New "Combat Change" discussion:

[Gaige]

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Moorgard wrote:

If you play on Test server, please give us your feedback on the combat changes we are testing. The specifics are posted below.

 

If you do not play on Test, then please direct your comments to the non-tester board.

 

Thanks!

 

 

*** Combat Changes ***

 

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.

 

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.

- 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.

- 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.

 

Mitigation

- The base mitigation values of armor have been adjusted as follows: Heavy (35%), Medium (25%), Light (20%), Very Light (10%).

- 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.

- The damage output of both players and NPCs should now increase more smoothly rather than receiving a sharp boost at levels 10 and 20.

---

 

On test now.

 

Thoughts?

[Salodor]

Will be interesting to watch the feedback threads on it.  Personally I am glad to see them trying to put more of a distinguish between the tanking methods, but not sure how much of an effect/change it'll be for us as avoidance tanks.  Just going to be exciting to see how the changes pan out, change can be a very good thing =)

[melgan]

Mind I don't play on test server, these are just my thoughts on things he has said.  They seem to messure up fairly well to what we have been looking for.  If you are wearing heavy armor you arent going to nimbly jump asside so often.  I have no idea how this will work in practice but I am frankly hopeful.  It sounds good.  All of their thinking as its explained seems to be in order.  I have seen people griping already on test forum about casters being interrupted more because they lose their parry.  I think that it makes sense they arent able to parry, they are waving their hands around and concetrating on the powers of the universe.  That doesn't leave alot of room to deflect a giant club from smashing you in the face because your tanks lost aggro.  Not that a casters puny arms would deflect much.  :robotvery-happy: If all goes well and this works as it sounds, then I think there will be a few things happening besides outrage from some camps and lauding from others:  The role of the tank becomes all that more important, encounters become more challenging (or rather they become more intelligent), each fighter class gets a distinct feeling of hey I'm handling this encounter differently from the X class but I am just as viable and able to go toe to toe in my own manner.

 Also they have already been working on eliminating some classes ability to insanely stack buffs becoming nigh invulnerable and look to hit all classes at once on this front.

 

Just my thoughts.  Such as they are.

[SageMarrow]

yeah basically it seems to me that they are taking out that tanking commodity in the bigger scheme of things...

All classes being able to tank to some extent and it being a factor in balancing and relativity for the most part. Thats what caught me as being the most interesting thing about it all.

basically what it does is take out the required classes for grouping. A great group will have a tank - but a decent group will have a scout as MT in absence there of and on down the line.

Some of the changes lead one to assume that they have removed the brutal damage spikes that are present as mob levels increase. But that one is open to discovery i suppose.

On the note that we tend to view as most important, things are a bit more realistic with avoidance being armor wieght/size dependant.

But that doesnt say much about form over function, with function being the dependant factor. More than likely, class specific armors are right behind these changes to further separate the classes to wear SOE wants them to be. With warriors/crusaders/brawlers having separate types of armor.

Much different approach from what we expected though... (aka simple nerf this botch that approach lol)

[woo]

looks nice..

 

in theory it seems like tanks will be a little more equal, yet further apart in the avoidance vs mitigation.

 

also looks like scouts might be able to take a few hits?  and avoid a few more as well..  which will be nice for them.

 

 

they dont give enough numbers, but it kinda seems like those shields might be giving a lot of avoidance.. i hope Deflection and agility affects avoidance enough so monks still have the edge to make up for avoidance..

[AsheBail]

- The base mitigation values of armor have been adjusted as follows: Heavy (35%), Medium (25%), Light (20%), Very Light (10%).

 

I am curious as to the values for avoidance wearing Light vs. Very Light is.

 

Based on this the 10% mitigation drop is alot but would the avoidance increase make it worth it for a bruiser/monk?  If so, I could see myself mixing and matching to increase avoidance.

[i3ry]

I doubt it would be enough to give up what little mitigation we do get.  Only time will tell I guess. This looks like a very good change to balance the Fighter archetypes though.   Can't wait for this to go to Live.

[-UGG-Andy]

i like the goal they are trying to achieve..just hope they don't botch it up.Last thing i want is to log in and get squished in 10 seconds by a mob i should tank well.I think it will likely cause a huge uproar among guardians in particular,some will adapt and still play well,others won't know what hit 'em.Its gotta be done though,just as in the past it was'nt acceptable to agi stack to become invulnerable,now it won't be possible to stack def with guardian and do the same thing,and should hopefully put us on an even playing field where any fighter is a viable choice for mt.

