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Official Feedback Thread: Weapon Enhancement Changes
rgutscheradev
Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 188Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
TLDR: We’ve buffed the dps of a whole bunch of the weaker weapon enhancements. Did we mess up? Anything broken? Please try them out (they’re in the Preview tab of the Wondrous Bazaar). Mathcrafters especially welcome.
The Problem
Right now, players are using just a few of the existing Weapon Enhancements (e.g., Vorpal, Dread). Why do so many of the others go unused? The biggest reason has to do with scaling. The Weapon Enhancements (let’s call them WEs for short) were originally built as non-scaling. If you wanted to scale them up, you could increase their rank, but at any given rank, they did a fixed amount of damage. If your character’s power went up, it didn’t matter. (They do scale with weapon damage, but that’s not a number that rises that much in Neverwinter compared to things like Power.)
But then come WEs like Vorpal and Dread. They add a fixed amount of crit sev. So that’s OK, right? For a fixed rank, you always get the same amount of crit sev, no scaling, right? But not so fast. Crit sev gives you more crit damage, and crit damage is a multiple of your base damage. And your base damage scales like crazy!
The Change
It’s really hard to have a non-scaling thing compete with a scaling one. So, with some trepidation, we’ve decided to make the other WEs scale. In other words, if your character’s power goes up, the amount of damage your Flaming Enchantment does will go up as well. The overall effect should be that all the WEs now scale at basically the same rate as Dread or Vorpal.
The Design Goal
The goal is NOT to make these other WEs better than Dread or Vorpal. The goal is just to get them onto the same playing field. Given how much some players have invested in their WEs, and how much effort it is to switch to a new one, we’d rather the new WEs come in a bit below Dread/Vorpal rather than above (because we don't want to be obsoleting anything). In any case, it’s still a really dramatic buff to all these WEs.
Ideally, we’ll end up in a place like this:
The Help We Need
But to end up in this happy place, we need your help!
Adding in scaling is such a big change, it’s almost like these are new items. The raw numbers (7% of weapon damage or 11% of weapon damage or whatever) are almost certainly off now. If you care about dps, we’d love to have you take a look, try these different WEs, and let us know what you think.
The big question we want input on is, does the extra damage you are getting seem right (given whatever else the WE does)? Remember the goal is overall comparable to Vorpal/Dread, but not always better. When you tell us what you find, be sure to mention what your power is and what the WE is saying its bonus is (the tooltip should adjust as your power does).
What’s affected:
The Problem
Right now, players are using just a few of the existing Weapon Enhancements (e.g., Vorpal, Dread). Why do so many of the others go unused? The biggest reason has to do with scaling. The Weapon Enhancements (let’s call them WEs for short) were originally built as non-scaling. If you wanted to scale them up, you could increase their rank, but at any given rank, they did a fixed amount of damage. If your character’s power went up, it didn’t matter. (They do scale with weapon damage, but that’s not a number that rises that much in Neverwinter compared to things like Power.)
But then come WEs like Vorpal and Dread. They add a fixed amount of crit sev. So that’s OK, right? For a fixed rank, you always get the same amount of crit sev, no scaling, right? But not so fast. Crit sev gives you more crit damage, and crit damage is a multiple of your base damage. And your base damage scales like crazy!
The Change
It’s really hard to have a non-scaling thing compete with a scaling one. So, with some trepidation, we’ve decided to make the other WEs scale. In other words, if your character’s power goes up, the amount of damage your Flaming Enchantment does will go up as well. The overall effect should be that all the WEs now scale at basically the same rate as Dread or Vorpal.
The Design Goal
The goal is NOT to make these other WEs better than Dread or Vorpal. The goal is just to get them onto the same playing field. Given how much some players have invested in their WEs, and how much effort it is to switch to a new one, we’d rather the new WEs come in a bit below Dread/Vorpal rather than above (because we don't want to be obsoleting anything). In any case, it’s still a really dramatic buff to all these WEs.
Ideally, we’ll end up in a place like this:
- people with Dreads and Vorpals are happy to keep them
- people who like to experiment feel there might now be some point in doing so
- people who, for reasons of flavor or character concept or looks or whatever, want to use another WE feel they aren’t being completely punished for doing so
- if some specialized builds find that another WE is BiS now, that can be OK, as long as it’s not too extreme (again, we don’t want to totally nuke large numbers of people who have invested in their current WE).
