Damage Buffs/Critical Severity/Combat Advantage

noworries

There are a few changes to the way damage bonuses are applied to a character which will be available on preview soon.

The first change is that Critical Severity, Combat Advantage, and Damage Bonuses are now in separate categories. What this means is instead of all of the categories adding together and then multiplying off of the base damage, they each multiply on top of each other. A simplified equation of what is happening behind the scenes is:

Final Damage = Base Damage * Critical Severity * Combat Advantage * Damage Bonuses


The second change that goes along with this is that Damage Bonuses are added together before multiplying on the base damage. Previously some damage bonuses added together and others multiplied with each other. This created a situation where different builds/classes were ending up with different multipliers. Now damage bonuses will universally add together before multiplying off of the base damage.

This should create a method of damage increase that is clear and consistent which will make planning out the setup of a character easier.


EDIT: With these changes, Vorpal was reduced because the effectiveness of Critical Severity has increased and to bring it more in line with other weapon enchantment options.

Further edit, looks like the Vorpal change won't be in the preview update, at Rank 14 the crit severity bonus is now 20%

tassedethe13

@noworries#8859

Is critical severity capped ?

foxxy

I'm not sure but will this tone down the +3% damage from different gear pieces?

micky1p00

tassedethe13 said:

Is critical severity capped ?

You are serious or it's like a meme question?

tom

noworries#8859 said:

There are a few changes to the way damage bonuses are applied to a character which will be available on preview soon.

The first change is that Critical Severity, Combat Advantage, and Damage Bonuses are now in separate categories. What this means is instead of all of the categories adding together and then multiplying off of the base damage, they each multiply on top of each other. A simplified equation of what is happening behind the scenes is:

Final Damage = Base Damage * Critical Severity * Combat Advantage * Damage Bonuses


The second change that goes along with this is that Damage Bonuses are added together before multiplying on the base damage. Previously some damage bonuses added together and others multiplied with each other. This created a situation where different builds/classes were ending up with different multipliers. Now damage bonuses will universally add together before multiplying off of the base damage.

This should create a method of damage increase that is clear and consistent which will make planning out the setup of a character easier.


EDIT: With these changes, Vorpal was reduced because the effectiveness of Critical Severity has increased and to bring it more in line with other weapon enchantment options.

did u guys think about seperating gear buffs from class buffs? and if u did, what was the reason for not making them seperate.

micky1p00

noworries#8859 said:

EDIT: With these changes, Vorpal was reduced because the effectiveness of Critical Severity has increased and to bring it more in line with other weapon enchantment options.

Hmm, this is also affects healers. Can we separate outgoing healing then outside of critical severity...

zimxero

I see that this change will make damage processing faster for the server, and take the black magic & fun out of it for stat gurus, but dont really see this as an advancement. Noteably, Combat Advantage & Crit becomes much more powerful in relation to its previous importance. A definite downside: We are likely to see bugs for years as old gear breaks and becomes transferred over to this new system.

misty

You guys just don't stop nerfing stuff. Always looking for new ways to decrease things!

zimxero

By the way... 15% critical severity for r14 Vorpal is a hammer-nerf!

Redo your math please... and yes I understand the pools now and proposed.

At 15%, nearly every Vorpal owner will dump it on the market for dirt.
25% puts Vorpal in-line with other enchantments.

lordaeolos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6FVFN5TuiE

enough stated.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

thefabricant

Massive bug: the number "1"

It seems cryptic is having problems with the number 1 at the moment. For example, the decanter accidentally turned into a 101% damage buff (+1) per stack:

And that critical hits, which should deal 1+Critsev, are missing the 1 and are dealing less damage than non crits if you have less than 100% critical severity.

lordaeolos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6FVFN5TuiE

enough stated.

foxxy#4211 said:

I'm not sure but will this tone down the +3% damage from different gear pieces?

yes, but it also means that the 3% bonus will not be applied equally to all classes, or even between paragons inside the same class... No offense, but with the basic information this is a train wrecking waiting to happen

codeteller

when this arrives, can you give the antiquities exchange vendor their full range of exchanges again please.

feadan

Yea, what about healers?

Vorpal is the only weapon enchantment that's of use to us. Everything else either requires offensive stats and powers or affects stats people have capped anyway.

