Why are the devs messing with the combat system? [Archive]

View Full Version : Why are the devs messing with the combat system?

gooli

04-14-2005, 06:49 PM

<DIV> Moorgard: NOTE: We are now beginning to test significant changes to the combat system. Our primary goal is to eliminate cases where some characters could make themselves virtually immune to attack through buff stacking. We also want to better delineate the tanking ability of the four archetypes: fighters should tank significantly better than scouts, scouts should tank better than priests, and priests should tank better than mages. In addition, we are smoothing out player and NPC progression so there are no longer sudden increases in difficulty around the class and subclass levels. Overall, the con color of your opponent should be a lot more meaningful and will better indicate the level of challenge you're about to undertake. Our intent is that the game feels and plays basically the way it always has for soloers and small group players. Groups and raid forces taking on powerful targets should find a greater level of challenge. Not that knubed casting ice comet for 7->11k every 7 seconds was a challenge. These changes will be undergoing extensive evaluation and tweaking on Test server. Please understand that we will not release these changes to the live servers until we are confident that they have the desired effect, so they may not go to the live servers with Live Update #7. We appreciate hearing your feedback on the official forums. Avoidance - Your likelihood of avoiding an attack is now based on two primary factors: - The con color of the attacker. - The type of armor you are wearing. The heavier your armor, the lower your chances of avoiding an attack. Does this mean that all of the end game epic will tear through tanks like paper dolls? Everyone knows avoidance is much more important than mitigation, what is the purpose of being a tank if we are going to die faster? Taking 200 less damage on an attack than a scout but being hit more often = tank taking more damage and dying first. - Increasing your Defense skill gives you a better chance of avoiding attacks, but there is now a cap on how much it can be buffed or debuffed. - Increasing your Agility improves your base chance of avoiding an attack, but it will not improve your likelihood of parrying, deflecting, or blocking with a shield. - There is now a cap on the effectiveness of Deflection buffs and debuffs. - Mages and Priests no longer receive the Parry skill. It temporarily still shows in the Skills window, but these archetypes will no longer have any chance to parry. - There is no longer any way to buff the Parry skill over your current skill cap, and there is a limit on how far it can be debuffed. So all of the berserker parry skill line is now officially useless. I guess that knocks weapon guard off the list of 5 spells we had that worked properly. 4 more left to go devs, keep at it. - Shields now have the following base chances to Block: Tower (20%), Kite (19%), Round (5%), Buckler (3%). Your chances to Block scale up or down based on the con of your opponent. Shield buffs no longer have any effect. Yeeeeeehaaaaa, 1% extra for a tower shield over a kite shield! Shield buffs no longer have an effect! LETS BREAK EVEN MORE SKILLS!!!!!!! I don't use any shield buffs myself but other classes do. Mitigation - The base mitigation values of armor have been adjusted as follows: Heavy (35%), Medium (25%), Light (20%), Very Light (10%). Well I may be throwing away all my heavy armour if medium armour makes me avoid more. Heck I might even go light armour. Why? Avoidance is worth about 10X as much as mitigation. - Mitigation values scale up or down based on the con color of your attacker. - There is now a cap on how much mitigation can be buffed or debuffed. Damage - Melee damage bonuses are now calculated based on the attacker's strength versus the defender's agility. Meaning we do more melee damage to a fighter mob class than a scout mob class or caster mob class? What the heck are you all smoking? - The damage output of both players and NPCs should now increase more smoothly rather than receiving a sharp boost at levels 10 and 20. =========================== If the whole point of all of these changes is to make combat tougher, wouldn't itbe much easier to increase the abilities of the mobs instead of redefining the way we have to play the game. And why are you breaking more skills. How about you stop messing with combat and fix the skills that have been broken since october and while at it fix the skills that you broke between then and now?</DIV> Message Edited by goolian on 04-14-2005 07:50 AMMessage Edited by goolian on 04-14-2005 07:51 AM

Dfoley3

04-14-2005, 07:23 PM

Dfoley3

04-14-2005, 07:23 PM

Dfoley3

04-14-2005, 07:32 PM

They are doing this for a few reasons. 1) the invlunerable guardian complex that most guilds use to tank mobs. 2) the horrid balance between plate tanks and leather tanks a) atm avoidance tanks avoide LESS then mitigation tanks b) + defense and parry skills were making plate tanks avoide 99% of raid mobs hits, were as an avoidance tank has very limitied ability to dodge hits 3)You make the assumption this is game breaking because the end game content will not change but the tanks will. I would assume if they change the way we take dmg, then the way mobs deal it will also be changed. The goal is to greatly increase mitigation to the point were mitigation tanks can mitigate through an epic fight, and not have to rely on avoidance (something that wasnt supposed to be a mitigation tanks domain) 4) In short, yes, this will make brawlers better tanks and usable in more situations, esspecialy brawlers with 250+ unbuffed agi, but no, i dont expect to see a monk tanking Vox any time soon. 5) Sheilds are GAINING the avoidance, so while tower is only 1% more then kite, it will retain its sheild factor superiority 6) if u honestly think that mitigation means less then avoidance u are seriously mistaken. as a monk i have 82% unbuffed avoidance and 37% mitigation. and i can tell u that a paladin 2 levels lower, with no shield, and way worse gear, will tank better then me simply because his mitigation its 57% and avoidance is 54%. Mitigation means the world, which is why monks suck at tanking because 1 or 2 good hits and they are dead. 7) Again you assume that npc stats are dependant on their class. In all honesty it should be harder to hit a scout then to hit a 300 lbs tank. But again most mobs (from my experiance) ahve stats based on the dificulty of their encounter, ie a dragon lvl 52 x4 is gonna have 400 to most stats, while a dragon x2 is gonna have 200... easiest way to tell is get some debuffers in there and see how many buffs it takes to criple the mob.

Chath

04-14-2005, 10:22 PM

I've gotta wonder about this, too. Moorguard stated that the problem that is attempting to be resolved with these changes is the near invulnerability of guardians on epic raids at level 50 with sufficient buffs. What this has to do with priests and mages having defensive combat skills is absolutely nothing. Seems to me that more is going on here than just dealing with guardians in raids, and I am concerned that my chosen classes will suffer yet again. Does this mean that my coercer in very light armor will actually avoid damage noticeably better than someone wearing light armor, who would avoid noticeably better than someone wearing medium armor, who would avoid noticeably better than someone wearing heavy armor? If so, I can probably handle the change. Avoiding a hit by being dodgy (yuk yuk) or deflecting it with parry or riposte (? -- I saw ripostes last night with my coercer) gives me the same result -- I survive to cast another spell. If I'm not being hit much less often than heavy armor users, however, then I have a real problem. Tanks get spells. Devs call them combat arts, but they're really "physical spells", and they drastically outdamage my coercer. Giving my coercer various defensive combat skills (if you tended to get hit a lot, I bet you'd figure out how to parry with that giant staff right quick) does not seem all that out of line, considering. The progession given for avoiding damage seems suspiciously similar in design to the progression expected for dishing out damage. Given that this update was supposed to include changes to DPS for the non-sorcerous mage subclasses and the priest subclasses (priests were addressed in another post; pet damage for summoners was mentioned; enchanters weren't mentioned at all, as I recall), and yet, instead this update has nothing to do with DPS, isn't inspiring any great deal of faith in the system.