I bet it needs some tweaking after it goes live though...:smileytongue:

[adrian]

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-UGG-Andy wrote:

i like the goal they are trying to achieve..just hope they don't botch it up.Last thing i want is to log in and get squished in 10 seconds by a mob i should tank well.I think it will likely cause a huge uproar among guardians in particular,some will adapt and still play well,others won't know what hit 'em.

---

From a Guardian perspective it will be interesting to see how we fit into things now. At best, it will simply allow all fighters to experience tanking at the same level, though in different ways. At worst though, it may make Guardians irrelivant. Being that we rely soley on our taunts and def, if suddenly a level 20-30 guardian is expected to rely totally on the mitigation of his 10s-30s armor to make it through, there may be some problems. The retooling of mobs in ourdoor areas balances out that a bit, but put a poorly outfitted tank that can't avoid in front of a named and it would get pretty ugly pretty quickly. I'm going to reserve my judgement until I see it going. Relying on the opinions of others never works in this sort of thing. Everyone gets too *$%#&! emotional over it all. I'm waiting for the 5000 moaning 'n whining guardian threads from the vocal minority damning the devs to hell, with 5000 gloating threads from gloating minority of buttholes looking to cash in on other players misery. What I do think should be looked at, is perhaps evening up the way we all do damage to counter the fact that the way we take damage is changing so much. Maybe it is time to rethink the the fact that Guardians dish out such appalingly low damage for some extremely good defensive ability. If there is going to be a balance, especially for soloists, that will need a bit of attention IMO.

[ScoobRo]

Sounds like they read my old post about making shields actually mean something and armor bulk decreasing one's nimble nature.  LOL.  Anyways, I hope the shield stats are wrong for Tower (20%) and Kite (19%).    Something doesn't seem right about only a 1% difference from one type to the next.  Perhaps Tower shields should be raised to 30% and Kite to 20%. 

 

As for avoidance, they said AGI will only affect base ability to avoid.  Is this going to undo some of the AGI nerf for Monks?  Scouts benefited from high AGI pre-nerf because defense as handled so generically, but now SOE appears dedicated to diversifying how players defend.  With shield mitigation, armor mitigation, parry, block, and deflection all being treated with more unique focus, it seems that high AGI *could* benefit Monks again for avoidance.  Not to the extent that it did pre-nerf, but enough that we don't have to fear "the big hit streak" from high level mobs as much.

 

It's exciting for sure.

[SageMarrow]

no, what i see happening from a guardian POV, they will still be the best TANK only TANK. because the armor particularites are needed on all fighter classes to be successful. Further illustrating the need of both avoidance and mitigation to be successful.

Defense has been capped, but base mitigation has been lowerd. I also believe that the SPIKE damage from mobs is being removed as well.

Basically that means that more  than likely those +parry buffs that = 0 damage will be mitigation buffs soon, so that the tank is taking damage but at a much higher yet mitigated dmg portion. So guardians will be hit - but they will be the only class that can reach the defense cap as well as aquire certain levels of Mitigation/avoidance combinations.

Defense buffs were capped but we dont know how high and or where, and for the most part, defense skill will still buff the Guardian the highest of all the fighters. While lower than the levels achieveable previously, they will still be able to reach for the cap beyond all other classes.

so basically the defense skill will still mean avoidance *potential* to guardians...

(edit- change i was reffering too)

- 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.

Message Edited by SageMarrow on 04-14-2005 04:59 AM

[RafaelSmith]

Does SOE ever handle anything w/o drastic knee jerk reactions? Just seems to be that the game/classes needed some fixing/tuning but not an entire rework combat system. There is no way all this can be properly tested w/o it going live and once again we become beta testers for what is essentially a "new" game.

[Pessimist]

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melgan wrote:

I have seen people griping already on test forum about casters being interrupted more because they lose their parry.  I think that it makes sense they arent able to parry, they are waving their hands around and concetrating on the powers of the universe.  That doesn't leave alot of room to deflect a giant club from smashing you in the face because your tanks lost aggro.  Not that a casters puny arms would deflect much.  :robotvery-happy:

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I hear what you are saying Melgan, but you are overlooking one simple fact about casters loosing the parry and the mitigation changes.  Non pet caster classes will not be able to fight without a tank standing in front of them (that is my knee jerk reaction and assumption of the changes).  Though I agree with you that it does make sense that a caster is not able to parry, let me paint you a scenario:

I am a lower level caster, 26 Wizard.  Currently I use a big nuke (Ball of Fire) to pull a mob followed immediately by my one and only worthwhile stun (Freeze) then root the target in place (Frozen Manacles).  Once that target is rooted I start my rotation, Ice Spike, Breath of the Tyrant, Ice Spike, Ball of Fire.  If the mob isn't dead by this point, I stun, root, and finish it.

