test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
classes balance and scaling
malakay
Member Posts: 19 Arc User
What happened to balance between classes? the need for a tank is gone with a reasonable healer, the dps from barbs fighters and warlocks is terrible compared to rogues wizards and rangers and even clerics, i understood why they would make this classes stronger (except clerics), but the amount of stronger is too much really, tweak that pliz. If you think about it deeply if tanks are obsolete and if warlock is the class that no one picks for a healer (no one really cuz they suck compared to the other 2 with shields from pala and continued strong healing from Cleric) then you just have 3 classes that if you play them this is just getting on your nerves.
As for scaling, the only place where a end game feels confortable right now is at LoMM, the blance is absurd and if needed i can give you examples.
Since im at it, what has been done to the weapon enchantments also terrible, i only see Vorpal and Bronzewood, all the other WE are gone, i mean, i love this game, been playing for 3+ years, its just getting depressing, ill log in, get my key, do a walk arround sometimes do a LoMM and thats it, if anything else take this from me, balance is key make everyone viable options, make tanks needed again, and drop scaling, no one likes it and it removes the need for lower level players to grow, or at the very least tweak it.
As for scaling, the only place where a end game feels confortable right now is at LoMM, the blance is absurd and if needed i can give you examples.
Since im at it, what has been done to the weapon enchantments also terrible, i only see Vorpal and Bronzewood, all the other WE are gone, i mean, i love this game, been playing for 3+ years, its just getting depressing, ill log in, get my key, do a walk arround sometimes do a LoMM and thats it, if anything else take this from me, balance is key make everyone viable options, make tanks needed again, and drop scaling, no one likes it and it removes the need for lower level players to grow, or at the very least tweak it.
5
Comments
It's only been a year and a half for me, and I already feel so discouraged.
Lately it's been a real effort just to invoke and pick up my key.
Using my wizard as an example I have 85K in armor pen and critical strike when I run LoMM because when I go into lower content my stats are right where they need to be to ensure I'm most effective. This has cost me power on my character and quite a bit of it to ensure that I can play all content effectively and not just be a power pump like many players are do to only going after the minimal stats and than dumping everything into power.
As for classes not being balanced; well I disagree. I got told that Fighters are horrible with AoE damage. Yet I can get on my fighter, run around a zone collecting adds, and than use the build I have and clear a large mob rather quickly with a so called class not designed to clear mobs like that, tell me how I did it; by reading and building my character so I can handle mobs.
To many players don't try things out for themselves and simply follow other player builds and this hurts their damage as they are not experimenting with their character to truly see what is a good build for how they play the game.
I have run LoMM plenty and I have seen good rangers, fighters, clerics, warlock, rogues and wizards. Yeah wizards, rogues, warlocks and rangers seem to have a slight edge but the edge from what I have experienced is mostly do to having a bit more power than the the other classes do to having 3 offensive. Getting the right build for how you play is important, its about 90% of the battle.
The problem I see is that each class has a mechanic to produce its maximum damage and some classes take a bit more now than previously to ensure that the class is going to hit that higher damage value. Because of that, if a player is not doing what needs to be done to max out their damage it is on them and not the build or the variance in class.
Looking at the old system wizards use to be slow to build up their damage and other classes were quicker and easier to get the bigger damage numbers. This has changed as wizards can now quickly do big burst damage and other classes have a build up period. I know for my cleric and fighter if both have all things lined up right for them they produce bigger/higher damage number than my wizard does, but my wizard damage is higher as it is more burst and is easier now to maintain than maintaining that high damage window on my Fighter or Cleric.
I actually like some of the update as it now makes it so that some of the classes require a bit of timing/skill to produce higher damage; however, at the same time I dislike the slower cooldowns making it so that if you miss that damage window your encounter damage is lower and not as high impacting the over all damage.
I'm hoping some class encounters have their cooldowns adjusted.
¨˜ˆ”°¹~•-.„¸ρℓαуιиg иєνєяωιитєя ѕιи¢є 2015¸„.-•~¹°”ˆ˜¨
As for classes not being balanced; well I disagree.
Are you on PS4? if so, show me, and i do my own builds, always have cuz its part of the fun for me, sure you can do something somehow viable with any class, but that doesnt mean its balanced, by your coments im sure you main either a Wizard or a Ranger. I main a Warlock, and altough im not the most hit by the changes, i feel for my friends who are, and as a Warlock i can tell you that there are powers that are no even working! Balance is a must for fun to be had, its not fun, when you get to the very top of your class and youre crushed, seen this happen to Barb a Fighter friends, not cool, But i repeat if youre on PS4, lets have at it!
