ok maybe instead of reducing max health it could inflict antiheal, essentially reducing regen for a duration
(in case you don’t know antiheal basically eats up any healing you receive, like if i have 100 antiheal and i receive 150 healing then i lose 100 antiheal and heal 50)
would functionally be similar without as much of a coding headache
besides the orange healthbar could be reused later to show antiheal again
I like your idea but mechanically and in practice that would function almost identically except for antiheal being removable by healing. As it is right now an opponent has to, as Walyn put it, “leave the fight entirely and recover from the injuries, or they have to go all-in seeing as they won’t be able to re-engage with as much health as they started with.” This effectively discourages people from running away half way through the fight and healing up to be, if you can forgive my French, a complete pain in the ass to deal with. As it is, the style would give someone that say is defending their island claim an advantage in long lasting fights and would gain some breathing room if the opponent runs given that the opponent either has to get a player kill to regain max health quickly, or stay away much longer while the defender/s gain time to reorganize and possibly launch a counter attack.
If this style instead used antiheal you would certainly help prevent regeneration and most if not all of a healing potion, however it wouldn’t be as reliable in punishing runners. Plus the injuries/hard damage from this style do fade much quicker after someone with them kills another player to prevent it from being too strong in such situations. If in the future more powerful methods of healing are added this style also loses almost all purpose if it uses antiheal so overall I don’t think that would be the wisest change. Still though, a great suggestion!
Also in boss fights and up against powerful beasts/monsters where they can heal, it creates breathing room for the user of the style to heal up while the strong opponent cannot, granted I don’t think these injuries would remain if the player takes too long to deal damage and the NPC’s health resets entirely. In PVP if someone tries to run away while using this style firstly the hard damage/injuries would heal over on their opponent a good amount and I think the counter to doing that with this style is ironically this style itself.
Edit: One more thing to note is that anti-heal would feel less like an injury and more like a magical effect of death magic or something given that you’re completely preventing the body from healing as opposed to hard damage/injuries feeling and appearing like you’re just leaving severe, deeper, harder to heal wounds on someone. You make a solid point about the current idea being a little harder to implement but I think it’s necessary, plus half the code for it is already in the game with story injuries.
TL;DR: Hard damage/injuries are a bit more lasting of an effect that are better at countering runners than anti-heal that won’t become irrelevant the moment stronger healing methods are put into the game. Sorry for the small novel of text above. Also of note, this style will most likely have the highest strength requirement among base styles so far so it can somewhat get away with being a tad stronger.
Don’t only two bosses heal without the fight resetting? Makes me think the injury effect could be useless in PvE in most cases.
Another question (though this might be a question about injuries in general): Does max health reduction get taken into account for applying status effects that require a certain % of the enemy’s health in damage to be applied?
If you’re asking if you have to do a certain amount of damage to inflict injuries, first bullet point of mechanics.
If you mean to ask if other status effects will have their damage thresholds to inflict a status effect affected by the health taken away by injuries, yes because the opponent’s max health is temporarily lower so you don’t have to do quite as much damage as you would have before their max health was lowered. I assume that’s how it works with story injuries too but I could be wrong.
As long as story injuries actually influence the max health value and everything that scales with it, it’d have the same effect here. If not then no. Also you’re right, the max health reduction wouldn’t do a lot in most cases in PVE, but you do still have a pretty solid DPS style that inflicts T2 bleed when the opponent is low so it’s great if you have the skill to fight without relying on attack size. It’s also excellent for warlords for imbuing into weapons that aren’t overly reliant on attack size.
Uhh, to be honest, decreasing opponent MaxHP DOES look bad in some cases, but, how much is it, really? How much can it stack? I’ve an idea, injuries stack as a debuff too, and make them take more damage, like, as they get more open wounds, they are left more open, allowing for more fatal strikes. It can also be a weird one that gives the opponent extra damage too, to balance if too overpowered, encouraging both sides to go all-in as they have higher chances of survival by re-engaging unless they are too low and you’re too high on HP. Also, below %50 instant dodge reflex, looks a bit too strong, I think? Though I totally would love to see something like this, yes I just like the idea of using a sword draw on someone pouncing at me like a goddamn wild animal. Also maybe it can increase the stun after getting parried (Since you don’t have a technique, a parry is far more effective againist you) and if possible decrease the block damage reduction (Again, you don’t have the technique)?
You have to be extremely cautious when adding effects that apply a multiplier to damage because they can very easily get out of hand. Frankly I think the max hp reduction is a safer bet to develop. Also if the player is increasing the damage of their opponents they objectively become a detriment to their team in coop PVP/PVE.
As for the dodge reflex, Thermo Fist gets dodge reflex just for getting to 50% heat which is much easier and this style has decent speed so it makes sense to have instant dodges be a bit more accessible than 1.6x agility. Generally the speed scaling of styles coincides with how easy it is to instant dodge, except boxing which always gets it because boxing as a whole is gimmicky.
I think your suggestions about stunning the user longer on being parried or giving the player weaker blocking power are some interesting ideas though. Might throw those in a poll later to see what everyone thinks.
