test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
How and why damage and control immunity abilities are greatly damaging the endgame experience
diogene0
Member Posts: 2,894 Arc User
For those of you who don't know, dungeon design rules changed greatly with module 6. Not necessarily in a bad way, as this was a quite popular request before this module, but it didn't come with the complete overhaul of some powers that was required to smooth the experience. I'm obviously talking about damage immunities.
Back in beta, and up until module 5, dungeons had adds. A lot of adds. Swarms of adds. And many player powers were designed around that fact. After mod 6, there's barely any adds, dungeons are more or less empty, and have a few big adds doing some damage when they feel like it, which isn't often. Of course, it implies that powers which were designed around protecting the team for a few hits became much stronger, and now require much less skill to use, if any.
But let's name these powers:
- Fox's cunning. In theory, that's a cool spell. Before mod 6 it would require precise timing, ie knowing a fight, it's mechanics, and the overall pace of things. That means skill. It protects the entire party for one hit and one hit only. When it was added to the game, back in mod 2, that only hit made the power situational and quite difficult to use, which was great, because it's an auto dodge for any attack, which means complete damage immunity.
Now? When you have bosses hitting once every 3 or more seconds, and very little adds - when there are adds -, you're pretty much guaranteed to auto dodge something meaningful, as there is no more of these meaningless hits from small adds, dots from them, and stuff like that. From a very situational power, we switched to a quite game-breaking one as it's now possible to entirely ignore some of the game mechanics with slow attacking bosses in the newest content, such as FBI.
- Anointed army. Okay, this one is probably the biggest offender. It suffers from the same design flaws as fox's cunning, except that it's a 90% damage reduction for 4 hits that lasts 10s and a complete control immunity. So in practice it means that players will not die to hits up to 1M damage, that there is no need to dodge any telegraph, that any class can tank any boss as long as they can keep aggro, and with the current levels of AP gains it's possible for a devoted cleric to use it once every 5-6s.
In addition to that, it suffers from other major design flaws, as it's a buff that scales with stats. This is the most atrocious game design you can ever come up with. Power creep can only make the buff stronger, and with time it becomes more and more problematic. Last, but not least, stats sharing with companions equipped with bonding runestones makes this power completely out of touch with the reality of the game's level of challenge.
Let's make it clear: there's no way to design challenging content with anointed army in mind without either making it feel completely unfair without it or without completely reworking how dungeons are designed - all of them. This power is that good.
Since the DC is my main character, I've been able to make a video to illustrate how broken that power is in endgame content. Just watch it if you want to see how often my character or anyone else dodges telegraphs in that video, but if you want the short answer, it's never:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-EqgjcNl-8
- Steel defence. This one has been balanced not so long ago, and in itself, it's not really a big deal. What makes it a big deal is when it's paired up with Fighter's recovery. In practice, it means that the GF will be completely damage immune for 3s and be able to self-heal quietly during that time, and of course, if he uses tide of iron to do so it pretty much means full stamina once it's done. It's really not difficult to achieve, but this is quite a sick combo, as it makes healing completely unneeded for GFs, especially tacticians with their crazy AP gains.
It means that GFs need no support at all from party members. Clearly, this isn't balanced and makes endgame content extremely trivial in its own way.
I know this may upset some people who hate having a challenging game experience in endgame content that is supposed to be challenging, but currently, these are the biggest offenders when it comes to trivializing things. The other main offender is self healing for dps but that would take an entirely new topic.
Back in beta, and up until module 5, dungeons had adds. A lot of adds. Swarms of adds. And many player powers were designed around that fact. After mod 6, there's barely any adds, dungeons are more or less empty, and have a few big adds doing some damage when they feel like it, which isn't often. Of course, it implies that powers which were designed around protecting the team for a few hits became much stronger, and now require much less skill to use, if any.
But let's name these powers:
- Fox's cunning. In theory, that's a cool spell. Before mod 6 it would require precise timing, ie knowing a fight, it's mechanics, and the overall pace of things. That means skill. It protects the entire party for one hit and one hit only. When it was added to the game, back in mod 2, that only hit made the power situational and quite difficult to use, which was great, because it's an auto dodge for any attack, which means complete damage immunity.
