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Post by Tim on Jan 17, 2017 19:30:05 GMT -6
Start things off with one of the elephants in room: Health gain.
I agree with the argument that health gain as it stands now is overpowered. I'm glad it's useful and even strong, but it is really hard to combat with anything other than your own health gain or just getting lucky with turn order and a lot of damage. I've thought about this a lot and as with any balancing issue, I want to be careful not to over correct. So I'm going err on the side of caution and take this slow.
Also, I'll try to kill two birds with stones while I'm at it. Taint is a stat that I think has the opposite problem of health gain. It's really strong early on in the age, but its usefulness diminishes as the age rolls on as other stats out pace it. So here's what I plan to do: Taint damage will no longer be able to be healed by health gain. This will be accomplished by having any taint damage a player takes also decrease their max health that is tracked for health gain.
Hopefully, they will poke a hole (or at least a chink) in health gain's armor, while still keeping it strong against a lot of builds.
Note: before some of you panic, this is not the only stat/skill change coming this age. More to follow.
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Post by Seitaarin on Jan 17, 2017 22:49:24 GMT -6
Note that it is not health gain alone that is off kilter, it's the ease with which some builds are able to stack it to it's capped value due to the way other stats are very conveniently able to be discarded because they have been more or less devalued to the build overall. As an example, if health gain was capped at it's original 50% value, and if a poison build was pushed to include damage% and to reduce the effectiveness of poison secondary benefits such that it was required to be stacked to higher values (including base/% value calculations be taken into consideration) to remain competitively balanced, then the health gain issue would not be as unbalanced as it seems to be at this point because there would be more stats for the poison build to actually balance out in the build. Making accuracy a 'required' stat could be another potential avenue, bearing in mind the big fat achilles heel that poison had to dodge in prior ages with it's already % based to-hit calculation.
Making Taint Health gain immune straight up without a downside will create a space whereby every single competitive dueller will have to be taint stacked to some extent. Not only will that go straight up against many player's RP profile for their character, it will also add yet another stat that melee builds will need to try and fit into their character which will actually be a point in favour of poisoners - at the moment one of the few counters melee builds have is to eat damage, health gain back up, and burst through the poison damage reduction on a final hit. I only see a healthgain immune damage type adding to the demolition of that particular counter, as the melee will be unlikely to last out the 12 rounds - or they will have to balance taint in, sacrificing damage potential in the process.
Please note this is not criticism of this change notification, nor is it my intent to detract from the comment about more stats changing, it's simply something to bear in mind as more changes are pushed out.
Just another thought to chew on, there's another stat that is underused at present, and fits rather neatly into this role if you think about it - wound. Right now it's an inoffensive tertiary stat at best - no build can reliably use it to dramatic effect, and nobody in their right mind wastes wound TA's on endgame build items. However it is in a fair number of widely used advanced classes, and there is also an underused endgame TA that would have it's usefulness bumped quite significantly (assassins) if wound was a useful stat. This would provide poisoners with an additional stat to factor in as well, whereas with taint it's simply a damage balance calculation, an easy tradeoff. It also means that the 'best' anti health gain TA would provide a useless stat to a pure poisoner (damage%) in one sense, while providing a competitively viable alternative to scouts as an endgame prefix for melees and hybrids, while giving a bump to non-speed builds (or if wound was made a decent stat, an anti-speed build perhaps could emerge).
Anyways, just afternoon thoughts on the matter while chipping away at end of year reports for work.
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Post by gerdonat on Jan 18, 2017 7:35:59 GMT -6
Well, I agree mostly with Seitaarin here, I think that the taint change is good, and maybe Wound could be helped a bit, for example, subtract your wound from the max % health gain you can get, someone wounded by 8, lowers in 8 his health gain.
And one more thing, excess health gain, should give 1 to 1 defense not 2 to 1... seems like too much, giving 2 to 1, makes anything that gives % to defense worthless, since once you get to 75% health again (which is pretty easy, more if you are light side) you are better served by getting extra health gain instead of extra defense, while you could consider a ta with defense instead ot health gain the other way around.
So, what I propose is, you add all your health gain, lets say you have 93, your stats would be 75% health gain and 18% defense (without counting other defense). If I wound you for 8, you gain 67% of your damage back (not counting taint damage). But if your total health gain is 62%, and i wound you for 8, then you recover 54% of your no taint damage.
The taint fix is good, but as Seitaarin said, it will be a tool for poison users to diversify their damage vs other health gainers, but wouldnt help as much to damage dealers, wound would be a bit more usefull for them.
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Post by Cain Darksblade on Jan 18, 2017 15:54:08 GMT -6
Ive always like wound but in most my builds it was only a stat,, so finding a way to make it have more play would be nice
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Post by King Richard on Jan 18, 2017 19:07:19 GMT -6
CAIN!!! We missed you.