I think the Warlock got hit pretty hard - mostly 'cause of the number of broken or useless encounters and mechanics.
And the below low average magnitudes don't help either. If they only fixed the broken powers and shadowslip, it would make a big difference. I'm very happy with my Barbarian, Rogue, Wizard, and Cleric. It took me a while to adjust to the Cleric, and I'm still learning it, but the more I play it, the better I like it. I'm still the world's worst Paladin, but even with that character I'm learning to embrace the suck. The Wizard's a bit buggy still, but it's nowhere near as mucked up as the Warlock. I personally think my Barbarian is an improvement over the GWF.
Don't know about the Ranger, but the ones I meet in queue don't seem to do as well as they used to. They all seem so depressed.
But I must say, it is gratifying to see the Wizard doing so well.
As for the other classes they all have a mechanic that requires a bit more to achieve maximum damage and if played correctly they can do similar damage to the three primary dps classes. The problem with these other classes is maintaining that max damage potential; however unlike the three primary dps classes the other classes in the game can play a support role which IMO makes them more useful than a pure dps class.
As someone that plays a Fighter, Cleric and Wizard I was hoping that the Cryptic would create a 3rd support role; buffer/debuffer. But it never happened as I was hoping that the wizard and hunter would be able to play that role. Maybe once they release a bard as a class that role may come to the game, maybe.
All classes are somewhat bugged and that is a problem when trying to balance anything. Until the developers can figure out how to deliver unbugged/broken code on classes there will never be even true balancing. Even if the code is not broken, balancing again will not be perfect as each class play differently and how the damage is produced. Most balancing in a MMO game happens around a sparing target and not in actual content. Also, it depends upon how the developers view balancing; is the balance of damage done over a set period of time or is it done in time chunks while going through a rotation? Also are the developers considering use of various encounters and not just specific ones; such as a wizard that uses Chili Strike as Mastery vs. a wizard that uses Entangling Force; both can be used.
The thing with balance is that there are so many variables that balancing cannot truly happen. The only way it can truly happen is if the development team removes all but the encounters needed to build our characters for said role; meaning even less choices; is that something the community wants? Than another issue arises from the fact that there are encounters for single targets and those designed for AoE.
I know DCUO took a strange approach in trying to balance the game out a while back and created a mechanic called Advance Mechanic or AM for short. It simplified the game and all players pretty much used the same build. Even with combat mechanics being simplified by forcing players to use specific abilities there was still plenty of balancing issues; mainly burst damage dealers significantly out performed the DoT damage dealers; even in hard content or high health bosses burst damage was easy to rotate through and DoT simply could not do enough. All the players I knew that played a DoT power/class in DCUO played their support role and rarely played as a DPS.
Like I have stated, in LoMM I have seen a variety of DPS and all do well; it is a matter of finding out what works for YOU as a player and working within that mechanic to produce maximum damage. The other aspect I want to point out is fun; if you are not having any fun, simply quit and go play another game.
I think I've tended to look at it in terms of how much damage a rotation can produce in 60 seconds. And from there I just assume that magnitudes could be tweaked to keep the various classes somewhat close - which is probably another oversimplification of the challenge of balancing.
Issue with Cleric is that they placed a mechanic of two types of pips that half of the best abilities are of one type and the other half are on the other side. So if you take the best abilities your losing damage stacks half way through the fight. If you only use abilities that share the same stacks your now picking abilities that don't perform well.
SW takes too long to get everything that improves damage fully up. Even when they are fully stacked they only do the same damage as the top end classes for a burst and are in poverty again.
Barbarian can't get to everything in time to actually continue attacking all of the time. Half the time your chasing what the ranged classes have already engaged and are chasing the rest of the fight. If you start the fight before the tank to keep everything close you really just are doing the tanks job and some healers will let you die in this situation. Most tanks also don't like it either when you initiate before them. This class is balanced to do the same damage as others at the attack dummies. They aren't balanced to do better damage than the other classes when they need to do more dps than other classes to make up for not being able to get near half of everything. Suffers from long animation timers and being stuck in location.
Fighter is balanced to where it excels over the Barb in single target damage but has issues with a mechanic that is hard to keep up all of the time. If you keep up the buff your doing a little better in dps than the other classes. Same issue with getting next to monsters that are running around or split up. Poor AoE in the fights in general and single target doesn't make up for it. Poor AoE at wills is the main issue with long animations.
CW has good fast animations, good at wills that perform better than classes that are mainly at will based. Better utility and ranged attacks. Fast animations and run speed that is the same as all of the other classes. They do everything as well or better than the classes that are supposed to be best at that ability. Only downside is that they are squishy when played by players who don't use dodge mechanics well. Very technical class to master.
