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Post by Methes on Feb 25, 2020 13:40:09 GMT
Almost can't believe bale wrote that thick wall that is quite irritating to read but I actually agree with most of it; perhaps because some of it has been influenced by our lockerroom talk. You'll see the tank damage skyrocket when people get XR weapons. They vastly outrank Casters against any dangerous monster; oneshot crit trash, and cleave whole packs. Good tanks even pre-XR weapons were high quality goods; they just took more knowledge of damage types to pull off, and gearing was harder. Well-built 2h tanks will clear trash faster than casters due to the nerfs in Hells bale mentioned as well. Consider that dual-physical weapon types were so good they had to be removed from the game (though this was probably done more so with intent to balance weapon selection, not to nerf tanks but point stands). Increasing KB damage across the board will only hurt new players; rich, smart or otherwise well prepared ones will simply gear around it and when it becomes impossible to gear around (see, Limbo has high esoteric and divine Kickbacks...); it will simply pigeonhole party setup and gear selection in a terrible way. I would not go that way, at all. I agree that many shields are outdated, but even if they made your character nigh-invulnerable (they do, with proper gearing and building) people won't choose them because damage is more valuable after you reach a breakpoint. Even if you die occasionally, it will be worth it to do a huge chunk of extra damage 90% of the time rather than get a minor setback every other run. Shields need something other than defenses to attract users past a certain point, after that you will only use them if you're a high utility character that can't pull off 2h well (shifterlash - we'd 2h these if whips were 2h-able, lash, stormlord to name a few). I'd rather see shield/dualwield get buffed by existing feats that you can gain by reading a dropped book pandect-style (hey, another goal to fight for, similar to caster books being a really exciting milestone) and limiting some of the existing 2h damage behind the same thing - and nerf XR weapon damage slightly, while nerfing Limbo mob HPs slightly (and I assume Mechanus when it arrives if they are similarly dodgy fellows as Limbo mobs). Though I'd appreciate an endgame zone with nigh 0 conceal and sr that just sport big BEEF machine-style. You know, you could do a feat that makes you do an extra attack per round as a "shield bash", you could do a quick action like rogues that does damage or stuns/dazes; all shield users could get the warchanter taunt thing and warchanters could get something else in return for losing this speciality (they'd still be able to feat it in though ^^).. 2h damage could be nerfed to 40% physical 20% non-physical types; dualwield could get one extra attack, etc. I'd use a slab of beef with 15/- dr as a base balancing dummy, below that DR dualwielding is supreme and above that 2h is supreme; and balance numbers as such. Dualwielding gets to take extra KB damage and reign supreme in terms of damage dealt majority of the game, where 2handers get to shine when their big blades cut into boss tier enemies. -- Now weapon buffing is a tricky one. I think you already had this right if you let go of the spell slot requirements on them and let casters buff everyone with the cast of a button after a certain point in time has been reached, such as Legendary Levels where people start to have a lot of weapons and *require* a lot of weapons. The Roleplaying 2d6 bonus we get for going through the manual labour of buffing people is vastly outranked by the inconvenience 3d30 penalty we get for going through it. We already have the spellslots required to buff everyones' required weapons 95% of the time and the metagaming value we could get by optimizing against those low level slots is negligible. Your first point sounds more like XR weapons are too powerful, not necessarily two handed damage is. I wouldn't base SnB/DW/TH balance on specific weapon class. Increasing KB for TH will not nerf new players. New players should go SnB due to lack of demi/PL powercreep. It would hurt not-super rich players using TH against KB monsters. Also you saying increasing KB for TH would pigeonhole player choices into a certain position, what does KB do now to DWs or monk DWs then? They recieve 1.4x or even 2x the KB THs do. How fair is it to them? Does it not pigeonhole them too and force players to chose TH? Pit Fiend has 5/- bludgeoning, that's what I considered in my math and still THs are superior to DWs in many categories, not just damage.
