RNG

Bias

Even middle to higher tier skilled players will simply constantly attribute their losses to bad RNG alone, but when their wins come from being on the better side of the dice rolls, they often assume they just dueled better instead of attributing that victory to an arguably easy ride, therefore they don’t analyze what went into their wins, either, which is arguably as important. 

There are players who complain about getting bad RNG when they swung a total of... 3 times. There are players who think they outsmarted an opponent but what ended the match was their 43hp halberd into a 32hp EB into a 20hp katana. I don't exactly blame anyone for thinking these ways - this partly is the result of rather unreliable and sporadic mechanics.

The issue is these disconnected observations can result in players hitting a plateau in progress because they decide there is nothing more to learn from, whether a win or a loss.  It's the same reason why you sometimes can't read a dueler's ability over even 5 duels or tournaments. You need a lot of duel data to find the median within the outlier scenarios.

And yet... RNG at high level can be be the overwhelming factor that dictates who wins and loses a match. 

Our view on what actually happens in a duel would be greatly differ if we watched some type of live indicator of each swing/hit/miss when it happened and which part of the damage range each spell and weapon landed on. We would then have more clarity of what actual pockets impact a win or loss.

Update: Screenshots below were taken prior to the Streak Entropy system that I explain in the Offense section, therefore seeing a hit or miss streak of over 7 rarely ever happens. Wrestling is also now included in hit/miss statistics, which was not the case in these screenshots.

Damage Gaps Tell the Real Story

As stated above, a large majority of players review their matches or the matches they spectate by reading the first RNG stat window that showcases the hit rate percentages. The numbers you should also be looking at are the damage dealt versus damage taken on page 1 of the match results. 

As far as damage gaps go, in my experience, any duel with a duration that is 4-5+ minutes and one player is trailing behind 300-600+ hp damage dealt is probably going to end up in a loss for them. I feel the same if you have a damage gap of 150-300 hp within the first 3 minutes (as shown above). If you are at this much of a gap with similar swing counts - it’s just very unlucky. In these situations you will usually lose against an equally skilled player. Key word is usually. You can pull out wins being this behind, mainly because you never know when dice can flip the other direction, which is often sudden. The challenge is that most skilled players know how to continually take advantage of their better rolls. This can and will happen in any tournament, so accept it. That loss shown in the image above for me was a cash tournament final - it's the way it goes.

Normally, the player connecting more hits is going to have a higher overall damage dealt, but note that two players can also have identical hit rates with very different damage dealt from weapons, due to a couple things such as having opposing swing habits (relying on slower burst weapons versus faster DPS weapons), or Player 1 getting low damage rolls on their hits while Player 2 gets high damage rolls on their equivalent amount of hits. 

That in mind, if you see a similar hit percentage and a noticeable damage gap, then you should explore your total swings (and maybe what spells you are dropping). Swinging 15/30 times will probably deal less damage than 30/60 times in the same period, depending on the weapons used and how your dice rolls are. Sometimes that damage indicator can challenge you to use faster DPS weapons more than slower burst choices if you notice you are losing matches from those gaps more regularly. It just depends on your style and individual patterns.

In most cases though, I find that the back-and-forth or close-call intense duels are the ones in which the total damage dealt and taken are fairly close between two same-skill level players. 

When it comes to hit/miss percentages, the really difficult-to-win duels between two skilled players swinging similarly often end up being around a 15-30+% in hit/miss difference. Although it is worth noting that a long duration duel with even a 5-10% difference can still be a very substantial gap between two players with similar technical skill.

RNG Scenario 1 - Pretty Close

In most duels, you really can’t ask for too much more than being in a 4-6 percentage difference of hit RNG against someone swinging somewhat comparably to you. In most cases, the better the player you are dueling, the more you will feel a difference if that 4-6 percent leans their way. 

In this duel (which ended from Sudden Death more than anything), the reason I am only one hit behind is by taking some more opportunities to swing over the course of the match, but without punching data (Update: punching data is now included) it’s hard to know exactly what each of our total swings are.

As I noted earlier, the thing people kind of misinterpret about even “balanced” matches is how the dice played out through the entirety of the match, or when the streaks occurred. The whole idea of what can make a duel dynamic is how the dice have variation and change sporadically throughout the duration.

