Warning: If you’re dyslexic or illiterate, you’re going to hate reading through all of this. You have been warned.
Preface
Ever since the drawback stat was added to the game, I’ve been mulling over the idea of a drawback-focused fighting style, only just recently dedicating myself to coming up with something well thought out enough that it feels like it’d fit nicely into the game.
I’m presenting two options for this new style on how people think it should be done, as partway through coming up with this fighting style I had an idea about how to make it more distinct from Impact Fist so it isn’t just another fighting style that charges up high damage singular attacks. My goal here is to gather feedback and hopefully get this style added.
Please don’t complain about the balancing of the suggestion’s stats or design or try to completely redesign the core concept of the style. Bringing up an especially egregious flaw inherent to the design is valid.
The inspirations for this style are mainly from Zeus in his fight versus Adam in Record of Ragnarok, mainly his final form Adamas (Minor Blood, Death, Partial Nudity, & Terrible Video Editing Warning). The second option was inspired by a lot of other things but mainly just the very real type of bone fracture it inflicts that I found when coming up with a status effect. I am personally on the side of Option B but don’t feel pressured to choose the same.
Differences in Option B are outlined for your convenience!
Edit: At this point Muscle Coiling is clearly the most popular so if you want to save yourself time you can just read the drop down for that one.
Option A: Muscle Tightening
Muscle Tightening
“A fighting style that involves tightening the muscles through a combination of brute strength and trace magical energy at immense risk to the user’s well-being, allowing for strained but truly lethal strikes.”
Mechanics
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The style builds strain when charging energy, effectively a ramping drawback scaling from 0 to 20 that increases damage while slightly negatively impacting speed. Attacks and techniques do not raise strain unlike Thermo Fist.
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Drawback from strain cannot take health below 20% of the player’s base max health (defense doesn’t raise this threshold). The exception to this rule is ultimate techniques and imbued ultimate skills, which can still kill the player and are treated as if the player has an additional 5 drawback. Drawback from other sources will still apply past the threshold.
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Upon reaching maximum strain, the next attack technique will have its damage increased by 40% and cause the user to lose a limb, the limb loss effect having a longer duration bleed for the user and resulting in a very short stun to the user that can interrupt the user’s multi-hit techniques as strain instantly resets. Multi-hit attacks only apply the damage to the first attack as a result of the stun interrupting the rest of the attack forcing the player to prioritize single-hit techniques.
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Basic attacks are also a lot harder hitting and slower to account for the built-in drawback, this scaling differently with strength weapons to prevent them from being too slow or hard-hitting. In addition to this only 30% of the drawback from strain rounded down is applied to basic attacks. (20 * 0.3 = 6 Drawback)
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Strain is lost passively at a fast pace a reasonable delay after the user hasn’t charged, dodged/high jumped at 100% strain, or attacked as the user is giving their body time to recover.
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Reaching 100% strain will increase the delay before it begins to passively drain by several seconds.
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Receiving healing resets strain to 0.
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The speed of the user’s attacks reduces as strain increases to simulate the user losing control.
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Dying from using ultimate arts at or near 100% strain causes the user to erupt into a damaging explosion of “red mist” (so roblox ToS doesn’t get angwy), the size and damage scaling based off of level, the player’s strength stat, and charge level. Gear stats do not affect this.
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VFX/SFX
Visual/auditory charging effects are themed around tiny speed line particles rushing towards and into the player’s body to represent the player using trace magic and their own strength to tighten their muscles to an extreme degree, as well as ‘anime-like fist clenching/leathery or rubbery stretching noises’ (something akin to the sounds Naruto/One Piece/DBZ characters tend to make but less cartoonish) playing when charging and using techniques that transition as your strain increases into the sound of bones cracking.
As strain increases, a passive, translucent, black, and trembling particle effect will increase in visibility on the player’s body and weapons when imbued to represent the player shaking from the strain. Maximum strain is audibly represented by a loud, low-pitch rumbling sound emanating from the player and the player’s audio being muffled slightly, similar to being underwater.
