Test update #7 - Ruh roh

[prisoner]

<div></div><p><strong><font color="#ffcc00">*** Combat Changes ***</font></strong></p><p>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.</p><p>  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.</p><p>  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.</p><p>  <strong>Avoidance</strong> - Your likelihood of avoiding an attack is now based on two primary factors: <span>  </span>- The con color of the attacker. <span>  </span>- <font color="#ffff00">The type of armor you are wearing. The heavier your armor, the lower your chances of avoiding an attack.</font> - 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. - <font color="#ffff00">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.</font></p><p> <strong>Mitigation</strong> - <font color="#ffff00">The base mitigation values of armor have been adjusted as follows: Heavy (35%), Medium (25%), Light (20%), Very Light (10%).</font> -<font color="#ffff00"> Mitigation values scale up or down based on the con color of your attacker.</font> - There is now a cap on how much mitigation can be buffed or debuffed.</p><p> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p><p>Not sure what I think of this.  A few things in particular which kind of worry me,  which I've highligted.  First is heavier armor = less avoidance.  It does make sense of course,  I imagine its hard to be nimble in full plate armor.  The increase in defense skill affecting avoidance sounds good enough,  but I wonder if it is enough to compensate. </p><p>The second involves blocking and the shield skill buffs.  Its nice to know that the block difference between a tower and a kite is only 1%,  but the shield skill buff worries me a little bit.  Its worded a bit strangely,  does it mean that they no longer have an effect whatsoever,  or does it mean they have no effect on your % to block ?  If the effect is entirely removed,  they will have to redo one of our bread and butter buffs,  the aegis of hope line.  Having +10 skill increased your effectiveness by 2 levels,  thus if your shield still conned yellow or above,  you would recieve more of the ac value.  Example:  shieldA maxes out at level 40,  you would enjoy the full ac benefits at lvl 38 with this buff.  It will be interesting to see where this goes.</p><p>The last with mitigation worries me a little more.  What is the 'base' I wonder?  So far everything has been vs an even con.  If the base stays vs an even con,  most of us will be taking a good 10-20% hit to our mitigations,  and taking on higher level targets group or solo is going to be the pits. </p><p>Solo those greenies while you can ladies and gentlemen.  This doesn't look so good.</p>17<div></div>

[Leatherface77]

Rumor is thats a typo on the sheilds and taht kite is 10% not 19

[Troodon]

<div></div><div></div>Hmm, well we knew was this was comming at least, but meh it does look like we're caught in the Warrior-Brawler crossfire. :/ Hopefully they will consider the larger picture of a subclasses abilities and spells as part of this change, that is a subclass that does not have favourable base bonuses will have other means to make up the difference or perhaps some other means to ballance? [brainstorming] Could better ballanced be achieved if shield size selection was a trade off, as it stands theres no real downside to using a bigger shield, so you just use the largest shield you have access to (which for us means that we're capped at kite level). E.g. larger shield means better blocking but has the downside as a reduction in dps? <u>Shield               Blocking             DPS bonus </u>Tower               Very good          Poor Kite                   Good                 Medium Round               Medium             Good Buckler             Poor                  Very good Its far from a perfect solution by any means, it's still going to result in class imbalance when it comes to tanking, that is Warriors will still be the defacto plate tank of choice because what real purpose does dps server for a tank, but at least such a sugestion means we might gain a small bonus for the rather arbitary constraint placed upon us by the game. Another posibility would be rather than a shield size blocking-dps tradeoff, a blocking-taunt tradeoff, after all the bigger the shield you're hiding behind the less the mob can see you to be taunted? <u>Shield               Blocking             Taunt bonus </u>Tower               Very good          Poor Kite                   Good                 Medium Round               Medium             Good Buckler             Poor                  Very good "<i>- 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.</i>" Another posibility would be not to remove the Agility bonus from blocking/parrying but scale it down with increasing shield size. After all if you're not hiding behind a massive shield, if you're agile you'll be able to move the one you have to block blows, to be better able to defliect incomming attacks with your weapon? [/brainstoming] Can anyone think of more elegant suggestions? <div></div><p>Message Edited by TroodonIE on <span class=date_text>04-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>12:57 PM</span>