For example, was this match originally around 58% vs 32% for the first 6 minutes, and one of us with the lower dice rolls pulled through, and then it flipped the other way to be around 32% vs 58% for the latter 6 minutes and the other one prevailed with the help of Sudden Death, ultimately settling around 48% to 45% after some more variation? Where exactly did I experience this 10 miss streak (Update: This streak length is no longer possible with the entropy system)? Was it when I was being interrupt cycled and needing to get a Greater Heal off, or were those misses when I was trying to be offensive and going for burst halberd or axe hits to start a combo? If that 10 miss streak aligned around the same time my opponent had a 6 hit streak, I could have been severely damaged or mana drained.

These are the types of things you can’t decipher without watching clips.

Also, two players could have near balanced hit rates, and even near the same damage dealt, but one player might have landed more of their hits with leading halberd burst hits into dropping a pre-casted EXP or EB, and the other player might have missed all of their burst attempts (or had low damage rolls when they did connect), and most of their comparable damage and hits were done defensively trading. This is important to note, because generally I think the player getting more high bursts on the front-end and following that with notable axe and viking hits is going to be at a greater advantage.

RNG Scenario 2 - Out The Gate

Okay, you’re going to have fast, annoying losses like this, where the opponent has massively good RNG within a short window of time, right off the beginning of a duel. When you combine it with your opponent also having full mana, they can afford to spam offensive spells between their high hit rate, even if their timing is imperfect, and as long as they are successively hitting your Greater Heal attempts, you are often screwed against these hit streaks.

One reiteration I will make is that when you take high damage streak hits in a small window of time, and you miss your weapon trades and/or GH+punches (or your GH punches are successful but then the tail end of the cast is interrupted with the opponent's weapon hit) you will be forced to MH spam to survive, which will then drain you of mana. Eventually, you get to a place where you are mana locked, not trading enough return damage, and the damage you are taking is higher than the mana available to heal, ultimately leading to a loss.

You basically have to accept these types of matches will happen, and still look for your mistakes in clips. Even in this particular duel, when reviewing a replay clip - I had noticed I went for a swing on my opponent’s GH while I was at 62hp, in which I could have just GHed at the same time - I missed that swing, so my next immediate GH attempt was disrupted since I delayed it, and therefore I was interrupted into a cycle with 20 mana while taking large weapon hits. Would I have lived if I GHed at the same time as my opponent? I can’t possibly know. It may not have been the difference of surviving enough to turn the match, but I do know that finding that one mistake allows me to attempt playing smarter the next time I’m unlucky.

Take in mind, my individual hit RNG was fair in this match and I managed to outswing the opponent despite lower dice in order to try to keep attempting trading back damage - it just wasn’t enough.

At the same time, this is a small amount of data, the rarity here is the 10 hit streak (Update: This streak length is no longer possible with the entropy system). Normally 12 total hits versus 16 total hits is not a lot of data to be hyper concerned about RNG differences, but I do think that when it is fresh off the wall drop with full mana and a hit streak, it is a substantial advantage for a player to have within the first minute. This is even more the case a player is going something like 9-2 versus 2-9 off the front of a duel with full mana.

My only main tip for if you are being heavily streaked within the first 30 seconds to 60 seconds of a duel is to defensively poison your opponent between MH spamming. This is assuming your weapon trade attempts are failing. If you notice 5 or 6 hits in a row early, throw in a Nox between your healing attempts since you also have that full bar of initial mana to work with. With this tactic, you sometimes get an opportunity to GH while your Nox is ticking the opponent and disrupting a spell, or you watch closely for the moment they go for a Cure and immediately try to GH at that point.

Otherwise, if you are on the other, favorable side of this type of RNG, enjoy the breeze and the whining of your opponent.

RNG Scenario 3 - Through The Mud

This is an example of pulling through a grueling match, ultimately to Sudden Death, which in some cases will be your only chance. The thing to stress here is you can win these matches with huge RNG differences, but being behind a massive 500 hp damage gap while I was attempting to trade as much as possible still could not get me out of a mana trap for the entire duration of the duel. This match was comprised of me constantly trying to meditate, going for every dire GH+punch possible, resorting to MH spam when I couldn’t pull off a GH, being out damaged repeatedly, and luckily getting small opportunities to meditate back to 30-40 mana only to be drained back down to near 0 mana over and over and over from healing the damage and missing trades. 

