CDV17: Starting classes and weapon focus changes

[Tim]

Let's face it: Starting classes make very little difference in the game. Most of the time, I try to get through the first 20 levels spending as few points as possible so I can bank them for my first specialty class. Weapon focus classes I put some points in the weapon specific skills, but don't use any of the active skills past the level 30 or so. These are the things that are supposed to define your character, but there really isn't much difference between a Wanderer with Sword focus and an Armsman with Axe focus.

So it's time to make those choices matter. Currently, skills for these classes follow the pattern "2-1-3-1-2", where the outer active skills have 2 skills, the middle one has 3, and the passive ones just do 1. Next version I plan to boost the starting classes to "3-2-4-2-3" and the weapon focus bonuses to "3-1-4-1-3". The passive skills on weapon focus are pretty useful as they are, but the active skills could use a boost. I'll role out the specifics of what's changing in a future post, but hopefully this will spice things up a bit.

Oh and players will be able to chose Shield focus for their starting weapon focus. Still debating about the Armor focuses, but Shield for sure.

[King Richard]

That's exciting.

[Jenlyn]

That's good news

[Seitaarin]

yeah, so many yays

[gerdonat]

Good to see, but I dont see why dont put the equipment focus skills at 3-2-4-2-3?, I mean, in order to get the active skills you have to rise the passive ones... and just having one bonus wont cut it...

And while we are at it, whats the supposed equivalence between different bonuses? because in skills every bonus seems to count the same, except by speed and wound that are 1/3, but on items, you get max bonus of 3 for speed wound, 6 for accuracy, dodge, stun and fs, 12 for poison, taint, health gain and luck, 18 for damage and defense.

So it seemed that in clases 1% damage is worth the same than 1 stun, but on items 1 stun is worth 3% damage for example...

[Tim]

Not every skill is meant to be equal. Too many of them and I'd drive myself insane trying (I did try once). Each stat does effect equip points by a fixed formula (%damage and %defense adds the least, speed and wound the most), but I found that trying to balance them out in skills led to all skills being either too weak or too strong. Imaging if I doubled the skill bonuses for all % damage and % defense skills just how out of control you could get with your stacking.

As for the equipment focus skills, I'd say that both of them are strong enough to make them worth while even with only 1 bonus. -% cost gets quite strong late game and +straight weapon damage is pretty strong by itself early on.

[gerdonat]

+straigth damage is found in a big number of skills, with other skills more, so it does not justifies to get it alone, and -% costs its kinda unique, but not sure it makes a big difference in the end, pretty sure soth had like 100+ spare equipment points by the end... using 4 of the shadow, i dont think it gets justified spending more than 2 or 3 lvls in a skill that only gives -%

[Tim]

You don't have to use them then.

[Seitaarin]

and he would have been wearing wools right? using higher cost items brings raw block into your itemisation, and raises the value of -% cost at endgame, but as Tim said, if you don't want to do that then you don't have to. If you want your basher to be wearing paper armour and just have big weapons then you can do that, but you just played a poisoner last age ... with secondary poison effect being reduced, you can see how you MIGHT want to stack some defensive values a bit higher now yeah?

I've always tended towards keeping 1 endgame item slot as a 'growing' slot, with replaceable TA's that I can raise every few levels to the next tier item as points allow. That becomes quite easy on a channeller as well, which allows for huge cost + reduction. Which actually brings me to another point, why is channelling so danged weak?!?!? Absolutely INSANE expenditure gains some small benefit stats-wise in using an item, but when you factor in the cost to get there vs the stats you lose from where you COULD have allocated those stat points, it seems to fall behind? Am I crazy to say this? I think channeller actually takes the wooden sgenitals for focus classes, which makes me sad

[mogmiester]

I really like this change!

[gerdonat]

Jan 20, 2017 18:58:22 GMT -6 Tim said:

You don't have to use them then.

Well, that could be the answer to any suggestion really...

[gerdonat]

Jan 20, 2017 20:53:51 GMT -6 Seitaarin said:

and he would have been wearing wools right? using higher cost items brings raw block into your itemisation, and raises the value of -% cost at endgame, but as Tim said, if you don't want to do that then you don't have to. If you want your basher to be wearing paper armour and just have big weapons then you can do that, but you just played a poisoner last age ... with secondary poison effect being reduced, you can see how you MIGHT want to stack some defensive values a bit higher now yeah?

I've always tended towards keeping 1 endgame item slot as a 'growing' slot, with replaceable TA's that I can raise every few levels to the next tier item as points allow. That becomes quite easy on a channeller as well, which allows for huge cost + reduction. Which actually brings me to another point, why is channelling so danged weak?!?!? Absolutely INSANE expenditure gains some small benefit stats-wise in using an item, but when you factor in the cost to get there vs the stats you lose from where you COULD have allocated those stat points, it seems to fall behind? Am I crazy to say this? I think channeller actually takes the wooden sgenitals for focus classes, which makes me sad

The poisoner surely wants to raise his raw block, but for the damage dealer it makes not much difference, I would need 6 points of % reduction, on a top tier item (a top tier item its around 600 points, so 6% reduction is 36 points discount, barely enough for a tier jump without counting ta's), to raise 1 tier of armor at most, so instead of wool shirt, thanks to those 6 points I spent on axe usage reduction, i would be able to use leather armor, for a net gain of 4 block... so 21 skill points spent  for total 4 block... in the top tier the costs increase even more, so to change from the second better shield with good tas, to the better shield, i would need like 10 points of equipment reduction i guess (didnt did the math) but guess what, the benefit is still 4 block...

Anyway, I was just trying to help people that cannot figure those things by themselves so they dont get shortchanged by the game rules...

[Tim]

I know in the past I've seen really strong damage builds where between their ter'angreal and skills they had -30+% cost pretty early on in the age. This gave them effectively 100+ extra points worth of equipment they could wear. It did eat up half their ter slots, but by using higher tiered base gear they were able to stack the raw damage and focus their other ter effectively. Worked pretty good from what I remember.

[kaldar]

By the end of the age, everyone qualifies for all the best weapons without any discounts. Each TA slot you would use to get a slight discount would decrease your max % damage by around 16%. Also, if the TA that decreases the cost of a weapon, in the process increases the cost of the item it is attached to, that diminishes the benefit of it as well.

In other words, I add a TA to a piece of armor that decreases the cost of a weapon by 5%, but it just raised the cost of the armor I attached it to by 5. The weapon I wish to use costs 200 normally, so now it costs 190. I effectively used a TA slot to get a 5 point discount on my weapon.

This would probably be a likely scenario at around level 35. At lower levels the benefit would be even less. Take or leave the input and advice as you prefer, I'm just pointing out the penalty for using such a TA

[gerdonat]

using ta's to get discount on items its even a worse idea, but well, if people want to use them... it was a post about balancing classes, thats why I thought that one more skill to passives from focus would be good idea...