[Iustus]

<P>Looks to be a bad patch for crusaders. Brawlers and Warriors are getting more even, by nerfing the mitigation of the first, and the avoidance of the second, but we take hits on both sides, hurting us the worst.</P> <P>Our shield skill increase buffs now become worthless.</P> <P>I think SOE needs to strongly reconsider giving us tower shields, as they may be desperately needed to level the playing field now.</P> <P>Further, there is nothing mentioned about update 7 having the much needed leveling in taunting abilities.</P> <P>All the tank classes need to be able to tank epic encounters. If SoE is shooting for guardians as the only tanks for raids, let us know now, so I dont waste my time.</P> <P>-I</P>

[Boli32]

oh dear just as I feared crusaders are going to get crushed in the middle... if this does turn out bad and indeed we get hit TWICE as often (as it seems we may do) and have our mitigation not increased to match. We use spells and we SHOULD have a high avoidance just in order so we can cast our spells some of which are VITAL to our tanking ability (solo or otherwise) <div></div>

[Boli32]

<div></div>...and just to rub it in<p><strong>Paladin changes: </strong></p><p><font color="#ffff00">- Unwavering Faith will now increase avoidance from Apprentice IV to Adept I.</font></p><p>- Blessed Rush will now appear in the maintained spells window.</p><p>- Divine Wrath should now heal the group appropriately.</p><p>I hope after they mess around with it all we DO in fact havecomparativly the SAME stats we had at the start... we were pretty much balanced.</p><div></div>

[uzhiel feathered serpe]

<P>This patch doesnt look too good for us. We're getting caught square in the middle of avoidance, mitigation, and shield skill.  Sigh..I sincerely hope we dont get broke :smileyindifferent:</P>

[Troodon]

<div></div>Already there is mutterings of discontent that Kite shields are only 1% less than Tower shields. :/ Fundementally there are two core aspects to Fighters, the ability to avoid/mitigate damage and the ability to hold a mobs attention. If Crusaders are going to end of being at the bottom of the pile for avoidance/mitigation I certainly hope that as a tradeoff we're better at taunting otherwise we're going to be in the position monks were in prior to these changes. <div></div><p>Message Edited by TroodonIE on <span class=date_text>04-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>04:51 PM</span>

[Boli32]

not a chance... a good portion of our tuaunting "skills" comes from the agro we get when we cast heals and wards.... you can;t cast them if you are continually being interrupted.  <div></div>

[Deltree_c]

<P>I've read the kite-shields-as-ten-percent thing too.  Logically, it makes sense, no matter how much I don't want to believe it.  :smileysad:</P> <P>So does ths mean the numbers on the persona screen are going to be changing dynamically?  How would it determine who an "attacker" is, if I, say, pulled an orange mob and a blue one wanders by and adds mid fight?  Would it display an average?   Inquiring minds want to know.</P> <P>And I'm also assuming Aegis of Hope will be useless for soloing now (I would cast it on my pet human to receive the shield benefit).  Not a big deal, but now I have no excuse as to why I have a pet following me everywhere.  :smileytongue:</P> <P> </P>

[Arsen]

<span><blockquote><hr>boli wrote:not a chance... a good portion of our tuaunting "skills" comes from the agro we get when we cast heals and wards.... you can;t cast them if you are continually being interrupted.  <div></div><hr></blockquote>I think this is an important point for all Plate classes.  Warriors who are constantly getting interruprted, stunned and stifled cannot cast their taunts and group buffs to increase aggro either.  This is already an issue for me at times as a guardian in the current environment - its going to get a lot more difficult to fight through these situations and maintain aggro when I can't dodge anything.</span><div></div>