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Post by woqued on Feb 25, 2020 14:05:26 GMT
Your first point sounds more like XR weapons are too powerful, not necessarily two handed damage is. I wouldn't base SnB/DW/TH balance on specific weapon class. Increasing KB for TH will not nerf new players. New players should go SnB due to lack of demi/PL powercreep. It would hurt not-super rich players using TH against KB monsters. Also you saying increasing KB for TH would pigeonhole player choices into a certain position, what does KB do now to DWs or monk DWs then? They recieve 1.4x or even 2x the KB THs do. How fair is it to them? Does it not pigeonhole them too and force players to chose TH? Pit Fiend has 5/- bludgeoning, that's what I considered in my math and still THs are superior to DWs in many categories, not just damage. I know that is the *current* situation. Sorry, I wrote down different things than what I thought I did - phrased poorly in my previous post. I would use a slab of beef with 15/- dr as a base balancing dummy, and -- Change numbers around so that -- dualwielding is superior up to 15/- dr, and 2handers would pick up from there. And this would not just be physical, but all types. And yes, my first point is that XR weapons are too powerful. 2handed damage would be fairly alright actually if XR weapons were brought in line, and we bring dualwielders and 1handers up. Surely you agree that you need to take existing item balance into account when you are twirling around related things such as dual/2h/1h damage. Increasing KB for TH will nerf new players wanting to play TH. Why should TH be only reserved for top highend? My suggestion from previous post was to have dualwielders pay for their post-change bigger damage by having to deal with bigger kickback. Currently dualwield is just shit, but I don't think punishing 2handers with increased KB is the way.
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Post by Methes on Feb 25, 2020 14:19:08 GMT
Basing damage on DR is quite a good idea, but I'm not sure what's the "average" DR in the module. I know changing mob stats is quite a chore so it would have to be based on current numbers. Otherwise not a bad idea of balancing DW/TH damage. Each one would shine against different enemies, enhancing variability.
Yes, I agree and as I said I have a feeling preXR weapon damage is fine as is for THs. As multiple of you pointed out, XRs are a problem.
I'm not sure what "post-change bigger damage" you're talking about as I've not suggested any damage increase. Unless you mean the eventual outcome of either increasing DW AB (as some people suggested) or decreasing TH AB (as I've suggested) which would translate into _slight_ absolute or relative DMG increase of DWs.
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Post by FunkySwerve on Feb 25, 2020 14:29:22 GMT
been hearing this about wizards for literally years. And will for several more, in all likelihood, as the disparity with sorcs is based on spellslots vs spell utility, and spell utility is based in large part on individual runs. Once we have all the elder evils, we can do a bit more tweaking. If we wanted to do something more quickly, we could reduce the amount of bonus spellslots sorcs get, but nerfs generate more complaints, and there's no rush to implement them given that, as you say, the 'meta' shifts all the time, and re-documenting constant balance tweaks made after each area set release would waste inordinate amounts of dev time. Part of the reason your posts are so long is that you say the same thing several times over. It's not productive. The short way to say this is, 'I disagree'. Let me be equally succinct. You're wrong. It is precisely this kind of analytical breakdown that leads to useful discussions and balancing edits. How about just saying 'I don't like the suggestion of buff auras', and then offering some support? I'm really not trying to be rude, but given the wall of text in your next post, you need to realize that at some point soon the people who make balancing decisions are going to find better things to do with their time than sift through massive amounts of text looking for something useful or productive. As I assume you are posting at least in part to advocate certain positions - as you do just below - it would behoove you to learn to self-edit. These two things are linked - hence the ab increase planned in Mechanus. DPS requires being upright. I suspect you're having trouble seeing the forest for the trees after having spent so much time running just Limbo. This is a revisionist history for which I don't see much support. The current '2her Age' you refer to was ushered in by a number of things having little to do with shields, like making 2hers more useful by applying a large damage boost. And amazingly, they got more popular, again demonstrating my point that none of this is inevitable as you so pessimistically claimed. It's not terribly persuasive to say that shields are the default, and then divide HG's tank eras into two, neither of which has shields as best. Why does it matter if there's a hypothetical 'default setting' of shields being OP, when they have not been preferred in either of the last two eras as defined by you? Is this just rhetoric aimed at discouraging edits because you don't want to reinc, or were you going to make some deeper point? For my part, shields only matter if monster abs are high enough to land a lot of blows without them. We deliberately kept mob abs low in Limbo, where we were working to shift away from caster primacy in the last batch of endruns. Also why we've talked about offhand ac bonuses for dual-weilders, as an alternative to reducing the 2her damage boost or limiting it to certain damage types. Lastly, understand that our goal is always to make multiple types of characters - including tanks - fun and useful in a party. It's for that reason that we started adding mob types with much higher ab than the area norm. That's yet one more dial we can adjust to find a good balance. Funky
