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CON Rebalance - NERF IT INTO THE GROUND AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA
bluhman
Posts: 2,410 Arc User
It's actually a good deal more complex than just halving peoples' HP, so read on:
The last update to a major fight, the Clarence Fight, gave Clarence an attack that would do 35% damage to anyone who didn't block, and only 10% to anyone that did. This is not to overlook the main reason that the change was included (to ward off Onslaught Villains griefing), but now that this has been implemented, slowly but surely, more new bosses that are about to be included are going to make some use of this mechanic, particularly the Teleios fight inside Teleios Ascendant. Mind Control also gets an honorable mention, as it also uses this effect when the corruption ailment wears off.
Beyond all that, the biggest issue behind all this - why %HP is an attractive mechanic in the first place - is because the gap between people who invested in CON and those who didn't is too huge. Instantly take CON as one of your superstats, throw in a fair number of CON enhancers, and you now have more than twice the health you had before. And why would you pass that up? Mobbing enemies, and especially newer bosses nowadays like Mechanon, are traditionally going to put out about 4000 damage in about 2 seconds. Hell, Gravitar can put out that much damage without even looking at you. Simply put, CON's become something of a requisite stat to take part in any of the more intense game content featured. It's a luxury that Freeforms, outside of experimental builds, seldom pass up on, and one that a majority of ATs never get to use.
As part of a paradigm to increase the general challenge of the game, I see a need to make the direct benefit of statting high on CON less attractive, in order to make other statting decisions more important to consider and allow for more varieties of build to survive for an extended period of time.
Just 1000 HP away from that threshhold, how much CON would be needed to achieve that same standard of survival under the new setup?
Also note that the proposed changes also leave out any sort of debuff to HP+ Specs and Mods. This is intentional, because the vast majority of HP buff in the game comes from con - even with this proposed change, CON itself is still a much higher booster of HP than any other spec in the game (though END's Hardened does come close here). The setup also becomes desirable, as now it no longer is a no-brainer to take CON as the way to ensure your survival. Despite that, CON still is going to be the best way to get more HP directly, and as a result, still will be essential to tanks for being able to take the most damage possible - in the long run, though, proper defenses and blocking will take you much farther.
Preface
The last update to a major fight, the Clarence Fight, gave Clarence an attack that would do 35% damage to anyone who didn't block, and only 10% to anyone that did. This is not to overlook the main reason that the change was included (to ward off Onslaught Villains griefing), but now that this has been implemented, slowly but surely, more new bosses that are about to be included are going to make some use of this mechanic, particularly the Teleios fight inside Teleios Ascendant. Mind Control also gets an honorable mention, as it also uses this effect when the corruption ailment wears off.
Why's this bad though?
It isn't inherently bad - if it were not for %health attacks, we wouldn't have a way to ward off OSV's in Open Boss Fights where they shouldn't be. However, it is important to understand its benefits and detriments. Let's first look at the drawbacks of % HP attacks:- Coding Eratta - % HP attacks do not respond to blocking like most other attacks do. This means that the 'flag' received by the server for blocking is calculated more slowly, resulting in late blocks letting full damage through, and inversely, blocking and then releasing a block sooner than normal providing full damage reduction. Here's a small example of what I mean (though using stuns and knocks instead of % HP attacks:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WViookszNg
Even discounting the slightly laggy application of 'block state', there's also the distinct possibility that the coder forgets about adding in a flag to check for block condition, meaning that blocking might not have an effect at all. - Makes HP commitment pointless - While this effect is a bit limited, thanks to enemies having many other attacks that don't do % HP, This still doesn't change the fact that a large number of % HP attacks would make the appeal of CON and other HP-boosting gearings less appealing - though the effects of that do tie in slightly to a benefit.
- Makes Damage Mitigation pointless - More concerning is this drawback, which effectively renders defense-passives, shields, and other very deliberate effects used by tanks and support useless. This also ties in to why it's necessary to code a flag to check for blocking, because without that, attempting to block a % HP attack would also be useless!
