being slowed, Assault could be used during the duration of the Slow. Spells from actual magic trees could also be used to help make up for Unarmed's weaknesses.
The removal of Axe Kick helped get rid of my bad habits, and I no longer have a problem with Unarmed feeling like it has "windups".
Murderous Surge feels really fun to use.
At some point, I do feel like someone will complain about Follow-Up and how it's like Jab or Lightspeed and isn't affected by slows, since Unarmed was reworked and Jab was removed due to that reason. Currently, there's a Follow-Up into Spin Throw combo that works instantly unless they get knocked back diagonally, so it does worry me a bit. Though, if you ask me if I can live without Follow-Up, I can.
Being a month late for a Day 1 Review, I'm sure that all the Unarmed players most likely adapted and are doing amazingly somewhere, and this "review" was unneeded. Though, I decided to just make this post anyway. For those wondering about where I've been, I've just been busy with a summer course and preparing for a final exam that happens to be on my birthday, and when I'm free, my non-Eternia friends tell me to join them on BG3. So while I would like to get online and do something, it's just difficult to find the time to do it.
Since I feel that enough time has passed, here's a bunch of old recordings of Orlisarte, Sarte, and Vent in the order that they were filmed. There's quite a bit missing, since I didn't feel like editing every single recording along the way or I just didn't record. If someone happens to dislike that a certain video is in the playlist, let me know and I will make the video private instead of unlisted.
Unarmed Journey
Also, since this is a thread, I apologize if parts feel a bit disorganized, as I typed about whatever I felt. I wondered if I should have posted this as a Discord Suggestion Thread, but I feel as though I wrote too much for that. Forum helps makes posts more organized rather than letting it out like a stream like Discord, so maybe it's a good thing?
-- Discussion --
To fellow Unarmed players (or to victims of Unarmed), what do you think about Current Unarmed? Too strong? In an alright place? Then, comparing it to the current Armed, what do you think?
To be honest, I'm stuck in that mindset of feeling bad for winning and feeling bad for losing, and I can't tell if I'm just skilled or if Unarmed is too strong, as it has an incredible defense and strong offense. I've heard "Unarmed has everything" or "Nerf Unarmed," as well as 3 different places on Vent telling me "I'm glad that you're on our side / not against us." (Also that one comment of Xarxes killer). For reference, Vent is 212 RPL and has a post-Aura pow of 303 with Wild Nature boosting that to 331, I think.
I will suggest that Unarmed should not get buffed from here.
P.S. I remembered someone say that they want to see Unarmed cook about a month ago. My reply is that I was expecting a ban or warning for using Orlisarte and Sarte and didn't, so they let "Unarmed" go for two of my characters (also another reason why I felt like I shouldn't app for anything).
I'll probably regret writing something in this post, but since I wrote this on and off for several days, it was bound to happen.
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