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Post by FunkySwerve on Feb 25, 2020 14:50:45 GMT
if this is pessimistic it's cuz there's no positive reaction? how is the grandiose schemes oft presented in OPs such as this or the author of the OP-linked-thread, how are these things taken more seriously or more favorably than me saying adjust this % adjust that % undo that change undo that change Because he presents arguments, support, and concrete suggestions, takes the time to organize it coherently, and does not engage in fuzzy thinking, overblown rhetoric, or self-contradiction (see, e.g., 'tanks were never a joke...tanks were a joke for one period only). I honestly didn't even notice the 'add attacks' suggestion in my reading of your first post. It's something we have discussed but not implemented because they get added at increasinly lower ab. Pushing them at top ab would, if memory serves, require a plugin edit, and we have too much plugin debt at the moment as it is. Also the issue of increased engine load resulting from more procs. There's more effective levers, though I'm not ruling out adding some attacks at some point, especially if we also add some unusually low-ac mobs. Funky
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Post by FunkySwerve on Feb 25, 2020 14:53:14 GMT
The purpose of OP is not to fix all issues at once, definitely not broken classes that need individual approach. Sword+Board vs Dual-Wield vs Two-Handed is a general problem that needs general balancing. After you've done that and you've created a standard for damage/survivability, go ahead and individually balance each broken class and quasi. This. Well stated. Funky
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Post by chirality on Feb 25, 2020 15:15:16 GMT
lol i don't get it, i'm not the one who made any broad claim such as "tanks were once a joke". literally all i did was say that that isn't true. the following sentence "one period only" obviously isn't contradictory in a meaningful way. Fine, "it's correct that tanks were once a joke, but that period was extremely short, and you completely miss the point and are incorrect by using as a thesis the fact that "tanks were a joke in the past until recent edits buffed them vs casters". Which, not to accuse anyone of being obtuse, is quite obviously exactly what the OP was implying. but if i were to slip something like that in my posts it would be torn apart for lack of proper evidence and analysis. lol. all i'm saying is that it's wrong. but that's overblown rhetoric? it's really hard not to be overblown or rhetorical when i'm responding to very overblown and rhetorical claims?
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Post by FunkySwerve on Feb 25, 2020 15:19:23 GMT
Increasing KB damage across the board will only hurt new players; rich, smart or otherwise well prepared ones will simply gear around it and when it becomes impossible to gear around (see, Limbo has high esoteric and divine Kickbacks...); it will simply pigeonhole party setup and gear selection in a terrible way. I would not go that way, at all. I agree. That said, high kb on select mobs with an instakill vuln is not out of the question, especially in endgame areas where newer players don't venture. Some interesting ideas, but without more exposition I don't think I'd go with any. If the motivation in nerfing XR weapon damage is to make caster damage spells more viable, I think it's a bit short-sighted, but I can't tell as you haven't explained your reasons. I'm open to these ideas but we need to figure out a sweet spot for median monster ab first, I think. Any reason you picked 15/-? Guestimate? Wouldn't that vary based on weapon tier, and doesn't that make this kind of approach problematic? As an aside, I find it weird that people complain about tank primacy and then suggest boosting one of the original edits that, along with more liberal applications of immunities, made them endgame-competitive when the Hells were new. That said, I get wanting to save the headaches, but that's why autocast. Beyond that I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. If the 'RP' bonus is outranked by 'inconvenience', people wont' use them. Am I missing something? Funky
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Post by chirality on Feb 25, 2020 15:24:53 GMT
like where is the evidence offered to support this claim? about tanks being a joke for some meaningful length period in HG's meta, or about shields being underserved, or honestly about a whole heck of a lot. i see a very basic damage chart, the same type of which has been created over and over (i dont have the link anymore to that one from the original 2h% debate days, you know, the one from the weap update package times, the gsheet with like the 5 big baddie hell/abyss uncrittable mobs that shows a dmg output breakdown between comparable classes and the penetration of each mobs stats) i dont see a whole lot of support for a lot of this stuff. again the dmg chart, PFs? so the chart that governs this thread, for speaking about endgame balance discussion, is showing the damage of a ces...on a PF....ok...what is the value of the Str axis, i don't get it, other than to show AB/dmg curve? "shadowdancers are op already" where is this coming from and why is it not being called out? is it monks are OP or is it SD are op or both? is SD op without monk? if anything the only thing they're especially op with is limbo dropping weapons, in limbo! which really says more about 2h%, ele/exo buffs on OP weaps, then it does about how long it takes to beat down a PF with a ces hellweap!