- Equalizing Damage - Part of the appeal of %HP attacks is when you consider past battles - like what Gravitar's Force Cascade spam does to a tank versus a DPS. This calls forth the perfect use for this type of attack, which is as a team-wide effect that puts everyone at equal risk - not something that a tank will just walk off and put a DPS into the ground. However do note that Cybermind also makes use of a similar sort of application of an effect, but in his case, the damage just ignores defenses (it's actually possible to survive a rainstorm by him by having a healer repeatedly shield you - maybe that could be something %HP damage could fix!) In other words, %HP damage is very good for mechanics that are supposed to be irresistable, and put any kind of character at a huge risk.
- Increases value of DPS - Obviously related a bit to the above, the effect of such damage would put a bit more emphasis on making DPS more competent - particularly, fragile, potentially-AT-based DPS that lacks the benefit of healing or HP. An attack that does 20% of a person's total HP is going to be much harder to heal for a CON tank or freeform than an EGO DPS, because the former's 20% HP chunk is almost twice the size, if not more, than the 20% HP of the DPS... wait
The Underlying Problem
Beyond all that, the biggest issue behind all this - why %HP is an attractive mechanic in the first place - is because the gap between people who invested in CON and those who didn't is too huge. Instantly take CON as one of your superstats, throw in a fair number of CON enhancers, and you now have more than twice the health you had before. And why would you pass that up? Mobbing enemies, and especially newer bosses nowadays like Mechanon, are traditionally going to put out about 4000 damage in about 2 seconds. Hell, Gravitar can put out that much damage without even looking at you. Simply put, CON's become something of a requisite stat to take part in any of the more intense game content featured. It's a luxury that Freeforms, outside of experimental builds, seldom pass up on, and one that a majority of ATs never get to use.
As part of a paradigm to increase the general challenge of the game, I see a need to make the direct benefit of statting high on CON less attractive, in order to make other statting decisions more important to consider and allow for more varieties of build to survive for an extended period of time.
The Proposal:
- Base Character HP at level 40: 4880 -> ~8000
- CON Stat bonus (L40): 15 -> 6
Why those numbers though?
This model's roughly balanced about how much CON statting is required to achieve 9k HP. Note the model doesn't quite account for diminishing returns, which is a thing that does affect CON at the moment, but its effects otherwise are pretty subdued. In the base game, to achieve 9k HP, you would need:(9000-4880)/15 4120/15 = ~274Around 274 CON to achieve that much HP. If we're talking about fairly extreme content here - that is, missions that many new pieces of content probably are balancing themselves around - Frosticus' Ice Pillar would take a character with only rudimentary damage mitigation out in 2 hits. His Frozen Dagger, quite possibly even faster. For Gravitar, her unpredictable FC spam would take about 3 or 4 firings to kill a character with this much HP and no defense - guess how many she fires in a row near the end of her fight? Provided a player gets unlucky in that situation, they could wind up face-first quite quickly - and in the case of a non-con character with only the baseline 4880 HP, these scenarios only get much more hairy.
Just 1000 HP away from that threshhold, how much CON would be needed to achieve that same standard of survival under the new setup?
(9000-8000)/6 1000/6 = ~166Much less, clearly. Considering that 9000 HP alone only offers about the baseline of defense for surviving some of the rampage villains' onslaughts, having such a rudimentary devotion of stat into CON would be pretty fair. Probably more important to consider is how the model would adapt to those who did put high amounts into their CON. Time to put my algebra skills I haven't used since middle school to use:
We want to solve: 4880 + 15x = 8000 + 6x Subtract 6x from both sides: 4880 + 9x = 8000 Subtract 4880 from both sides: 9x = 3120 Divide everything by 9: x = 346.66666In other words, around 346 con is where you'd neither gain nor lose HP from this change. Anything above this, and the change would cause you to lose max HP. Note that this doesn't quite account for Diminishing Returns on the CON stat, so it potentially could be lower. As a bit of a visual representation, here's a graphing of how old CON (red) would compare to new CON (blue) - as you can see, the survival of all but the highest of CON builds would be increased substantially.
