As I said at the end of the last little bit, if you want to use status effects and immunities to promote build/party diversity, spread it out evenly. Mages very rarely ever get impacted by Silenced, and when they do it's only when fighting kitsune so you can prepare for that. Disarmed happens much more often, from varying sources rather than one specific faction. Tease immunities largely only impacts beast or ghost type enemies, and outside of dungeon bosses most of them are honestly pretty weak compared to others, with only a few enemies which aren't of those types (like Sigrune, Benny, or the Arcane Golem) having tease immunity. I may be wrong, but as far as I can tell, that's how it is. So you can usually know about it based on faction for counters to magic and teasing, but disarmed is spread amongst several enemy types
And as I said in my post, it certainly seems like it will be distributed evenly. Just because it currently is doesn't mean it will always be like that.
In the interim it may seem punitive, sure, but I'd argue that the Disarmed Combat Effect is much better than the Stunned Combat Effect, because you actually have options (even if
you don't see it as such).
Even if you see Defending as "useless", when Stunned your PC is still taking full damage, so taking less damage is still better overall. And if you've got sufficient party diversity considering the three different damage types (Physical, Magical, Resolve), then you'd be able to synergize via utilizing Tease attacks in any case. As well as using damaging Consumables, you'd be able to continue to apply that sought after Health damage you're talking about.
Anyway, for Combat Effects, I could see some argument for having some form of Diminishing Returns, where if one was afflicted with a specific Combat Effect, they would gain either some Temporary Immunity (1 to 2 turns after the Combat Effect they're Immune to being afflicted with the same Combat Effect again), or Temporary Reduction in the next application of said Combat Effect (3 turn Disarmed Combat Effect applied to PC -> PC does whatever action for the next 3 turns -> PC gets another 3 second Disarmed Combat Effect applied -> Diminishing Returns result in the PC's new Disarmed Combat Effect only lasting for 1 turn).
The "implication" came in the form of the first sentence, right? Where I posed that either it's strong enough to not need to build for it, or it's weak enough that you won't have much of an impact. I then immediately followed it up with "I believe that, most of the time, it's the latter." So, you know, I definitely implied that it is when I said that it isn't the case. It's weak enough that most of the time, there isn't a point for an unarmed weapon-user to actually use it.
I'd argue that it would only be "weak enough [to not have] much of an impact" if there wasn't party diversity to bridge that gap. You have access to Bimbo set Azzy, Dancer set Cait and Base set Quin.
If you're playing as a Physical damaging PC, I'd argue that having inclusion for every damage type would make sense for a typical party composition (specifically because of how prevalent / powerful Resolve damage is in this game). That way even if your Physical damaging PC was Disarmed, they'd be able to synergize with your Resolve damaging Companion by using Tease attacks (assuming it's not an encounter with an NPC that's immune to Resolve damage), and actually feel as though the specific Tease attacks were actually resulting in something instead of just feeling "useless".
As for defending, I stand by the idea that it's practically nothing while disarmed. It halves the damage that you take, and in normal combat all that really essentially means is that you took the wait action. It's only really useful if you're at low enough health that one undefended hit will take you out, but a defended hit won't, and the enemy isn't low enough that you could finish them off and not need to worry, so you pick defend so that the healer can heal. In a disarmed situation, the defense isn't a critical/useful strategic tool, its utility is entirely in retaining a status quo rather than making an impact.
I'd argue that it's not "practically nothing" though, because in the event that one was Stunned for 3 turns in a row (assuming RNG like that exists in the first place), one would take full damage over all 3 of those turns. However, if one was Disarmed instead for 3 turns and Defended for all 3 of those turns, they'd have taken reduced damage for the duration - definitely seems a bit better than being unable to take action (as when Stunned).
Sure, you're not able to do the Physical damage that you want if your PC is disarmed, but you are still able to see some level of impact (by your PC taking less damage) in the encounter that you wouldn't see if your PC was Stunned.