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Post by FunkySwerve on Feb 25, 2020 15:31:52 GMT
lol i don't get it, i'm not the one who made any broad claim such as "tanks were once a joke". literally all i did was say that that isn't true. the following sentence "one period only" obviously isn't contradictory in a meaningful way. Fine, "it's correct that tanks were once a joke, but that period was extremely short, and you completely miss the point and are incorrect by using as a thesis the fact that "tanks were a joke in the past until recent edits buffed them vs casters". Which, not to accuse anyone of being obtuse, is quite obviously exactly what the OP was implying. but if i were to slip something like that in my posts it would be torn apart for lack of proper evidence and analysis. lol. all i'm saying is that it's wrong. but that's overblown rhetoric? it's really hard not to be overblown or rhetorical when i'm responding to very overblown and rhetorical claims? No. The 'tanks' contradiction was only an example of a self-contradiction, not the rhetoric, lack of organization, or the rest. It was, however, facepalmy enough that I stopped reading your post a short while later. You need to value your reader's time enough to make your posts coherent, at a minimum. The useful bits - like your suggestion of added attacks - get completely lost, otherwise, and I value my time too much to spend it sifting through hay looking for a needle. Also, FWIW, tanks were severely underpowered in early HG once we started editing spells en masse. The pendulum is always swinging. Funky
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Post by Methes on Feb 25, 2020 15:46:11 GMT
like where is the evidence offered to support this claim? about tanks being a joke for some meaningful length period in HG's meta, or about shields being underserved, or honestly about a whole heck of a lot. i see a very basic damage chart, the same type of which has been created over and over (i dont have the link anymore to that one from the original 2h% debate days, you know, the one from the weap update package times, the gsheet with like the 5 big baddie hell/abyss uncrittable mobs that shows a dmg output breakdown between comparable classes and the penetration of each mobs stats) i dont see a whole lot of support for a lot of this stuff. again the dmg chart, PFs? so the chart that governs this thread, for speaking about endgame balance discussion, is showing the damage of a ces...on a PF....ok...what is the value of the Str axis, i don't get it, other than to show AB/dmg curve? "shadowdancers are op already" where is this coming from and why is it not being called out? is it monks are OP or is it SD are op or both? is SD op without monk? if anything the only thing they're especially op with is limbo dropping weapons, in limbo! which really says more about 2h%, ele/exo buffs on OP weaps, then it does about how long it takes to beat down a PF with a ces hellweap! The OP is not speaking about endgame balance discussion, it's trying to tackle general weapon wielding balance discussion. As such it has to overly simplify things as using tons of data and creating essentially a study (which would be best) is not how I want to spend my time. I used a PF as a general "tank" target any tank should be able to cope with, either alone or with UUU. Bashing barbazu has no point if it's killed a few seconds later by casters. What you might notice if you read HGX data is that this "tank" target has actually very little DR. 5/bludgeoning, 10/slashing, 15/piercing or something like that. That's it. It shows that measures have been already taken to balance more attacks vs. bigger punch and still the imbalances are present. Mobs that have higher DR make the difference even bigger, while there's not much space to go lower in DR. Using a bit of thought would indicate that 68 STR is a somewhat average value of endgame STR tanks while keeping sane DEX. STR 44 is the same ending STR but for dexers. Those numbers are there only for my curiosity, really, as I try not to adress STR vs DEX issue. Either way, the differences are not as big as one would think, especially if you think about how PWSpecialization makes STR bonus less important in the overall dmg package, same as other dmg buffs available to dexers. Shadowdancers being OP was a joke. The only one who posted a build utilizing SD's full glass-cannon capabilities was ssjpoliwhirl who I will greatly miss.