No comment on HR since I don't play them at end game other than to say that they are very good in dps and have good mobility.
TR has great single target damage in the assassin build and is very close to the CW in everything in dps except in AoE abilities since Assassin is the better paragon for damage except when doing AoE. Has ranged at wills to get in some sneaky damage at range while also having the ability to delete the biggest mob in most AoE group phases. AoE is still better than most other classes in the game which gives it a really good benefit to game play.
Yule (Barb): 72k : Siren (TR): 78k : Torun (DC): 73k : Siren OP (OP): 76k : Siren SW (SW): 78k : Modern (F): 80k : Cherry1 (CW) : 68k Siren HR (HR): 78k
Yule (Barb): 72k : Siren (TR): 78k : Torun (DC): 73k : Siren OP (OP): 76k : Siren SW (SW): 78k : Modern (F): 80k : Cherry1 (CW) : 68k Siren HR (HR): 78k
As for movement speed l all classes are in a similar spot. However, I love it when a Warlock or a Barbarian flies ahead dies and than starts complaining about the healer not being right behind them to heal them. The movement mod that we all have is to protect us from damage and not to allow us to fly in before a tank and healer to try to wipe out a set of adds or even a boss. When I see that type of play it is all do to bad behavior the player learned from prior mods. This mod now requires the dps to wait for its healer and tank. Stamina should be saved for when it is actually needed to avoid damage, not to run ahead.
First off as someone who plays a fighter I can do a ton of AoE damage; I can pull all of the mobs in a ME together and clear them rather quickly with my fighter because a fighter can do very good AoE damage. Yeah a fighter can do good single target but with the right build they also can do AoE damage. That is the thing with this mod, you need to have the character build right to maximize the damage based upon the type of situation. If you are pulling mobs together for AoE damage you need to have a well thought out AoE build and a build for bosses. At minimum most players should have 2 dps loadouts if they want to maximize their damage potential in content.
This goes back to one of my earlier statements that we as players can select different encounters. I made an example with a wizard that uses Chill Strike on Mastery vs. using Entangling Force. Both are viable. Same can be said for all classes. It took me a few hours to figure out how an overall build my cleric that works for me in all content. I did the same with my wizard and fighter.
With the above statement in mind and the difference in single vs. multiple target builds how does one properly determine what is considered balance? You can't! There are to many variables. If we want true balance do you want the game to be simplified further? Do you want less feats or encounters available to us? Than once that is done the development team would be dependent upon sparring target testing to determine balance. As I stated in my prior post DCUO did this and on sparing targets DoT and Burst builds both did similar damage; however, in actual content burst builds were doing 2-3x if not more damage than a DoT build. So, even if the developers here can balance classes at a sparring target with limiting our build further we really won't have true balance in content do to all the variables that show up.
Balancing in a MMO game can happen at a sparring target but trying to balance classes for actual game play in content rarely happens.
So if all players want damage dealers classes to be truly sparring target balance than my recommendation is simplify the classes further so that we have 3 or 4 AoE and single target encounters with 4 dailies that clearly state which ones are single target/AoE as well as feats that drive our rotation in a specific order including our at will, dailies, encounters, etc...
I hate how this game reduced complexity and going after true class balance like many want will only reduce complexity more fro my experience; if that is what the community wants than enjoy a game that will be less complex than many loot shooters.
They gave us this system instead. And it is therefore perfectly reasonable to demand they at least do it well and it isn't, yet again, a matter of overgearing until it is all trivial.
The problem in this game is that people are just lazy, no one even reads what their ability does, i imagine most barbs just patching their game to mod16 (not even checking out new changes), mashing their mouse and being like "omg no dmg".
I've seen barbs and warlocks that totally kick HAMSTER, i've seen rogues and rangers that are...how to say it nicely...trash. People just don't experiment, don't learn mechanics(because now they're real, if you wanna do codg you gotta stay on ! no longer can it be done with a cleric and a dps), hell, people don't even read the description of the items.
[REAL] I've witnessed a 23k healer warlock in lomm outdps a 26k rogue. Warlock isn't op, rogue certainly isn't nerfed.
The balance in this game isn't an issue, the community is.
As for scaling...yeah, not happy with it, but i also don't see an easy fix.