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Post by Seitaarin on Jan 18, 2017 22:17:49 GMT -6
On the wound theme, as an anti-speed/hg AC something like this would be kind of cool:
BladeMaster (sword focus required) P. Flawless Forms +lvl acc, +lvl dodge A1. Sheathing the Sword - +lvl wound, +lvl stun, +lvl% self dmg A2. The Flame and the Void - +lvl acc, +lvl/3wound, +lvl dmg%
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Post by Seitaarin on Jan 19, 2017 0:55:01 GMT -6
And on the defense% thing - that I'm actually not convinced of - that it's unbalanced in it's 2:1 format, yeah for sure but only in the context of endgame defense% ta usage - but like current taint, defense% is currently only really useful to stack in the early game. After lvl 40 or so damage% sprints from it at a very rapid pace. It's also a situational counter as well, ie only valid vs melee, and as such even the 2:1 gain is the only thing that makes defense% a worthwhile addition to the stat mix, so I don't really see it as a bad thing considering you have to stack capped health gain to actually reach the 2:1 gain ratio, which actually is really just a supplement to TA'd defense% in any case, not in direct competition for item slots.
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Post by gerdonat on Jan 19, 2017 8:09:40 GMT -6
On the wound theme, as an anti-speed/hg AC something like this would be kind of cool: BladeMaster (sword focus required) P. Flawless Forms +lvl acc, +lvl dodge A1. Sheathing the Sword - +lvl wound, +lvl stun, +lvl% self dmg A2. The Flame and the Void - +lvl acc, +lvl/3wound, +lvl dmg% Self damage is a killer right now for duel builds that want to beat health gainers... since you end doing more damage to you than you do to your enemy after health gain... And if hordes/army bugs get fixed, self damage would not cut for horde/army beaters either since you end killing yourself, for example, with soth I did around 10k damage vs hordes with low defense by the end, if i have 8% self damage, I do to myself 800 damage from 1100 total health, a little bit damage the horde does to me and I m dead, imagine if i get to 14% or more self damage... So, I think any class with self damage could be hard to get for a pure damage dealer, including warder one of the most popular... Unless you have a lot of health gain yourself... but its extremly costly for shadow builds.
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Post by gerdonat on Jan 19, 2017 8:20:09 GMT -6
And on the defense% thing - that I'm actually not convinced of - that it's unbalanced in it's 2:1 format, yeah for sure but only in the context of endgame defense% ta usage - but like current taint, defense% is currently only really useful to stack in the early game. After lvl 40 or so damage% sprints from it at a very rapid pace. It's also a situational counter as well, ie only valid vs melee, and as such even the 2:1 gain is the only thing that makes defense% a worthwhile addition to the stat mix, so I don't really see it as a bad thing considering you have to stack capped health gain to actually reach the 2:1 gain ratio, which actually is really just a supplement to TA'd defense% in any case, not in direct competition for item slots. The problem is, people already try to get as much health gain as possible because its one of the most powerfull things to get, so, if when you got there, you add 2 to 1 ratio to defense, its too much, besides its equally easy to get high % of attack than high % of defense without this additional rule, true, only works vs damage. For example, by the end of the age, with soth that had full damage equipment, and full damage bonuses from skills and classes, I attack Cast on our cities, and I cannot do any damage to all, and he is just putting a long of health gain, adding a lot of speed, and dodge as a bonus... so, even if he had 0 health gain, i dould not beat him, because his defense overpowers my offense, and i have 100% of my resources destined to deal damage... and he gets that just with the 20% health gain and 20% defense bonus extra form our city. But that 20% extra health gain transforms into 40% defense... I need 3 tas to get 40% damage, or once he gets to max health gain, adding one of tinkers, he gets 30% extra defense (2speed and 5 dodge) I need 2 full tas to overcome the extra defense alone.... Obviously, that depends too on tinkers being overpowered, not sure tim plans to do something about that... my opinion how tinkers should be: 10% health gain 2 speed and 3 dodge and start dropping at lvl 70+. That would make it still the best defensive ta out there.
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Post by Seitaarin on Jan 20, 2017 0:04:04 GMT -6
Nobody says you have to pick multiple self damaging classes, they simply offer you choices - specifically an additional stat at a cost. I chose that in particular because it seemed rather appropriate for 'sheathing the sword' in this case. Was just an example of an additional class that could bring a leading class to wound mechanics should it be decided that was an option in any case.
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Post by gerdonat on Jan 23, 2017 6:35:02 GMT -6
I was just pointing that self damage its a bigger drawback than what seems at first glance. Unless you dont do damage, but the classes that add self damage are the ones that the damage dealers usually want to use.
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