Now? When you have bosses hitting once every 3 or more seconds, and very little adds - when there are adds -, you're pretty much guaranteed to auto dodge something meaningful, as there is no more of these meaningless hits from small adds, dots from them, and stuff like that. From a very situational power, we switched to a quite game-breaking one as it's now possible to entirely ignore some of the game mechanics with slow attacking bosses in the newest content, such as FBI.
- Anointed army. Okay, this one is probably the biggest offender. It suffers from the same design flaws as fox's cunning, except that it's a 90% damage reduction for 4 hits that lasts 10s and a complete control immunity. So in practice it means that players will not die to hits up to 1M damage, that there is no need to dodge any telegraph, that any class can tank any boss as long as they can keep aggro, and with the current levels of AP gains it's possible for a devoted cleric to use it once every 5-6s.
In addition to that, it suffers from other major design flaws, as it's a buff that scales with stats. This is the most atrocious game design you can ever come up with. Power creep can only make the buff stronger, and with time it becomes more and more problematic. Last, but not least, stats sharing with companions equipped with bonding runestones makes this power completely out of touch with the reality of the game's level of challenge.
Let's make it clear: there's no way to design challenging content with anointed army in mind without either making it feel completely unfair without it or without completely reworking how dungeons are designed - all of them. This power is that good.
Since the DC is my main character, I've been able to make a video to illustrate how broken that power is in endgame content. Just watch it if you want to see how often my character or anyone else dodges telegraphs in that video, but if you want the short answer, it's never:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-EqgjcNl-8- Steel defence. This one has been balanced not so long ago, and in itself, it's not really a big deal. What makes it a big deal is when it's paired up with Fighter's recovery. In practice, it means that the GF will be completely damage immune for 3s and be able to self-heal quietly during that time, and of course, if he uses tide of iron to do so it pretty much means full stamina once it's done. It's really not difficult to achieve, but this is quite a sick combo, as it makes healing completely unneeded for GFs, especially tacticians with their crazy AP gains.
It means that GFs need no support at all from party members. Clearly, this isn't balanced and makes endgame content extremely trivial in its own way.
I know this may upset some people who hate having a challenging game experience in endgame content that is supposed to be challenging, but currently, these are the biggest offenders when it comes to trivializing things. The other main offender is self healing for dps but that would take an entirely new topic.
0
Comments
My main is an AA-spam DC and the benefit that the party gets (damage immunity, control immunity, HUGE power buff, and AP trickle from feat) is incredibly strong. I'm fairly decked out, but at the high end it's so strong that I can essentially "shepherd" any party through any content outside of FBI.
I also agree that this is a tough one to address. I think you point out the major issues as damage immunity and scaling stats. They need to strike the right balance between capping the high-end without gutting the power and making it useless for lesser geared / newer DCs.
And we haven't exactly seen a track record of getting the balance right with these kinds of changes.
In case it's not clear enough, this is the current state of the game. With anointed army, tanks are not welcome.
Given Cryptics track record on nerfing classes into the floor, players should exercise extreme caution with any feedback to them. Anyone remember what they did to the TR, GWF and CW?
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
I'm giving feedback because I care. Stop trolling my thread. If you don't want to give feedback on the topic I initiated (even if you want to post that you like facereolling the content, that's OK), you are not welcome to post.
Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
Take FBI for example. Honestly, most of the bosses are fairly trivial thanks to these high levels of damage immunity/resistance. They boil down to being mostly huge sacks of hit points, with people only dying due to "bad luck" or maybe a bit of lag. But when going through FBI, I often hear my favorite DC partner say, "Don't worry, I can probably just AA you through it".
And those areas are further exasperated by the lack of meaningful diminishing returns on any of the stats. Buffing someone to 200k power without diminishing returns (as well as other ridiculous scaled buffs/debuffs) leads the end game to be nothing more than "head down, dps harder" in nearly all encounters.
Anyway, these are fundamental flaws in the game right now that need to be addresses at the root level, because without it, you'll never really see a balanced end-game for Neverwinter. It's either going to continue to be EZ-Mode for top geared players, or so ludicrously punishing for anyone else that no one is having much fun.
Which is where we stand today...I can't imagine that any slice of the Neverwinter audience is really having that much fun in Mod 10.
/salute
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
Anointed champio path is very lacking of self dmg resistance, blessing of battle buff is very minor; the only good thing in this path is feature anointed armor. Anointed champion and overall DC lacks of control immunity and damage and righteous patch doesnt compensate this at 100%. So unless cryptic decides to tone down or remove some AP sources, the AA should stay the same or give Anointed champion some good control immunities and buff dmg. because thats what anointed champion is A BUFFER, GET IT?