Yule (Barb): 72k : Siren (TR): 78k : Torun (DC): 73k : Siren OP (OP): 76k : Siren SW (SW): 78k : Modern (F): 80k : Cherry1 (CW) : 68k Siren HR (HR): 78k
> Yet again,, if scaling is set for us to be optimized at certain cap thresholds which become increasingly inconsistent the further down we're scaled, that's bad implementation. Which doesn't happen. A wizard with a build based on crit is objectively weaker the more they're scaled, and tanks actually become less viable. And saying "just over gear" is absolutamely absurd and is not addressing the issue. The only way for scaling to be well implemented is to keep viability values adjusted. Scaling down from 68 crit should still give yu 50% Chance and preserve build integrity; There are other things to scale to maintain a challenge. Though this shouldn't be at the expense of progression, and lower dungeons should inherently be less challenging than higher ones. Ideally, creating normal, hard and epic tiers with respective risks and rewards would be best and cryptic knows, since it's what the community asked for years.
>
> They gave us this system instead. And it is therefore perfectly reasonable to demand they at least do it well and it isn't, yet again, a matter of overgearing until it is all trivial.
With ratings increasing in newer content and with the release of new gear, the less scaling will be an issue. M17 raises the caps to 80k, which is actually enough to bump us over most of the RIQ content scaling.
For instance let's look at eLoL. Enemies have 7K counter stats plus the 50K we need to maximize our stats. Using hard caps if a player is at 68K for armor pen, crit strike and accuracy and they go into eLoL they simply would have their stats lowered down to 57K vs. having their stats scaled by gear, enchantments, etc... the current scaling system actually forces us to over gear just to have the appropriate stats.
As for rating increasing with new gear; don't forget that one of the more recent patches made gear less effective in older content and made enchantments more effective. So if the devs keep their method of scaling in place, higher gear doesn't mean we will have higher stats in lower content as higher gear would have the stats reduced greater than say lower gear.
I hate NWO scaling systems. I rather it be hard capped on our current stats in lower content. It just makes more sense having it setup with a hard cap vs. scaling stats downward. It would be better for more players.
Or that people working up their way won't suffer from the uneven implementation.
Not everyone is, and not everyone should be required to spend the inordinate time of money and/or effort needed to be viable.
And for both those people and those who are still building their toons, saying get overcapped means Hamster, really.
Power is than capped in instances to ensure we don't speed through them. All items, enchantments, etc... give power and hit points. Two and three stat enchantments would be converted to a two stat enchantment that provides both. All older mount bonuses that are other stat would be power or hit points and the one that provided two or more would have both.
Since both of those have no hard cap it would be easier to code, balance and manage overall game development going forward. Placing a hard cap in lower instance would ensure we don't seem roll content(dungeons, trials, etc...). The hard cap would be 10% greater than the maximum amount of power or hit points one could achieve when using the best gear/enchantments for that content when it launched based upon the updated stats to that gear or simply level 70 content has X and level 80 has Y.
Going forward it would be all about HP and power, no more other stats.
This would be a solution would be simpler and easier to maintain than the current system.
Fill your secondary stacks to meet a certain cap, and then dump it all on power.
Which does ring kind of ironic as power creep is cited as one of the reasons for the changes, yet the practical result is, we're still stacking and overgearing, but now without the class synergy.
Oh well.
I even know of some GWF that started to do just this to get more IBS outs during a run. The reality is that each mod beyond gear we adjusted as needed not just for armor pen but anything else that changed based on gear, companion changes, bonding, etc...
I remember at one point AC DC power stacked and if you were lucky to run with 3 of them you could easily hit over 300K power and some times you surpass 500K.
The issues that existed in mod 15 that caused the power creep are do to how buffs are treated in the game; however, with removal of almost all group buffs and debuff that issue is not seen at all in mod 16.
Wizards could buff and debuff pretty well in mod 15 and do some crazy damage but all of those are pretty much gone. The only real group buff we have now is control momentum and it went from 10% down to a meager 2%. Along with that DPS would be buff also by a DO DC Terrifying insight by another 10%, miss the days of the tag along 20% buff, and also GF provided another 30-35% from ITF. These buffs added to our damage beyond just the power sharing from a OP or a AC.
To off set the damage reduction the devs reduced enemies health. YEAH! Let's make it so players can still do T9 in under 20 minutes.
Game and mod 16 update is a joke; still no challenge. Challenge wont' come until ToMM and than it will be only for the true elite player that not only are prepared with offensive stats but also have the proper defensive stats as well.
Mod 17 new trial is going to be for roughly 5% of the player base, and that is an over estimation IMO. Probably closer to 1%.
¨˜ˆ”°¹~•-.„¸ρℓαуιиg иєνєяωιитєя ѕιи¢є 2015¸„.-•~¹°”ˆ˜¨