Ultimately, the opponent made a couple heavy mistakes that saved me while redlined, and I was able to out damage them to win in Sudden Death with dice rolls.

Low Mana from Bad RNG 

Couple things to remember if you end up in this position where you are not trading back damage and a majority of your mana is gone from healing:

1) Be very careful to not hit your meditate key until after your opponent swings, so you don’t get an immediate 50% chance of being interrupted immediately and then have a 10 second cool down with no meditation opportunity. They may optionally MA you here, but surprisingly, many don't.

2) If the opponent interrupts your meditation with a weapon, you need to trade back ASAP. Any time you can damage your opponent and get them to heal themselves is more time they aren't dropping offensive spells on you and you are still passively gaining mana.

3) You can optionally hold a GH cursor defensively and force your opponent to tab out and wait for you to target yourself while you’re gaining passive mana to try to get out of the red zone, sometimes this may be the only way to get back in the match. That said, If I am on the offensive side of this tactic, I Nox my opponent to force them to deal with the fact they need to Cure, then when they target the GH on themselves, I have a chance to interrupt their first Cure attempt with a weapon and push them into a tick cycle. I can also Bless here if my opponent is doing this because I know them burning mana on debuffing me again might not be worth it

With those tips in mind, just know you will normally lose a duel with a wide discrepancy if the player is even semi-compotent, and per the theme here - you need to accept that, but still try to apply those tips in an effort to turn it. 

RNG Scenario 4 - Ah, Fuck Man

It’s really fucking hard to pull out of a fast match this lopsided and with this wide of a damage gap. One important thing to reiterate in relation to this scenario specifically is that wrestling stats do not factor into these statistics. The reason that’s notable is that I am normally keeping my swing rate the same as my opponent or higher, yet in this case, in order to conserve my draining mana I attempted several GH+punches - all which failed, and none of those swings are in the data, so my actual total swings might be comparable to the opponent.

So definitely take your punches in consideration when looking at these matches where you are getting the severe short end of the stick. If you are dueling properly, you are looking for any GH+punch opportunities to save mana on healing when getting decimated by having low RNG.

Again, the main thing to note here is the damage gap, my opponent dealing 4x as much damage as me within under 2 minutes. These matches are outliers, but you’ll notice them more prominently based on their annoyance.

I do think it can depend on the overall skill level of your opponent whether or not you get out of matches this lopsided - but I can say that if you are fighting an above average or high-tier duelers combined with this type of RNG, it’s almost certainly a loss.

RNG Scenario 5 - Swing It Out

This is an example of feeling my lower RNG in real time and trying to swing my way out of it. Despite a significant 7.3% lower hit rate after 12 minutes, I am only 3 hits behind, effectively helping to keep the overall damage gap lower than it could have been. Keeping up with these hits is the only way I pulled myself into Sudden Death. SD could have gone either way in my opinion since the opponent and I strategize it pretty similarly, but it happened to lean in my favor.

Another thing to look for in your footage is again where the streaks happen. If the opponent’s 5 hit streak would have lined up with my 7 miss streak, I would have very likely died earlier in the match, but that wasn’t the case in reviewing the footage.

Also note what your average hit damage is based on - sometimes it is an indicator that you used more halberds/axe hits if your average weapon damage is in the mid 20s, or might be an indicator that you used more katanas/viking hits if your average weapon damage is in the teens. You will find that this isn't always the case, based on potentially getting low dice damage on halberds or high dice damage on katanas with such a wonky overall range, but knowing what weapons you are habitually preferring is good knowledge.

RNG Scenario 6 - Find Your Misplay

There’s not a ton to study in this match besides that it was a losing battle for me after barely surviving the 9 streak and being so behind in damage based on bad rolls. A positive to consider in a match like this is realizing I lived even 6+ minutes, dealing out only half my opponent’s damage and being stuck in a heal/mana trap.