I dont know what u mean by telegraphs, the case is that if AA is cast very often is due to many AP sources. If we analyze Anointed champion DC brings buffs and lacks of cc immunity. Their dmg is bad, really BAD that they can only buff it. and DC has good AP genetations against other classes like Ranger, who got ridiculous control powers or CW as well, against SW and Figthers who got ridiculous DPS and GF that has everything. but u will tell me "they are dps", i tell u DC is a buffer, he needs to buff. again, the problem is the AP generation that comes very often.
I don't mean to suggest how you play your DC (you are much better than I am), but do you get the same 'out of balance' aspect to AA if you remove some of the 'buffs' to your power? Really just curious--not being sarcastic--i play the wrong type of DC to use AA and test the idea. Although after watching the video I may respec my DC.
btw, I really enjoyed your video--watched it several times for tips on how to play CN.
The three major design flaws of AA, since people want to discuss that spell specifically, are the following:
- it scales with player stats. This is wrong on so many levels I don't know where to start. The more time passes, the stronger the buff becomes. Power creep makes this spell stronger with every mod. The devs never take into account the effect of power creep on this spell when designing new items. The proof is the new eye of the giant artifact on preview.
- it shares stats with bonding pets that buff their owners accordingly. I mean, seriously?
- 90% damage mitigation that stack with damage resistance, and an extra layer of CC resistance added to the spell makes every fight trivial and boring. 1M hits? No problem, AA will make you tank it. With your control wizard. This doesn't make sense.
Which is why this is a massive undertaking, and while AA is defintly a powerful tool, its not the only one, one of the biggest issues they have is they tinker and fix a few things at once.. and leave dozens of other items , so poeple just keep shifting around.
Until they redo all buffs/debuffs, look at all dungeons/damage/hitpoint pools all together at once, it will never be truly fixed.
They also have a VERY , very bad habit of making powers that were once GREAT to overpowered.. to simply frig, that power sux cn balls now..
AA-spam is actually potentially available to even 2k+ iLvL DCs as long as they spec for it (though ultimately all good ACDCs become AA spammers).
If anything that level of spammability should be granted to something like Divine Armor, a purely defensive daily that all DCs have access to, not a daily like AA which is AC-exclusive and also carries an incredibly powerful offense buff.
EDIT:
If you read my posts on your other thread, you'll know that bonding procs don't affect AA. The reason for those incredibly high AA numbers has more to do with buggy feat/item interaction, which is a different issue.
Maybe we can have mini bosses spawn mobs and stuff and let main boss be pinata types?
There are some fundamental flaws that have made the dungeon experience worse. The main one is a move from a larger number of controllable and low damage mobs to a low number of control immune and high damage ones and from adds+bosses battles to single bosses battles.
This has a few consequences:
- Control is almost useless. As somebody said "nothing that is controllable in this game needs to be controlled". This killed entire feat trees around. I choose the HR trapper originally because I liked the control+support spamming+moderate dps idea. Now trappers need to be top DPS in order to be invited (and I already see that as a 3,5k HR I don't get invited to FBI in some channels) because control is useless.
- Healing is close to useless unless you're really at the very top end. I did FBI with a devoted OP only and while it can be done it's more difficult and time consuming than doing it with an AC DC, and it needs a top-notch OP to be possible as outhealing stuff like the manticore's DoT is not easy.
- Immunity powers like AA can change the game. Yesterday I carried a full-dps (and relatively low iLvL) party trough eToS final boss by spamming Fox's Cunning.
The net result is that you only need to do two things right now:
- spam immunity powers and build your toon in order to maximise the spamming
- debuff the enemy/buff yourself as much as you can to increase dps
There are dungeons like Valindra and Malabog where most of my guildies don't even realize that there are special mechanics in the final fights because all they ever did was burning everything.
As diogene0 says there is no need to build more defensively anymore. I have both Lathander's and Orcus' sets for my HR. The first offers more defense the second more damage. I tried them both in FBI and guess what? Everything can one or two-shot me anyway so the choice is a no brainer.
The reason why FBI is still a bit different is that they added some specific mechanics that you need to be aware of, but the way the dungeon is built is as flawed as the rest. To be honest mod6 dungeons were more challenging, not to mention Dread Vault and Spellplague which are still the two best dungeons this game has ever had.