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Post by woqued on Feb 25, 2020 16:09:13 GMT
Motivation of nerfing XR weapon damage is that the jump in power is too large from the previous-strongest to XR. It's not just caster damage viableness that is hurt; its also other instakill mechanics like assassins, CS rangers etc. You went and nerfed shifters and also hit druids/clerics hard because they cleaned stuff up too fast and "too dumbly" in Hells; XR weapon tanks feel even stronger than what that used to be, at least they needed save dropping or sr dropping team mechanics to complement and knowing vulnerabilities. Thus, feeling the need to nerf. I agree I am potentially shortsighted on tank damage balance due to being biased towards casters in tank/caster balance discussions; I find caster gameplay more engaging and exciting and hate the meta being throw 4 tank bots at a spawn. Mechanus couldn't come any sooner! /insert biased rant on Hell caster nerfs
15/- is a guestimate that most normal mobs don't surpass in their vulnerable types and some bosses/dr-durable mobs do; thus less DR value tweaking required after a change across the board. We had a large list of mob DRs gathered across the module and that felt like a decent midway point from memory (mostly on Limbo mobs to be completely honest) - not sure if the DR's were nerfed since then. Maybe it's not a good vantage point for balance steering, but since DR hits dualwielding hard thats where I started from. I *know* it wasn't too hard to compile a list of weapon tier x against y average damage per hit and list amount of attacks vs generic random mob and key target mob in hell/abyss/limbo since I made that list on the side to provide numbers for a then-ongoing balance discussion and theorycrafting for best weapons and damage types for given runs, but those were on my old computer that is currently inaccessible.. Poli & Raj made separate spreadsheets for different things. Anyhow, based on those memories a gut-guestimate.
DR tankiness especially on critical immune monsters ramps up really fast for dualwielders so the DR number where they are competitive should be fairly high. Of course 15 /- DR only in a vacuum is a pretty vague number since we also need to take immunity, soak and indeed weapon tiers into account. I would guess Mechanus is the first zone that is balanced around "We expect melee damage to come from XR weapons at this point"; and maybe Limbo now that some lunatics farmed it for years and years. 15/- dr is a pretty small number in sub-60% immunity environments for XR weapons I suppose, and fairly high for a dualwielder using buffed DB weapons. 6-72 is a small number //edit: against crit immunes// and a decent chunk of rolls end up being 0 0 0 against a lowly 40% 15/- unless we have ways of reducing DR/imms.
I'll come back to the thread in a better state of mind later, currently preoccupied with other stuff.
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Post by woqued on Feb 25, 2020 16:36:27 GMT
Ahh, missed the last line about weapon buffs. I mean, people will use weapon buffs even if you made us jump through hoops while doing it as long as we are addicted to the game just to gain that power boost. We will dance and sing a rain dance before every run for that extra power. Heck, we'd do a quick Elysium run before Limbo to get 4 dice on our weapons extra for the duration of the entire Limbo. But I think that will eventually make people miss the game less every time they go through that rain dance to get those weapon buffs, and eventually that memory of "urgh, this again" at the start of every run will deter them from logging in - there's no inherent gain in player enjoyability in making us do a rain dance before every run as opposed to just having an autocast feature do it in one click on all our weapons for, say, a numbered base cost. Insert 4 flame weapon spell slots into the slot machine and it will buff every weapon in 4 players' inventories with flame damage on it.