Also note that the proposed changes also leave out any sort of debuff to HP+ Specs and Mods. This is intentional, because the vast majority of HP buff in the game comes from con - even with this proposed change, CON itself is still a much higher booster of HP than any other spec in the game (though END's Hardened does come close here). The setup also becomes desirable, as now it no longer is a no-brainer to take CON as the way to ensure your survival. Despite that, CON still is going to be the best way to get more HP directly, and as a result, still will be essential to tanks for being able to take the most damage possible - in the long run, though, proper defenses and blocking will take you much farther.
But this is going to make the game even easier.
Only for people who don't have over 350 CON, But that's what we want. We want our core game to be able to provide a balanced, fairly difficult experience for all character types, and having all characters closer to this innate baseline would allow the developers to get started on making all mobs - normal, tough, in lairs, in alerts, whatever - all have a more standardized output of damage that can pose a more equal threat to all character roles. It would be a first step in allowing them to make blocking and support more ubiquitous, and above all, remove CON as a prerequisite for anything other than builds fully devoted to weathering all but the most catastrophic of attacks.THE TL;DR
- People get swatted by tougher content if they don't have CON or take it as a superstat. ATs are a particular victim.
- The current solution that's coming up for some of this is to use %HP attacks, which, while they have a niche, should mostly be limited to assaults meant to be fatal or otherwise ignore defense, rather than a standard to base damage output upon.
- To solve this, I suggest to raise the base health of all players, while reducing the benefits that con offers.
- This way, not only will this resolve the issue of some builds and ATs being killed repeatedly in high level content...
- But it also shall make the choice of CON as a superstat more strategic - do I want to use the primary specs to make a ranged tank? Can I get more out of my character by choosing End or Rec for more consistent attacks over a better defense?
- Finally and most importantly, it will set a new baseline upon which the entire game can be balanced, to make everything more threatening and challenging to all character types, without having to worry about certain scenarios one-shotting specific players.
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-Sterga
My concern with such a change is that it turns Constitution from a must-have into something that's hardly worth it. You devote EVERY piece of gear you have to Constitution, and only get 3000-4000 HP? That's pretty lackluster.
Now, if Constitution could get a little bit of extra stuff to help out dedicated tanks... Say, knock resistance... I think I'd be on-board for that.
Along with the reduction in Constitutiton effectiveness, making 8000 health be the baseline closes the gap between tanks and non-tanks quite massively, in a game where tanks are already mostly unnecessary. Granted, adding knock resistance wouldn't make tanks more needed, but it'd at least give some enticement versus a minuscule 50% increase in HP at the cost of huge amounts of damage and energy management.
So, overall, I might support it with some tweaks to make it so that Constitution doesn't get swept away entirely. X)
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And seriously, Buff END. Seriously.
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Tanks have slowly gotten a bit more use and acceptance for threat-holding roles - Fire and Ice, for example actually utilizes very high defense on its bosses to deliberately make it so that damage produces less threat comparatively to, well, actual threat effects. Provided a trend like that continues, I could see tanks getting more similar roles encouraged in major battles like that in the future.
I think what's most important to realize about CON as a superstat is that, in a way, it's the 'default', the fallback. It literally is the only stat that will help your character no matter what they do, which (aside from gigantic survivability) is part of the reason why it's so ubiquitous today. A big part in this is that so many character types nowadays just simply don't need a third superstat, because efficiency gear is enough to cover energy needs.
The discussion does bring up a bit of concerns. I do think partially that the HP benefit should be raised so that a decently-statted CON character should be able to take twice the damage, but to accomplish that likely would require a more complex HP-gain curve than linear. There's also the concern that characters in Tank role will stand the most to gain benefits from statting anything but con in this scenario, using the HP benefit from the role and combining it with End or Rec statting to counteract poor energy generation issues, but there's really no way to tell if that'll be the case until something's tested, eh?
Personally, if I had to pick an auxiliary benefit for CON to have on its own, I'd pick a slight buff to both Knock and Hold resistance.
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For years I've been annoyed that CON has been a requirement instead of an option for late game content. Creating FF niche builds without CON is always very tricky and must focus on dodge and/or stealth, or be killed instantly by anything sneezing on you.
