This seems to be reliably doing more than trip lag. I don't think vault needs to do more than trip lag ever, not on a sleeping person. The nature of a victim's situation when they are being vaulted in the first place makes only trip lag incredibly good already, any more is extreme I think.

I was convinced this was always only trip lag, additionally, Nepenthe had non-committally indicated this being the case in the past.

But after Xyfa's comments about being sure on Modaisen that he *always* got the next command after vault, and combing through a bunch of logs, I'm inclined to think otherwise.

I've done a bunch of fire a-p's and my experience told me to get them behind a closed door, because it was just trip. Xyfa (having played two strong a-ps recently) thought so on his fire too, until playing Modaisen. Is it possibly a dex comparison? Or even a random 2~2.5? Either way I think permalag off of this skill should require a wasted command on the victim's part.

I wouldn't say it is guaranteed next attack, because it isn't, but it is damn close to every time as a drow.

As a low Dex ap it doesn't usually give you next attack, and you are generally better dual wielding and excising pebble to boulder or even crushing hand or whatever it is called. Neither of them is guaranteed either but you have a better chance.

Personally I think vault should be a hero level skill.

But I'd also make it more reliable on awake enemies. It's hard enough to pull off on an awake person what with the advance lag, so if they are still standing there, you deserve a high chance of hitting them, in my view.

If you think so too, then that confirms it as far as I'm concerned.

I always kind of assumed from the big bleed on this skill that the intent was for the target to have a good shot to get away if they were well prepared and chose their battleground well (otherwise being nearly a death sentence if you have to open a door to flee), and then to have a struggle to survive the bleed/poison/plague. And that is how it works on Fire.

But if the lag is really altered by dex like that, I guess not. Seemed that way from Modaisen, but left me scratching my head in disbelief because, honestly, it's kind of dumb? I still think it might be something of an oversight, the skill was coded long before Spine was a thing, and Spine was designed apparently without at least Daev knowing dex changed anything on vault but bleed damage. I personally think this should just be trip, nothing more or less.

I do like the idea of vault working better on awake targets, I'd probably quarter the amount of time it takes, and I wouldn't mind dex having big lag in that case, especially since they aren't getting as much out of spine as giants anyway.

I'd be terrified to use a spear in general at hero given what it opens you up to, so that'd actually be a great time for vault to become faster and more reliable or something.

But I seem to recall that reducing didn't help my fire giant vault much.

Spear doesn't really have major downsides at hero imho. Most of the things you'd expect to cause problems (Eg kot) don't really, in practice. Taking that example, it means you try not to aim at the assassin (your hit all from blood lust and your spells will do enough) and you can flee if by some miracle he breaks your wrist.

Maybe poisons would be a danger but poisoners are relatively scarce (and as a scarab hero you can largely ignore them too).

Spear actually tanks pretty well and your damage is reasonable. It isn't burst damage but it is steady, and you can often toe to toe a fire giant with equal preps.

What is totally useless now is lashes of the slave. As tsal I switched to whip in order to be free to cleave the lich, and lashes did decimates to the huntress etc when I had over 100 charges. And it didn't prog much either. I'm not talking about unholy prog, just the prog from the skill.

It was nerfed way too hard. I actually think they should have kept in its ability to remove no disarm shields etc. Just limited the damage to (say) dismembers.

There's nothing wrong with vault lag, even if AP always gets the next command. It takes a lot of game knowledge and skill to play an AP well and there are a lot of combos that can utterly destroy you still.

We need more asymmetries, more power differentials, more opportunities for excitement. Normalising everything to a baseline that you deem "balanced" will kill every last bit of fun that this game has to offer.

It's usually already a bad situation. I see no reason to add so much lag to this skill.

But still time to time wimpy works and victim escapes prior AP does next command.

Even trip lag was/is stretching it on a victim maladicted to hell icluding bleeding and with a big chunk of their hps gone.

2+ rounds... beyond silly.