Oh, well I kinda didn’t know the thermo fist thingy, heh…
And, for the “Being detriment to your team”, I think the damage taken increase would be higher than the increase in damage dealt, therefore giving you the advantage. And it getting out of the hand is… Well, a geniune concern, considering the Arcane Odyssey’s terrible hard-to-balance nature, but I think it wouldn’t get that out of the hand for a boost 'round 10-15% increase, I think?
Also feels out of place to buff people’s damage by injuring them a little bit even if it’s supposed to be some kind of adrenaline response from the enemy. Lastly between the decent damage and speed of the style, T2 bleed on low opponents, and now a ramping damage multiplier this style would almost certainly just do too much damage even if the opponent deals more damage as a tradeoff.
Iron Leg is the base tier’s definitive hard hitter style. This style is better for countering healing and high defense and executing low opponents. I’m not trying to change the whole formula at this point because it would invalidate everyone’s vote up to this point. Still I appreciate your feedback a ton!
I mean, I think it would be a nicer thing instead of a T2 Bleed, y’know. I, do believe countering healing is still there, and buffed, as the bonus damage from Injuries disencourage you to keep the fight going on, and encourages you to keep attacking. The whole formula is not changing, I do believe, it’s just that you remove T2 Bleed to punish longer fights more. I do believe there’d be a cooldown between injury applies too, making you inflict injuries the longer the fight goes. Anyways, I understand your concerns about people’s vote.
(Wow been a while since I last had an intellect conversation with someone in this fandom.)
(Note: I just noticed before publishing the reply, I probably got the “Deal more damage as the fight goes” idea because of another game that has that mechanic named “Injury” as well.)
(Note 2: Before publishing the reply, I remembered the status in that game is called “Wound”, not “Injury”. I’m an idiot…)
this seems like a pretty cool idea
a fs focused around crippling your enemy with brutal hapharzard attacks, that promotes chaining attacks to cripple your opponent, the max health decrease isnt actually as unbalanced some people would like to think. maybe cap it at 20-25ish~ and then it’ll be balanced
bro has no idea what hes talking about 
prenerf metal pulsar was strong because of it’s damage output and how hard it was to dodge
this fs would not be hard to dodge nor would it be dealing insane damage, it would literally just mean that if you opponent tries to play passively to stall out their health you can punish them easier
I might consider implementing your feedback if I start doing polls asking for changes people might want. Right now though pretty much everyone is of the opinion that the style is slightly strong so it doesn’t need a new feature to make its mechanics have an even more drastic effect on gameplay. A reminder that cannon fist is also base tier and this needs to be at least close in complexity to it and something like boxing or sailor style though with a higher strength requirement it can be a tad more complex.
I’d be tempted to make this a lost fighting style however imitating beasts and tapping into your instincts and the raw power of your body isn’t quite as extreme as becoming a literal vampire and all.
Yep! I’ve had a few annoying PVP island claim fights where my opponent just insists on running away and healing all the time while waiting to catch at a bad time like when I’m stuck in the water or enclosed. This style would punish obnoxious evasive playstyles like that and make it where the more they do it, the easier they are to finish off quickly. The T2 bleed compliments that well and is handy for imbues too!
Also for those of your that don’t know, this fighting style is actually from a list of fighting styles I’m slowly chipping away at making suggestions for so if you haven’t voted here feel free! Who knows, the order I make them might change. With the recent change to hunger and magic energy which I “totally” didn’t see coming I’ll be changing aura condensing a tiny bit to fit with this new system. I didn’t know the specifics of the new system.
Me linking all these topics together totally isn’t my clever way of making it where if one topic gets big and gets noticed by Vetex or the devs then all the others might eheheh!
A lot of thought clearly went into this and, honestly, it feels very vanilla friendly if that makes any sense in AO. I think the elephant in the room here is the sheer strenght of it, I believe this would require to be one of the lowest damage fighting style, and that wouldn’t make it any less viable either. You could even justify such a damage decrease by sating that the lack of proper training renders the user unable to utilise the target’s weak points to its advantage.
Even though I wouldn’t really see Vetex adding this, I think it could be really could if he were to do so, and I’d love to see what kind of development this style’s mentor could get, still congrats cause this is very fleshed out and I’m quite fond of your creation
I figured between getting end lag on all your techniques and the low attack size that’d reasonably balance out its main gimmick and T2 bleed for finishing opponents off but fair enough! That being said I don’t think I agree with lowering the damage as the style is supposed to make the user feel like a fast, savage wild animal that’s unfocused. Would be underwhelming if the damage was kinda pitiful plus it still does less damage than Iron Leg, though probably more DPS overall if you can play around the end lag well. To be fair, it’d have a pretty high strength requirement for a base style I think, making it realistically only available for warlords and berserkers for a long while.
“Just you wait until I use my Bestial Instincts fighting style!”
Hey not my favorite name option either, just making sure to flesh out the names to choose from. 
I’m going to write up a poll to see if I can’t adjust the balance of this style a tiny bit more for those of you that still have your notifications on this topic. Then I’ll probably start working on aura condensation and then go missing for a day or two.