[Base Stats]
(These are all approximations to outline the feel of the style and as such shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Don’t bother doing the math.)
Damage: 1.05x [min] | 1.175x [50%] | 1.25x [max]
Speed: 0.9x [min] | 0.85x [max]
Size: 0.9x
(Damage increases faster at the lower strain levels to allow the player to be reasonably stronger without filling up their strain fully every attack. Strain changes these stats gradually, not instantly at these breakpoints.)
[Base Stats Imbued]
Damage: 1.1x [min] | 1.3x [50%] | 1.35x [max]
Speed: 0.85x [min] | 0.8x [max]
Size: 0.95x
(Stats slightly lowered for imbues compared to the average imbue stats to account for having such high damage. Might be unnecessary.)
Dodge Reflex
- Special Effect: When at or above 50% strain it can destroy terrain directly above or in front of the player depending on whether the player is high jumping or using dodge reflex and deal a small amount of damage and knockback. (Damage is based on level and knockback is unaffected by anything. Gels, imbues, and focus have no effect. Size does not increase.)
- Instant: When at 100% Strain (Dodges and high jumps have a drawback of 3 at 100% strain and can kill the player if overused.)
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Summary: This fighting style forces players to prioritize methodical strikes to whittle down their opponent’s health before finishing them off ideally in one final single-hit charged attack before the player dies from strain or low health, making this telegraphed in PVP and a high-risk, high-reward style that can do well in hit-and-run strategies without being easily abusable. Even without fully charging, it’s still a hard-hitting, concentrated fighting style that’s a little smaller and slower than Basic Combat.
Option B: Muscle Coiling
Muscle Coiling
"A fighting style that involves contracting and coiling the muscles tightly through a combination of brute strength and trace magical energy at immense risk to the user's well-being, allowing for the force of the user's attacks to painfully twist the bodies of their opponents."
Mechanics
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The style builds strain when charging energy, effectively a ramping drawback scaling from 0 to 20 that increases damage while slightly negatively impacting speed. Attacks and techniques do not raise strain unlike Thermo Fist.
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Drawback from strain cannot take health below 20% of the player’s base max health (defense doesn’t raise this threshold). The exception to this rule is ultimate techniques and imbued ultimate skills, which can still kill the player and are treated as if the player has an additional 5 drawback. Drawback from other sources will still apply past the threshold.
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Upon reaching maximum strain the next attack technique will
inflict a stack of the new Spiral Fractures status effect, causing the user to bleed for 1% of the attack's damage for 5 seconds. Multi-hit attacks can only apply the status on the first attack. Strain will then instantly reset. The status effect is described at the bottom of the mechanics section. -
Basic attacks are also a lot harder hitting and slower to account for the built-in drawback, this scaling differently with strength weapons to prevent them from being too slow or hard-hitting. In addition to this only 30% of the drawback from strain rounded down is applied to basic attacks. (20 * 0.3 = 6 Drawback)
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Strain is lost passively at a fast pace a reasonable delay after the user hasn’t charged, dodged/high jumped at 100% strain, or attacked as the user is giving their body time to recover.
-
Reaching 100% strain will increase the delay before it begins to passively drain by several seconds.
-
Receiving healing resets strain to 0.
-
The speed of the user’s attacks reduces as strain increases to simulate the user losing control.