Now, 50% of the time my first ice spike breaks root and the mob is charging full ahead at me.  Since Freeze is on a 30 second timer I cannot stun the mob again and my only choice is to try and get an ice spike or two off then root and back away, usually at 1/2 to 3/4 health.  I think you can see the problem here, if the changes to parry and mitigation have the effects that I, and other wizards, assume they will.  If root breaks, it will be an immediate run situation and hope to stay alive.

/shrug

Maybe I am just overreacting, but I hope they didn't make Wizzies and Warlocks a group only class.

Overall, I agree with what SOE is trying to do, but I hope they look at the big picture and don't totally crush classes with their sweeping changes.  In the interim, I will continue to play my 14 Brawler in the event my Wiz is no longer soloable, because groups seem to be occasional at best.

[Velor]

As it stands today, the more difficult the encounter from solo to group to raid, the more the choice skewed towards Guardians as the tank. These changes look like it may at least start to even things out across the spectrum.

Just remember one thing. No matter what changes they make to the combat system, Guardians are still going to have more HPs than Knights and a TON more than Brawlers. That in and of itself will still give Guardians the edge when it comes down to the choice of MT for high-end raids. That is unless Sony is able to actually factor that into the combat changes somehow so that our avoidance bonus over plate types removes it from the equation. I just don't see that happening though.

[Harpax]

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RafaelSmith wrote:
Does SOE ever handle anything w/o drastic knee jerk reactions?

Just seems to be that the game/classes needed some fixing/tuning but not an entire rework combat system.

There is no way all this can be properly tested w/o it going live and once again we become beta testers for what is essentially a "new" game.

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This is hardly a knee jerk reaction.  The game has been live for a number of months, and people of every class realize that there are some *serious* problems with the current combat system. 

As for "once again" being beta testers, go play literally any other MMO game.  You will constantly be playing in a world that evolves or has rule changes as the state of the game changes.  If you don't like "beta testing" eq2, you could always go be a load tester for the server login queue for WoW. :p

[bonesbro]

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Moorgard wrote:

- Melee damage bonuses are now calculated based on the attacker's strength versus the defender's agility.

---

 

I find this to be the most interesting change, and I think I like it.  Pumping up your agility will now increase avoidance AND decreases the damage you take.  For DPS, your strength now matters more as well.

[Gaige]

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SageMarrow wrote:

no, what i see happening from a guardian POV, they will still be the best TANK only TANK. because the armor particularites are needed on all fighter classes to be successful. Further illustrating the need of both avoidance and mitigation to be successful.

Defense has been capped, but base mitigation has been lowerd. I also believe that the SPIKE damage from mobs is being removed as well.

Basically that means that more  than likely those +parry buffs that = 0 damage will be mitigation buffs soon, so that the tank is taking damage but at a much higher yet mitigated dmg portion. So guardians will be hit - but they will be the only class that can reach the defense cap as well as aquire certain levels of Mitigation/avoidance combinations.

Defense buffs were capped but we dont know how high and or where, and for the most part, defense skill will still buff the Guardian the highest of all the fighters. While lower than the levels achieveable previously, they will still be able to reach for the cap beyond all other classes.

so basically the defense skill will still mean avoidance *potential* to guardians...

(edit- change i was reffering too)

- 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.

---

Yeah Sage but mitigation is also capped now.

[RafaelSmith]

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Harpax wrote:

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RafaelSmith wrote:Does SOE ever handle anything w/o drastic knee jerk reactions?Just seems to be that the game/classes needed some fixing/tuning but not an entire rework combat system.There is no way all this can be properly tested w/o it going live and once again we become beta testers for what is essentially a "new" game.

---

This is hardly a knee jerk reaction.  The game has been live for a number of months, and people of every class realize that there are some *serious* problems with the current combat system. 