The Help We Need
But to end up in this happy place, we need your help!
Adding in scaling is such a big change, it’s almost like these are new items. The raw numbers (7% of weapon damage or 11% of weapon damage or whatever) are almost certainly off now. If you care about dps, we’d love to have you take a look, try these different WEs, and let us know what you think.
The big question we want input on is, does the extra damage you are getting seem right (given whatever else the WE does)? Remember the goal is overall comparable to Vorpal/Dread, but not always better. When you tell us what you find, be sure to mention what your power is and what the WE is saying its bonus is (the tooltip should adjust as your power does).
What’s affected:
- Bilethorn, Feytouched, Flaming, Frost, Holy Avenger, Lifedrinker, Lightning, Plague Fire, Terror.
- All these WEs now have scaling.
- Dread, Vorpal: because these feed off crit sev, they scale naturally already. They are already strong WEs.
- Bronzewood: Bronzewood is just different. It needs some love too, but it’s not part of these changes. Sorry Bronzewood.
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@thefabricant @michela123 @rjc9000
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
Awww yeah!
Edgy! Debuff queen!
Yesss!!!
(oh and by the way, I don't do much besides poke Sharp and Michela to do the math of the content while I am the meatshield kekekekeke)
On the other note, some trans effects like the AoE of flaming and PF are currently useless with a VERY small amount of damage dealt. Same goes for the armor enchantments like fireburst.
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
Terror also have some nice look, back then it was as good as vorpal, but now it's not use, not even in pvp.
If everything goes well, i probably would swap my vorpal for one of those. Time to test!
A nice solution for slower classes that aren't mad sky high crit having some kind of option to improve their damage.
It is just my opinion.
Feytouched do not need buff. He had increases all damage by 18%. He scale already.
Classic characteristics for the character: 75% Base CritSev, 10% from boons, 10% from pots. Total 95%.
With Vorpal 95%+50%=145%.
DPS = (1+CA+CritChance*CritSev)*SomeBuffs*BaseDamage.
Now we draw the graphs of dps from critical strike chance and WE.
Pink. Vorpal. Without CA. DPS = (1+CritChance*1.45) .
Red. Vorpal. CA=30%. DPS = (1+0.3+CritChance*1.45) .
Gray. Fey. Without CA. DPS = (1+CritChance*0.95)*1.18 .
Black. Fey. CA=30%. DPS = (1+0.3+CritChance*0.95)*1.18 .
CritChance from 30% to 100%.
It is seen that Vorpal wins only in the case of high values of critical strike chance.
And one example, when Fey is better than Vorpal almost always.
HR with feats Rising Focus (15% CritSev) and Skirmishers Gambit (50% CritSev), 10% from boons, 10% from pots.
Pink. Vorpal. Without CA. DPS = (1+CritChance*2.1) .
Red. Vorpal. CA=30%. DPS = (1+0.3+CritChance*2.1) .
Gray. Fey. Without CA. DPS = (1+CritChance*1.6)*1.18 .
Black. Fey. CA=30%. DPS = (1+0.3+CritChance*1.6)*1.18 .
CritChance from 30% to 100%.
It should also be noted that Fey reduces enemy damage by 18%. What is another of its very strong advantage.
I know this feedback is not directly related to the changes, but the enchantments have several issues that in my opinion should be addressed, especially their tooltips. I would like you to be aware of them.
PLAGUE FIRE
Tooltip: “Induce terror in your foe, reducing their Defense by x% and Power by y%. This effect stacks up to 3 times”
I think the tooltip should also specify the Damage Resistance reduction in PVE. For example the 15% Defense reduction provided by Perfect Plague Fire is a 3% Damage Resistance reduction against mobs. It is also not clear if the Power reduction works somehow in PVE.
TRANSCENDENT PLAGUE FIRE
It has an additional 2% Damage Resistance debuff, but it isn’t listed anywhere.
PURE/TRANSCENDENT FROST
Tooltip: “Make them take 7% increased damage”
When applied, the Damage Resistance debuff has no icon in the enemy’s debuff bar. There is a debuff icon when you attack an enemy, but it doesn’t match the debuff uptime.