-
Dying from using ultimate arts at or near 100% strain causes the user to erupt into a damaging explosion of “red mist”
that twists upwards into a spiral pillar(so roblox ToS doesn’t get angwy), the size and damage scaling based off of level, the player’s strength stat, and charge level. Gear stats do not affect this. -
Techniques used at very low health have a very small chance to cause the player to receive the limb loss effect, with ultimate attacks having a lot higher chance of this result. You're likely already close to death when this would trigger. -
Spiral Fractures: Gives 3 (1.5 for NPCs or 0.5 for Mini-Bosses/Bosses) temporary drawback to the target and reduces blocking power by 5% per tier up to tier 5. This status effect has a 30-second max duration, and each time the status effect is applied, the duration is extended by 20 seconds and the tier is increased by 1. The status effect's tier decreases by 1, and the duration is set to 5 seconds when the status wears off instead of clearing fully. Visually, this could twist the limbs of your opponents at the joints at odd angles, more limbs being more severely twisted at higher levels. For balancing purposes the drawback inflicted cannot reduce an opponent below 15% base max health. Damage dealt to enemies by this status effect's drawback is credited to the last player that inflicted the status effect.
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VFX/SFX
Visual/auditory charging effects are themed around particles coiling around the user's limbs that extends outwards to coil their entire aura at higher levels as well as ‘anime-like fist clenching/leathery or rubbery stretching noises’ (something akin to the sounds Naruto/One Piece/DBZ characters tend to make but less cartoonish) playing when charging and using techniques that transition as your strain increases into the sound of bones cracking.
As strain increases, a passive, translucent, black, and trembling particle effect will increase in visibility on the player’s body and weapons when imbued to represent the player shaking from the strain. Maximum strain is audibly represented by a loud, deeper, and shaky sounding thrumming emanating from the player and the player’s audio being muffled slightly similar to being underwater.
[Base Stats]
(These are all approximations to outline the feel of the style and as such shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Don’t bother doing the math.)
Damage: 1x [min] | 1.225x [50%] | 1.275x [max]
Speed: 0.9x [min] | 0.85x [max]
Size: 0.9x
(Damage increases faster at the lower strain levels to allow the player to be reasonably stronger without filling up their strain fully every attack. Strain changes these stats gradually, not instantly at these breakpoints.) Max damage and 50% strain damage raised to account for not getting damage-boosted 100% strain attacks. The max damage for this is intended to be the highest of all lost fighting styles.
[Base Stats Imbued]
Damage: 1.05x [min] | 1.3x [50%] | 1.375x [max]
Speed: 0.85x [min] | 0.8x [max]
Size: 0.95x
(Stats slightly lowered for imbues compared to the average imbue stats to account for having such high damage. Might be unnecessary.) Max damage raised to account for not getting damage-boosted 100% strain attacks. 50% strain not boosted in order to try to preemptively nerf overpowered imbue meta. The max damage for this is intended to be the highest of all lost fighting styles.
Dodge Reflex
- Special Effect: When at or above 50% strain it can destroy terrain directly above or in front of the player depending on whether the player is high jumping or using dodge reflex and deal a small amount of damage and knockback. (Damage is based on level and knockback is unaffected by anything. Gels, imbues, and focus have no effect. Size does not increase.)
- Instant: When at 100% Strain (Dodges and high jumps have a drawback of 3 at 100% strain and can kill the player if overused)
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Summary: This fighting style, while capable of immense damage, incentivizes the player to only ever fully charge strain to inflict the Spiral Fractures status effect, get instant dodges, or do very hard-hitting charged attacks. Even without fully charging, it's still a hard-hitting, concentrated fighting style that's a little smaller and slower than Basic Combat. Comparatively, it has fewer drawbacks at 100% strain while inflicting a status effect that is thematically fitting. If the status is overpowered (inflicting 15 temporary drawback and 10% weaker blocking power on other players at 5 stacks), the duration can, of course, be reduced.
- Option A
- Option B
- Option B’s Mechanics/Stats with Option A’s Name/VFX/SFX (Spiral Fractures would be renamed.)
- Just make Option A kinda how Impact Fist works and don’t add any of these.
- None of the Above
- Base Fighting Style
- Lost Fighting Style
- Ancient Fighting Style
- Would Fold Vetex Like a Pretzel
- A Little Too Strong
- Basically Perfect
- A Little Too Weak
- Turns You Into Gore Confetti Too Fast