As for "once again" being beta testers, go play literally any other MMO game.  You will constantly be playing in a world that evolves or has rule changes as the state of the game changes.  If you don't like "beta testing" eq2, you could always go be a load tester for the server login queue for WoW. :p

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Look im not here to argue....Ive played other MMOS and fully expect changes to be made, things to be tuned/balanced....but in EQ2s short life thus far nothing has been tuned its been 1 sweeping change after another....never enough time between changes to really determine what the net effect of the last one was.  Look at how many changes effecting the Economy have gone in almost back to back w/o regard to the fact that it takes time for Economies/markets to react.  Now in the case of combat..people have picked traits,  spent lots of cash on certain spell upgrades, spent money on expensive rare armor and boom they go and change everything making some traits choices useless, some buffs/spells useless, all armor of a specific type now has the same migitgation (i.e heavey = 35%).  So other than a few more HP, etc whats the point of having Ebon Breastplate over Fulginate?  If I understand these changes correctly and I admit I wont really know until it goes live....but it seems like duos/trios having fun will be a thing of the past.  As it is I DUO alot with my girlfriend that is a fury...she has enough trouble as it is keeping me alive..and thats even considering you and others claim my class is some super godlike class...now im gonna take 2x the dmg,  she gonna have even more trouble healing which means even more *$%#&!led up Druid aggro...and guess what she now takes more dmg so she wont survive. The goal of balance should be making the game challenging and entertaning for EVERYONE. The goal of balance should not be making the game frustrating for EVERYONE which is what these changes look like they are gonna do. Honestly I can see why Brawler types are not as worred about these changes....If anything is clear about EQ2 its that Avoidance is KING.  Mitigation played little role and now its gonna be lowered.   The only reason Guardians tanked like they did is cause of Avoidance....now thats gonna be lowered so we will depend more on mitigation which is also gonna be lowered.  I expected and believed that our Avoidance needed to be lowered BUT not mitigation...35% is WAY WAY WAY WAY low for something called "Heavy"... If I have to rely on only mitigatin 35% of ALOT of hits that im all the sudden gonna be taking...i better save up ALOT of cash for mending =P

[Gaige]

I think the mitigation of the armor is only part of it Raf, I don't think you'll have 35% mitigation period.

The parry changes are the ones I wasn't suspecting.

[Siberia2]

"The type of armor you are wearing. The heavier your armor, the lower your chances of avoiding an attack."

If I am interpreting this correctly.. it seems like you could combine a suit of light and very light armor.. and have higher avoidance with near same mitigation..

Keeping the chest and legs light, and possibly making others VLA might give a decent boost in avoidance.. might.

Right now unbuffed I have 198 Agility.. with Phin's Mountain Haven it's around 220.. with I think 34% or so mitigation.. and 80% Avoidance.. maybe some LVA would tip it 32%/82%.. or something more/less? *shrug*

Just a thought :smileytongue:

[SageMarrow]

Yeah Sage but mitigation is also capped now.
______________________________________

 

Well yeah gage,

 

i guess the point i was trying to make is that they will be able to reach the mitigation cap on thier own, through buffs and such.

 

But through the defensive buff stacking in particular, they wil also be able to reach the avoidance cap.

 

While brawlers will be able to reach the avoidance cap easily, but not the mitigation cap...

 

So we will be able to get a portion of the mitigation, and all of the avoidance, they will be able to reach both just through different means.

 

make sense?

[Gaige]

Yeah but I don't think that's true, or else we'll be right back to where we are.

[Nemi]

I still see this patch as making Guardians kings amongst fighters. If avoidance is primarily dependant on armour and con of mob, won't a Guardian in Light armour and a tower shield have just as much mitigation as a Brawler but with much higher avoidance? I don't get it. Defense buffs still affect avoidance. Tower shields give 20% avoidance, Monk in built has 5% Our buffs no longer affect parry or deflection Agility no longer affects parry or deflection We have 15% less mitigation than a Guardian I don't see this as levelling the playfield. On the plus side, if mob damage has been reduced and damage dealt is function of str vs agi, that should help us tank more.

[Harlequiin]

i'm hoping for the best but...

 

if guardians will be at the high end of the spectrum through mitigation whereas we are at the other end with avoidance, with these changes, won't be still be in the same boat we are now?

 

i have to agree a bit with sage here. guardians will still be able to reach both ends of the spectrum. us on the other hand don't have the opportunities to for high mitigation. we can't use shields and they are reducing the mitigation on our armor.

 

ya we might be able to tank a bit better but i don't see it as some sweeping change in our abilities.

 

maybe i'm reading too much into this. but it seems nothing really will have changed. at least for us.

 

don't get me wrong. i'm excited about the changes but just wary.

[Cod]

I didn't think the patch would really change anything, unless it let all tanks hit all the caps so everyone tanked equally. 

 

But nemi has a good point I wonder if guardians will all be running around in light armor with tower shields on raids.