I share this example in specific because for me it’s interesting if you find misplays in these already unlucky situations. If you are a player that thinks they hit a plateau and want to feel like you can still improve, then finding a fault within a probable loss is how to do it.

When reviewing the clip before I died, we had both hit each other with halberds at the same time (which you kind of want to avoid doing). The wisest thing would be for us to both GH right away, but I casted a MA just barely late that I knew wouldn’t disrupt my opponent’s GH in time. I canceled the MA and went for a GH (my opponent had already healed by this point), but that half a second meant that my GH could now be interrupted by his weapon - and so I was hit with an axe and put into an interrupt cycle, inevitably leading to a weapon streak that soon ended the match, starting from being only 60hp, all because of one half second misplay.

Would me casting that GH instead of going for an MA have been the difference of surviving and winning the duel? Again, probably NOT, but it is possible. The mentality of believing you could have done something different is important because most players get so frustrated by this type of match that they give up on thinking they have control over anything.

A final thing to consider regarding your combos and hits… One of the more aggravating things that can happen with you in a duel is multiple failed “setups” for combos. You might have 6 consecutive setups you land, some type of spell/weapon combo that is dependent on a follow-up essential hit later in the mix or an uninterrupted offensive spell, and you can’t get either of those last things to line up even though the would win the duel. Meanwhile, you might be defensively in a position where you are working to make sure the opponent never gets a chance to even have a single set up, and then when they finally do get their only set up of the entire fight, it aligns for them on their first attempt and you die. 

It’s frustrating. It happens more than you’d think it should. It however, will not be the norm over the course of many, many duels. So have many, many duels.

When The Dice Are Your Friend 

Most of the perspectives in these above RNG scenarios focus on how to deal with bad dice rolls throughout your match as opposed to how to make use of good dice rolls. This is because I don’t think there is too much to strategize when the dice favor you if you already understand the basics of cycling and swinging in order to negate any chance your opponent has to GH and most players' complaints come from being on the lower end of rolls.

If I had to give a tip for getting favorable dice, though,  it’s that you want to take advantage of the leverage over your opponent’s mana that you get by continuing to out damage their healing. You want to apply pressure to your opponent while they are meditating in this case. The mistake I see players make is doing this when their mana advantage is only 20ish. Do not do this. If you continue to apply pressure against every opponent meditation attempt with a small advantage of 20 mana, you will often find yourself in a situations where it is not enough mana to finish your opponent, and your opponent will eventually trade back some damage hits that then throw you both into a dice war where you are both sub 40hp and sub 30 mana, not allowing each other to GH. This becomes a ping pong match highly reliant on weapon hits and interrupt spells, and you will die as much as you succeed going for these greedy kills with low life. That said, if you enjoy that gamble - then go for it, but if you want more consistency of wins, it’s a bad habit. 

I keep the pressure on when my mana lead is more substantial, such as 30~40+.

Modified T2A Issues

I have seen a few conversations that try to figure out why exactly these mechanics feel so weapon dependent or have so many annoying moments of imbalance.  I think the answer is pretty simple - T2A precast era, in most iterations whether classic or emulated, did not have reliable mid-speed weapons that swung between a halberd and katana, while often delivering the same damage as a halberd… not until this server, from what I know.

Therefore, it used to be that within duels you had moments of choosing slow swings with burst damage, or faster swings with low damage. If you chose to be spammy with your weapons, your only option was a katana, which would work great for extra potential interrupts, but wasn’t chunking massive damage. This meant you had to rely more on spell combos and spell damage. You could still lead a combo with a high burst halberd, but the follow up didn’t have the possibility of a mid-speed axe swing that hit for huge follow-up chunks of 27hp. 

The other additional factor is how spell recovery timing works combined with the “cycle” system of rotating 5 second timers for interrupts. I think mixing this with what I call the potential “mini-halberds” (axes/viking sword) is what creates these pretty bonkers scenarios.

In general, the damage range of weapons is too wide, in my view. I do agree that some range can create a more dynamic skill ceiling in forcing different decisions for different damage hits, but if the same weapon hitting 3 times can be the difference of 36 total damage versus 129 total damage, I think there is a problem.

What It's Like (Video)

(Video taken before streak entropy)