In terms of recency bias, I don't think so? It's a negativity bias, not a recency bias. Pretty much all of my recent characters have been Mages and Charmers. I think it's the negativity bias since my main characters from before were a Warrior and a ranged Thief, so I remember the annoyance much more greatly despite how I generally don't experience it now. In regards to tease, I didn't "admit" to it, I talked about how it's pretty much pointless for a weapon-user to use while disarmed. Defend is pretty much the only thing I actually did while disarmed with the weapon users, so of course I know you can do it, but I view it as having very little impact outside of a few situations. And consumables are... Eh? I pretty much never use them, honestly. I have a hoarder's habit. I knew that I could use them while disarmed, but I never thought to because I simply never use consumables. I only use a consumable in a game if it's easily renewable/gatherable and it has a very strong impact. Basically, I only use consumables if they're Estus from Dark Souls, or arrows in the same game. In CoC2, your main source of healing is usually going to be the powers of a dedicated healer or a split support/damage dealer, plus healing items aren't something I have, like, a stack of, so I could know that I have a comfortable enough amount of them.
Doesn't particularly matter the identifier used for the bias, it is bias nonetheless. And whilst your first hand experiences with Defending might result in you thinking it's "useless", you have to admit that you'd take sufficiently less damage than if your PC was Stunned, yes?
Consumables? Yes, whilst not the most conventional, they do still allow for you to deal Health damage to enemy NPCs, even if you're playing a Physical damaging PC. Your prior complaints could somewhat be negated with items such as the
Leananstone and the
Ley-crystal Grenade. Because even though the Ley-crystal Grenade is rather difficult to come by, it still does Health damage, and whilst Leananstone adds Cunning and Willpower to its damage, it also allows for one to deal Health damage (and is directly purchasable from the start of the game; from Ivris).
So in that regard, your PC would still be capable of dealing damage, even though it'd be a different damage type (Magical damage), at reduced damage, I'd imagine it'd be somewhat comparative to a "enemy desperation attack" in any case.
I know about how Mages get impacted. I did say
White and Black Mages don't rely on their weapons, but they're still a large aspect of the power Mages can utilize.
in the post you're responding to. It's just a much lower impact, so you can still do make your actual attacks, even if they're less effective, rather than having to not attack at all.
Sure, I can understand that. But that highlights that it's not exactly a Combat Effect that only impacts one Class, it has some affect for all, just at varying degrees.
Just how you could say that (if the Silenced Combat Effect becomes more prevalent) it'd have more effect on Magical damaging PCs than it would on Physical damaging PCs. Just because that'd be true, doesn't mean that a Physical damaging PC couldn't be affected at all, because as I mentioned above with using Leananstone, if the Physical damaging PC was Silenced, they'd no longer be able to throw it as it's listed as a Spell Power as well. While in the scenario that would be to a lesser effect for the Physical damaging PC than the Magical damaging PC, I'd still say the argument is rather comparative seeing as it only affects on aspect of each PCs damaging types (and what action they take, seeing as the Magical damaging PC could still Defend, or Tease, same with this case study we're talking about).
For Charmers, yeah, it's annoying when you're not using a tease-based build. I was honestly mostly just thinking about charmers as tease-based, since that's what they excel at, but for support builds, I suppose it's pretty annoying, since that's the passive damage you can contribute. It's not as annoying as not being able to access powers due to the effect, but it is still pretty annoying.
Sure not being able to utilize Powers can be annoying, but that's only a temporary thing (unless unlucky RNG). I'd say that with Charmer's occasionally having encounters were NPCs are immune to Resolve damage would be just as comparable though, albeit not to the same extent (due to frequency and all that). But as I stated, the difference in that would then be that the Charmer's would consistently be unable to use any of their Resolve damaging powers throughout the entire encounter, instead of only for a specific duration.
Honestly I don't really want any change. Except for maybe being able to punch while disarmed. Most of what I've written is more just to vent the frustration I felt with the status effect, while trying to rationalize/justify it.
Yeah, I can understand your frustration, and I'd agree that the PC should technically be able to make an unarmed attack, because they actually carry a
Rusty Knife when they're disarmed (so, possibly could have a Riposte button next the the Defend button and use the Rusty Knife).
But I do disagree with your consistent assertions of Physical damaging PCs being "useless" when disarmed, as seen in the above - there
are objectively other options,
you just have to change the way you see them.