PURE VORPAL
Tooltip: “Your Critical Strikes now reduce your target’s Damage Resistance by 2%”
I’m not sure what is the issue with this debuff, I think the duration is too short. The result anyway is that I rarely see this 2% debuff. Also, it does not display any debuff icon on the enemy’s bar and it doesn’t seem applied on critical hits, but on random crit/non-crit hits.
TRANSCENDENT VORPAL
Tooltip: “Your Critical Strikes now reduce your target’s Damage Resistance by 2%”
The Damage Resistance reduction is applied by every hit, even the non-critical ones.
GREATER FEYTOUCHED
Tooltip: “Your encounter powers siphon away 10% of your target’s damage. This damage is converted into 10% more damage for you”
The damage buff is 10% as stated, but the damage reduction applied to the enemy is 9%.
PURE/TRANSCENDENT FEYTOUCHED
Tooltip: “Your encounter powers siphon away 18% of your target’s damage. This damage is converted into 18% more damage for you. This effect is a 3 target AoE”
No. It has two 15% damage debuffs: one is applied to the targets you hit with your encounter power and has a pink icon, the other one is the “3 target AoE” damage debuff and its icon is a white axe. This two 15% damage debuffs stack for a total 100-100*0,85*0,85 = 27,75% damage reduction. The damage buff instead is 18% as stated in the tooltip.
Thank you for mentioning bronzewood. It had its nitche in the past and I want to see viable again. Its a fun enchant with a neet grafic effect that looks awesome on earthy characters {cough cough druid coug}. But its not in anyones though processes when building a character, there is no other end game choice with vorp and fey topping all the charts of all the builds.
Also, in my opinion terror needs love. Currently there is no reson to chose it over PF.
Traxus Atheanes GF
Bastiel Atheanes DC
Ellara Atheanes CW
Keira Atheanes TR
Sarasin Atheanes SW
Jerkface McGee HR
-MANTARA- OP
What about Armor Ench?
Could someone please post the actual changes? I'm particularly interested in Lightning
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 hope it will be a huge buff, because hitting for 700 damages per lightning was very disappointing. I want it to be one of the best group of mob killing enchantment, like it used to be before.
and that's a good idea!
(had a try at flaming, frost, lifedrinker, lightning, plague fire and terror
no details from me though, i'm not a meticulous tester)
just this for now: the cost of swapping enchants has increased to 3,5 gold
this feels like a move in the wrong direction for alt friendly play...
Nice to see some changes.
How i tested:
4k GWF swordmaster destroyer high crit build.
Summoned pet Fire archon with 3 x r12 bondings equiped.
Full r12 brutals equiped on offensive slots (inc pet)
base power 30k,base crit 14k (Unbuffed by other players).
Attacking standard test dummy (should note test dummy has no defence to be reduced by plague fire or terror ,and also has no damage to steal via feytouched).
Using Test weapon with transcendant enchant equiped.
Average test time about 5 minutes but this varied so ignore the total damage column only the average damages are relevant.
An important note: my GWF is a high crit build and therefore changing my brutal enchants to radiant as well as changing feats and boons in order to go pure power build would result in higher dps using the power based enchants.So its hard to compare dps with the non crit enchants without completely changing and respec toon.
I have also saved each combat log seperately in case anyone wants to look at the detailed results using advanced combat tracker.
Bug: Bilethorn Weapon.
The 30% DoT is not scaling, however, the initial effect of bilethorn is.
2) People will be much more inclined to use Frost, Holy Avenger if their uptime is higher.
3) The use of Barkshield still seems rather limited in both PvE and PvP. How about make it like DC's empowered astral shield
where it negates a flat amount of dmg per hit for a fixed amount of time.
Mod 12.5 PvP Power/Crit/Arp Optimization
Youtube channel (PvE/PvP)
For those that would just like to express general opinions about the changes, debate philosophical differences, or otherwise express feedback that isn't directly related to testing these changes, please direct your comments here:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1227238/general-opinions-on-weapon-enchanctment-changes
Thank you.
If there is any chance of taking a look at armor ones too and get everything balanced nicely. This would be great as I feel after this weapon enchantment change we won't go back to enchantments for a very long time.
oh and @bronto111 thats great data, but is it possible to put the % of each? that would make it easier for me to compare to existing enchants.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
Posted a year ago: http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/1211463/elven-battle-removes-chill-stacks
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