[Harpax]

I fully expect them to add something in which if a character is carrying 1 piece of heavier armor, their avoidance equation will be treated like they are wearing a full suit of that armor type.  I also expect the different shields to be classified as armor types with Tower and Kite(?) being Heavy (do any medium armor class toons use Kite shields?), and roundshields / bucklers being Light.

 

If they do this, it will make classes mean something other then the abilities they have.  Heavy armor wears aren't trained to avoid attacks, so just wearing a more "mobile" suit of armor shouldn't allow them to do so.  Wearing a suit of lower mitigation armor (including a smaller shield) will give them more avoidance, but not the ability to mitigate the damage.  This would balance with brawlers training doesn't allow them to do the things they do in heavy armor

[Azazel-Defia]

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Moorgard wrote:

- 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.

- 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.

---

 

On test now.

 

Thoughts?

---

Looking at just these points you have to hope they take an extremely large amount of time to implement this to live. Before they add it they need to review and change all of the self buffs and groups buffs available for a majority of the classes.

The defense cap could be severely damaging depending on where they set it.

The deflection change will mean many monk and bruiser abilities will be made useless or redundant since they will not stack.

The parry skill change removes half the effectiveness of our short term avoidance buffs, and combined with the defense and deflection changes could completely eliminate them.

Depending on the caps, this could even effect racial trait choices making them far less desirable.

I cant be 100% sure but these changes could be horrid if not done properly, and even if done well I somehow see this leaving only a few important end game stats. Hitpoints, mitigation, and power. HP and PP arent capped. With avoidance capped you will definately get hit, so your only recourse is having as high of a mitigation as possible. The mitigation caps arent on armor mitigation but on buff increases, the only way this will be good for brawlers is if the buffs are strong enough to get us to the cap, and on platers it just takes less buffing. But if that were the case scouts could make it too, not that that bothers me since I enjoy when the smaller difference are what turns the tide.

 

Random thoughts since I am at work and dont have time to organize this

 

Azazel- Nek

[Babayaaga]

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RafaelSmith wrote:
Does SOE ever handle anything w/o drastic knee jerk reactions?

Just seems to be that the game/classes needed some fixing/tuning but not an entire rework combat system.

There is no way all this can be properly tested w/o it going live and once again we become beta testers for what is essentially a "new" game.

---

I am somewhat in agreement here. Not every class is at the same level of "broken-ness". Global changes like these may fix some classes that are "broken" today, yet in turn will end up breaking others that were previously acceptable.

They should be focusing on class-tuning at this point more than class-wide mechanics. In addition, this is indeed something that should have been recognized and addressed in a beta phase, so indeed it's going to be disconcerting particularly to raid-level players who have been working on encounter strategies and will now have to not only re-invent how they play their classes, but as a team.

That being said, on paper anything can look promising. How it plays out will be another thing entirely. Too many things are dependent on other things to work properly, and even one small change can dramatically change how things play out. This is a pretty massive change... there will be problems I'm sure.

[RafaelSmith]

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Babayaaga wrote:

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RafaelSmith wrote:Does SOE ever handle anything w/o drastic knee jerk reactions?Just seems to be that the game/classes needed some fixing/tuning but not an entire rework combat system.There is no way all this can be properly tested w/o it going live and once again we become beta testers for what is essentially a "new" game.

---

I am somewhat in agreement here. Not every class is at the same level of "broken-ness". Global changes like these may fix some classes that are "broken" today, yet in turn will end up breaking others that were previously acceptable.

They should be focusing on class-tuning at this point more than class-wide mechanics. In addition, this is indeed something that should have been recognized and addressed in a beta phase, so indeed it's going to be disconcerting particularly to raid-level players who have been working on encounter strategies and will now have to not only re-invent how they play their classes, but as a team.

That being said, on paper anything can look promising. How it plays out will be another thing entirely. Too many things are dependent on other things to work properly, and even one small change can dramatically change how things play out. This is a pretty massive change... there will be problems I'm sure.

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Hehe, well the more I read and try to figure out what the changes actually mean the more it seems no class is being fixed and MANY are instead having their level of "broken-ness" increased. =P  The gist of all this is we (FIGHTERS) are all having avoidance and mitigation reduced.   All this without any changes to mob dmg or healer/priests.... On or off paper it doesnt look promising =P

[SomeDudeCRO]

I can see them easily putting us at the top of our archetype with those changes.  Brawlers could be the flavor of the month, the defacto tank for raids like the guardian once was (or maybe even still will be). I don't think that's desirable, nor does it bring us closer to where most of us want to be. We'll have to wait and see, speculations on what those changes will actually mean are pretty irrelevant until it goes live and we really know what we are dealing with.