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Post by FunkySwerve on Feb 25, 2020 17:33:17 GMT
Motivation of nerfing XR weapon damage is that the jump in power is too large from the previous-strongest to XR. It's not just caster damage viableness that is hurt; its also other instakill mechanics like assassins, CS rangers etc. You went and nerfed shifters and also hit druids/clerics hard because they cleaned stuff up too fast and "too dumbly" in Hells; XR weapon tanks feel even stronger than what that used to be, at least they needed save dropping or sr dropping team mechanics to complement and knowing vulnerabilities. Thus, feeling the need to nerf. I agree I am potentially shortsighted on tank damage balance due to being biased towards casters in tank/caster balance discussions; I find caster gameplay more engaging and exciting and hate the meta being throw 4 tank bots at a spawn. Mechanus couldn't come any sooner! /insert biased rant on Hell caster nerfs I generally resist this kind of adjustment for a number of reasons. We could get very bogged down with them, and in this case it requires adding about 45 lines to our item updater, which tracks item versions, and which grows whenever we retro an item. I also resist it because the numbers we picked for XRs are still, in my estimation, likely to be about right...once we get to Atropus. HOWEVER, I did not project the massive development slowdown resulting mainly from my RL obligations. So, the value of an interim tweak is higher. And, if I'm right about the final values of XRs, we could simply remove the updater code when we edit them back. So, my concern about shortsightedness may not be so large. And these edits would be relatively simple to do. What edits, per damage type, would you suggest, and why? That's fair - I'm mostly concerned with altering future statting to find sweet spots. I also realize what a difficult question I asked. Here's some data for you. We use a 'Core Stat' sheet to scale critters by intended area. For Limbo, the base lines are thus: Each of those is a point towards a variable set on the critter that gives 5/-. So, if Limbo critters, on average, have 10 physical resists total, they have 50/- spread over 3 resists - Slash, Bludgeon, and Pierce. With Elements, it's 55 points, spread over 5, and exos 30 over 4. Of course, it's not quite so simple. To create variation among mobs and build in some class-variety, there are 'tank types', which add a lot of resist. Blue Slaads are an example of this. You will note that 'every other slaad fits the 11 ele 6 exo template. Minis and Randoms (the minis that don't always appear) add 2 ele and 1 exo. Bosses vary widely, but often add a lot of exo, from 5-10, and a little ele. There are many different tank types, and this is something newer we are tinking with - hells is much more uniform. Others include ac, deflect ac, natural ac, caster (ie, dispellable buffs, generally), soak, temp hp, conceal, conceal (incorporeal), crit (immune), extra hp (not temp), regen, immunes, phys immunes, breakable resists. Each means different things from monster to monster, and is a way of customizing the critter in line with its RP characteristics. Tougher/higher CRs generally get more. That list is every tank type in Limbo, though some are more common than others. Monsters also have Offense Types, though that's not as relevant to this conversation. Examples (same order as above - remember these modify the baseline stats): Sorry if some of those are confusing, like the lack of % on conceals - transcribed right from my shorthand on the sheet.
Mechanus is also going to add other tank types with breakable resists linked to other things, like SR and immunities. Ie, tank wears down resists and suddenly caster can land spells, including instas. This is one way of favoring more attacks/dualing, btw, though I certainly don't regard it as a complete fix. Some monsters of that type will also likely have high regen, making tank-caster comboing necessary. Thanks, Funky
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Post by FunkySwerve on Feb 25, 2020 17:37:59 GMT
Ahh, missed the last line about weapon buffs. I mean, people will use weapon buffs even if you made us jump through hoops while doing it as long as we are addicted to the game just to gain that power boost. We will dance and sing a rain dance before every run for that extra power. Heck, we'd do a quick Elysium run before Limbo to get 4 dice on our weapons extra for the duration of the entire Limbo. But I think that will eventually make people miss the game less every time they go through that rain dance to get those weapon buffs, and eventually that memory of "urgh, this again" at the start of every run will deter them from logging in - there's no inherent gain in player enjoyability in making us do a rain dance before every run as opposed to just having an autocast feature do it in one click on all our weapons for, say, a numbered base cost. Insert 4 flame weapon spell slots into the slot machine and it will buff every weapon in 4 players' inventories with flame damage on it. I get that, which is why we've streamlined them. I don't see removing weapon buffs altogether, though, and I don't see how removing the spell slot cost makes them any less raindancy. Funky
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