Power creep has to go. AP gain is far too high. These powers are called dailies and people can spam them every 6 seconds, which is in some cases less than the cooldowns on some encounters. Buffs in general are our of control too.
Monsters should deal less damage and be more numerous. This will bring AA and similar powers more in line. Mobs should be be mostly controllable and should be able to control more. Their damage should be lower. Self-healing should be toned down for non-healing classes.
Most of the difficulty in Dread Vault was due to the fact that mobs were able to completely shut you down if you didn't deal with them properly. You had to dodge to avoid being perma-stunned by chains of illithid mind blasts.
There was in the original game a lot of the 4e D&D idea of complex combat which is now completely lost.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
- The GF was aggroing and tanking the mobs. Weird, eh? Now the GF never tanks the mobs in a boss fight.
- The DC was keeping the GF up and keeping an eye on the rest of the battle.
- 1 DPS was taking care of the deadly archers which were not 1-shot machines like those in eCC in mod 6 but would wear the GF down fast if not dealt with.
- the other two DPS were tanking and burning the boss.
Quite a strange set-up. You'll never see something similar right now. DPS classes cannot tank bosses in most cases. I tanked the Manticore from half-life to zero on my HR only because I used Fox on a fast rotation and one of the best DCs in the game (Michela) was using AA all time to keep me up but that's just because AA is what it is.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
While in theory ,suggestions here ,point to a better and more chalenging game ,practice shows otherwise:
And i explain:
Pre mod6 all these would be great and i would approve them all.
Post Mod6 though ,game dungeons mechanics moved to a lot of small hits and deaths from attrition,to less but megahits that kill in one shot.
The whole game is structured around this principle now.
Damage immunities accompanied this concept aswell.
If you take out immunities completelly and leave the current end game damage unchecked,prepare for a rough awakening.
Also the introduction of everfrost damage,changed the whole concept dramatically.
An example:
A single bear in FBI with just an att will does 250k normal plus 125k everfrost damage.
That means that any GF ,that will eat this ,while not blocking ,is history.Theoretically no still he would have some hit points left.But as said...This is ONE (1) bear hit.Ascending FBI ,through the different plateaus ,group will face mobs of 2 bears plus 2-3 giants.
A good tank will get the aggro of at least 4 of that adds.That means he will take 2-3 hits every 3 secs.Now explain to me how he is supposed to survive.And at the same time reposition himself,and cast encounters.
Again in theory "a healer will debuff the adds".Nope.
A healer in that situation has to
1)keep himself alive
2)Keep group alive
3)Buff group
4)Debuff/buff tank/adds
if you think that this can happen every time with 100 success you foul yourself.
Even in the extraordinary cases with veteran players and nearly BiS gear,BondR12s,Bites/Avenger equipped R12 companions, and good latency ,wipes will happen.
Now compare this situation ,and move it into your minds with normal players with normal gear.Impossible to cope.
t2s will become extremely hard for the normal geared players.
Paladins already will have a really hard time in end game after mod10.5.Many of them will quit .
Game,population wise, is suffering already as it is .
------------------------
AArmy might needs adjustment as BO.But generally to wipe control/damage immunities from the game single handely,will lead to a player base exodus.
I said it,and I will say it again:
I remember vividly the same -in essense -conversations prior to mod6 release.
"Everything is too easy" "we need a challenge" "My toon is so geared.And for what?"
And then mod6 arrived.80% of the players that were saying these,quit the game.Cause they could not cope with it anymore.Theory is always easy guys.
Most of the problems the game faces now have its roots in mod6 and the damage spikes that introduced.
For example paladin class was totally different in mod6 beta,with sanctuary a separate layer,templar wrath's providing only 15% temp hps etc.
People could not cope with the content though and paladin became what it is now with BO an abomination of a power.Reworking it /nerfing it in every mod.
But i want to point it out,for me,the whole situation has its roots to the elite player base dissastisfaction of mod5 that lead the design team to rework the game ,moving from death through attrition to one shots death, and introduce immunities later.
Think about it,think what are you proposing and what are,or are not,the consequences of a decision of this magnitute you apply.
I am not against any of any change ,but each demands thoughts,conutermeasures and reworks.A wide open eradication of immunities is wrong.
Nothing personal,my two thoughts.