Despite this change, CON would still be an attractive option because it is the only attribute that directly increases both damage and survivability when picked as a superstat. Plus people will still want the overpowered Juggernaut specialization.
I take this quote from a review that I agree with.
"customisation is so linear; everyone is after the optimal dps:survivability ratio with 0 reliance on other players = autonomous gameplay... Players don't need each other anymore... which in my opinion is a bad thing."
Constitution is high on the list, and this well-thought post provides a nice framework to start.
Then work on Recovery and Endurance.
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With regards to the %HP attacks - these do have problems (as mentioned) but they're a much fairer way of implementing major attacks in open world contexts. Currently, high damage AoE attacks from event bosses such as Mechanon, Clarence, et al, act as a class and level bar, excluding any player whose character doesn't yet have a ranked block or ability to absorb sky high damage levels. It has some utility as well in lairs as well, but only as an occasionally deployed special attack, preventing super-tanks from shrugging everything off without thought. I woudn't want to see Gravitar being changed to work in this way (in some respects her unfairness is quite funny), but it is, generally, better to challenge the player's actions than simply to insta-kill them.
-Sterga
42 40s, LTSer.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I only did pvp once ;w;
This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
Mulling on it a bit, I have considered boosting the CON benefit, resulting in something like 8000/10, but I think that would generally make characters way too beefy for current content. Definitely think that boosting CON's HP benefit would be something the stat would grow into over time as more challenging fights get added/people complain that tank builds no longer take CON as a stat.
CON's stat benefit cannot be permitted to double HP, however. Significant Tankiness needs to be exclusive to people who use defensive gear and bonuses. Like I said before, even with the over 50% nerf to CON, I still forsee it being used everywhere due to alternative stats being situational or otherwise unneeded for certain character setups.
Pfft.
Of course I am joking.
I like this idea and having read through the proposal, I too would like to see more HP% based attacks. My only concern, as a PFF user during Clarence was that my PFF was being flat out ignored by the Mecha Wave blast attack because it doesnt count as HP.
So there would need to be some sort of way for damage mitigation and shields to count vs %HP attacks.
As a side note: I am so glad someone produced a "How to Block" and "Different types of blocking" video. You should link that in your sig
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Graph to show the different options proposed so far;
About the spikes from Grav/Kenina. Even with a no CON build you can survive one or two FC's. I regularly run the alert with my lightning dps build that does not have any CON, I only really need to block the FC then there are only a few people left in stage 3. Kenina's random Rimefire can be predicted, she only does the random one after the ice/fire rain. Blocking for 5 seconds after those end completely protects you from them.
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idea sounds sensible and a good idea.
I know I usually have con as a secondary, just to get some hps.
Now i know why I kept taking full damage from Clarences 1/3, despite blocking.
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Or better yet, can we go with 7000 | 8.5 ? Can we do decimals? Is that a thing? Although 6.5k | 10 is preferable for the game's content and the difficulty of new content being developed, the only down side I'd see with it is you'd have to revisit the issue again if there was more powerful gear or a level increase since the scaling is still a tad high (but it is great for level 40 and the current ranges of stats possible).
This idea in general is probably the best and most important balancing fix that the devs could implement. The fact that everyone in this thread is mostly in agreement shows how crippling CON is in regards to balancing content for all players, making ATs viable for all content, and opening up building varieties in both PVE and PVP. This before any other content should take priority.
I'm not going to poke a dev about this thread, but that doesn't mean someone shouldn't
Too put it simply, 8 k is too much health, there are tanks in the game right now that can rock 8k.
6.5k seems like a good base HP to grant Hybrid, Support, Ranged and Melee DPS roles.
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I would also remove the outdated and unnecessary maximum energy & energy restrictions on tank role.
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The +threat on CON should be capped for all roles except in tank role.
If no +threat bonus with CON, then delete Defiance too.
However, the last time they changed the ratio of hp to con, it had all kinds of side effects, for reasons that have never made any sort of sense to me -- apparently that ratio was all tied up in a bunch of other formulas. This makes me somewhat leery of such suggestions.
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Block timing explained
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.