Para/stun lock protection in PvP?

    Hi there,


    I'm playing Stella and I noticed a strange thing when chaining paralyse skills in PvP and maybe someone knows what's going on.


    I also uploaded a 9 sec clip of an example:

    https://youtu.be/pyN7R4oT9dU


    I'm catching someone with Soul Scream and try to chain it with Black Morass, but so far this always fails.

    When I'm using Black Morass in the clip I'm causing damage and the combo counter goes up twice (usually this doesn't happen if the hit gets dodged), but it won't paralyse him and he is able to dodge out of it afterwards.

    Do I need more attack speed and a better timing to make the switch between Soul Scream and Black Morass work or is there some para/stun lock protection preventing this?

    Sometimes the stun lock works for me as well, but it's not reliable when the opponent spams dodge while I'm switching to the next skill.


    About the balancing, the para lock is frustrating to play against, because it is a slow death that often is kinda inevitable once you got caught by it. Tho I would argue that you did something wrong if that happened to you and her ultimate relies on it too.

    To counter the para buff you have to avoid melee combat until it is on cooldown - the latency often prevents Stella from hitting a running target with the buff.

    And the other para skills have to get channeled and there is a lead time due to the animation where you can dodge out of range (the range is kinda low as well). Additionally Stella has to be stationary which makes her highly vulnerable to other players in FFA and their insta kills.


    So every character is op in their own way.

    A charged Erwin snipe is considered op by many players - especially after you got caught by his para skill (which again I would argue would be your own mistake).

    Lilly can kill you in a second with her ult combo (unless you have more than 75k hp) and she has the tornado on top which is like a para.

    And Haru has these massive AoEs that clear half of the map - there is a reason why everyone picks her.

    Quote from Redshire

    Lilly can kill you in a second with her ult combo (unless you have more than 75k hp) and she has the tornado on top which is like a para.

    I mean, is it even possible to argue that Lilly is anything but crap in PVP? Sure if you hit someone with her ult, it only deals slightly less damage than someone else's ult, but it applies a chain, so it warns people that the hits is coming and they have like 2 seconds to just walk out of it.


    And yeah Die-phoon can instantly kill people, but as long as they have super armour, they can simply walk through it.


    Lilly just doesn't have useful abilities in PVP.

    From personal testing in D6, Para chaining from different skills does not seem to be reliably possible. When multiple paralysis effects overlap, it seems like when the first one expires it removes all cases of paralysis...or something?


    Cases attempted:


    Sonic Pulse -> Soul Cry - occasionally works if soul cry knocks up the target, otherwise target is able to escape.


    Spirit Swamp -> Soul Cry - occasionally works if soul cry knocks up.


    Sonic Pulse -> Spirit Swamp - does not work reliably, target escapes the way shown in OP video


    Soul Cry -> Spirit Swamp - does not work, target escapes as shown in the OP video


    Soul Cry -> Bass Wave - occasionally works, but every once in a while the target will have the opportunity to escape.


    Soul Cry -> Sonic Pulse - seems to be the only one that actually works, maybe due to the extremely fast tick rate of Sonic Pulse.

    Quote from Cater

    Sure if you hit someone with her ult, it only deals slightly less damage than someone else's ult, but it applies a chain, so it warns people that the hits is coming and they have like 2 seconds to just walk out of it.

    In theory you can dodge everything, but if you don't pay attention for a sec something like this might happen:



    How bad is that chain really compared to Haru's bright yellow circle for example? And if you don't pay attention against Stella you still might have a chance to dodge the final blow, because she won't insta kill you like that and if she channels the swamp she might get interrupted by someone else (of course this doesn't make her weak).

    Quote from Cater

    And yeah Die-phoon can instantly kill people, but as long as they have super armour, they can simply walk through it.

    True true, you can just ignore that thing - it's not scary at all (even tho this is basically the only thing that gets me killed in a regular FFA match).


    Quote from Nitros

    Probably just a synchronization issue. What you see is not what actually happens on the server.

    Maybe you are right, the animation to get the swamp going is kinda long as well when you have to reposition yourself before.

    I maybe should try to chain it with an uncharged orb song next time (when para version of it is skilled).

    Like Soul Cry -> Orb Song -> Swamp

    Alright, small update - I did some tests in D6 with friends today and it doesn't just seem to be a synchronization issue.


    If you start paralysing with the spirit swamp the target has no way to dodge out of it no matter how hard he spamms dodge.

    If you start paralysing with soul scream and try to extend the para with the spirit swamp the target won't be paralyzed by it for some time (about the first two hits of spirit swamp).


    So there is actually somewhat of para lock protection in place. Trying to be smart and going for a para lock with spirit swamp as follow up is actually a quite bad idea, because the channeling makes you highly vulnerable to any kind of counter attack - and for the other classes these are usually insta kills.

    Edited once, last by Redshire ().