Thursday, October 8, 2015

He's just one guy


(On the heels of my last post...)  Every so often I'll hear someone say a thing which is incredibly stupid.  Some person who doesn't know who I am will look at another new guy, point at me and say "you go deal with him".  This never ends well.  Even when they sometimes double or triple up, 3 on 1 is a place where I feel pretty comfortable thanks to having to fight those odds a lot.  I tend to die when one for three conditions is met.  1) The person who comes out to fight me is at or above my skill level so they can beat me 1 on 1.  2) Two very good people who are just below my skill level attack me at the same time while working angles, typically 45 degrees (think of me as one point in a triangle).  3) 3 or more new people engage me, all at the same time, all swinging in unison while working angles.

It's been my experience that the first condition has about a 50% success rate as any good fighter sometimes makes mistakes.  In my experience the second condition is better with something like a 65-75% success rate, depending on the fighters who are close-lining me.  The final condition of many people working together has a 80-90% success rate, depending on who they are and how well they work together.  Another optimal solution is sending someone at my skill level with people to support them.

What this means is that numbers working together will almost always chump skill.  You can see the last post for ways that doesn't happen, but generally speaking a vet that is outnumbered is going to have a hard time of it.  Taking out a vet's legs is usually a death sentence for them because you take away their ability to maneuver.  This makes it much much easier to surround them and it also means that it's easier to engage them at the same time as your teammates, since they can't move as quickly.  If you have a support weapon it means they can no longer run away from that support weapon.  If you have a red and someone to cover that red, it usually means you've won.  Having the right gear is more important then having high numbers.  You can throw people with single blue against a legged sword and board fighter for a long time before they'll actually have any success.  But have them fight a red who can break that board and they've lost after 2 swings, assuming they haven't killed the redsman by then.

Generally speaking teamwork is better then having individually high skill because it allows people to work angles and set up catch 22 scenarios for the opponent, and having more fighters is better then having individually highly skilled fighters because with teamwork every high skill cap fighter that dies is a much more crushing loss to that team then an individual in a team with good teamwork.

So remember... the next time you see that vet out there, he/she's just one person.  Grab some friends, hack of their legs and then casually murder them.  As long as you don't throw yourselves at them like movie ninja's most of the time you'll be alright.

3 comments:

  1. So much narcissism! Good breakdown though. Very accurate.
    BTW- Condition '2' is easiest to meet, not by assigning two people, but by babysitting: Assigning one person, who hangs around, just out of engagement range. Whoever rift decides to engage with, naturally forms the second person. As rift points out, the babysitter doesn't have to be of 'rift' skill to neutralize him- you are effectively exchanging a medium skill for a high skill.

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    1. That's a good tactic to stall but not a good tactic if you're going for a kill. If the goal is to stall then a large group of people is often the least useful thing to do if only because they tend to get uncoordinated and can then be juked (dodged around) so that the vet (myself or someone else) then gets into the backs of other teammates. The post I'm writing now (doing math) will talk about stalling.

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  2. Belatedly. Here's the post on doing math, which talks about stalling:
    http://doyouevenriftbro.blogspot.com/2015/10/doing-math.html

    Also... let me say that while it may come off as narcissistic the reason why I use those numbers is because I can confidently talk about them from my own experience. As a fighter I keep fighting because I enjoy it not because I'm after some kind of accord or grandeur. I'm still happy to get horribly murdered doing stupid things. I talk more about that here - http://doyouevenriftbro.blogspot.com/2015/09/limits-fuck-em.html

    There are plenty of much better fighters out there who may have even better numbers/odds when fighting individuals who are less skilled then they are but unfortunately I don't know what those numbers are so I can't confidently use them as examples. I wouldn't want to presume and make anyone else look bad, though I'm happy to do that to myself :-P.

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