That's a huge nerf for healers whose crit-mechanic is already questionable. Are we going to get thrown under the bus for all of this?

noworries

thefabricant said:

Massive bug: the number "1"
And that critical hits, which should deal 1+Critsev, are missing the 1 and are dealing less damage than non crits if you have less than 100% critical severity.

There was a change that was missed for the preview build for crit sev. The formula did change to 1+ CritSev with these changes, it just didn't get into the build.

admiralwarlord

At last some good news has arrived. Finally a uniform damage formula for all classes.
About nerf on Vorpal was easy to predict as it was way ahead of other enchants, I just hope it's a balancing fit, not a nerf that will break the enchant again.

trgluestickz

@noworries#8859

From what the players looking at the math are saying so far, it sounds like gear buffs and class buffs need to be separated instead of being in the same category.

Essentially they are saying that gear buffs will be more potent for some classes than others if class buffs and gear buffs are in the same category. How strong these gear buffs are for you depends on how many class buffs you have; this will cause new class balance issues that get progressively worse as new gear gets added to the game over time.

trgluestickz

I wanted to comment on the healing concerns these changes raised but I don't think I'm the right person for that.

lukejones77

noworries#8859 said:

EDIT: With these changes, Vorpal was reduced because the effectiveness of Critical Severity has increased and to bring it more in line with other weapon enchantment options.

Further edit, looks like the Vorpal change won't be in the preview update, at Rank 14 the crit severity bonus is now 15%

Much as I'm a massive fan of mod 16 re-design, and have accepted all the chaos that came with it, along with patience that would be needed as the neccesary adjustments came through - I think you guys are really sending out the wrong signals with this sort of focus.

While I get the desire for balance in all the myriad ways you need to deal with it (class vs class balance and team vs content is just the tip of the ice berg), there is a really important fundamental suffering badly that doesn't seem to have anyone there looking out for it.
You guys really need to pay more attention to giving people a fundamental reason to log in and play the game - to have fun, and to be able to spend your time in a way that you feel rewarded.
Even prior to mod 16, Neverwinter had built a big debt of game factets that make no sense, like the zen prices of enchanting that made sense back when the greater vorpal was BIS, and look ridiculous today. Since mod 16, the relative value of gear vs enchants has added to that.

I'll break down the immement Vorpal enchant nerf for you:
Every week or so, I look at my rank 13 vorpal enchantment, and decide to not bother upgrading it.
To upgrade it 1 rank, wants a coalescent ward, 60,000 RP, 15 x marks of potency and 6 x Rank 6 Enchanting stone (formerly the massively valuable Ultimate Enchanting stone).
If I do this, my crit severity will go from 45% to 50%, which will fail 1/2 the time, assuming I'm good enough to get the max 50% crit chance.
Now, you're telling me that it'll be even worse (15% for rank 14), as you're briging it into line with all the other low value weapon enchants.

Let's look for a second at the "exciting and rewarding gameplay" behind making this enchant. You remember bringing in "Legacy Campaigns" a while back. At the time the "Ultimate Enchanting stone" was still an exciting thing, and having a BIS weapon enchant was an important thing. Jared even sold us with a "Wait! There's more!" in the original dev post, and even though the "steak knives you don't really want want or need" alarm bell would have sounded in most of our heads, we generally set about re-doing a massive list of quests, again and again, week after week, because.....?

So, it turns out that if we do Legacy campaigns faithfully week after week, solidly for 7 months, we'll be able to meet the costs of upgrading that vorpal from rank 13 to rank 14 (RP and coalescent ward not included).

And... you're about to nerf it from 50% crit severity to 15%.


Again, I'm happy to wear the sensible nerfs, to be patient, even accept the massive grind levels of this game, but, somebody there really needs to keep an eye on "rewarding gameplay", or even those as tolerant as me will eventually stop bothering to log in.

I'm not bashing the vorpal nerf. I'm pointing out that a player base running MEs to death because nothing makes more sense than "Doing it for Zok" in this game - needs you to demonsrate that somebody there understands "rewarding gameplay" and is sending that message - rather than the vorpal nerf message.

aragon

Well here goes testing all the other weapon enchants again, as soon as this hits. From 50% to 15% like seriously!? you get about that much crit severity from potions. You gonna give us the option to trade it out, right?
.

tardbath

@noworries#8859
Are you planning on releasing the Weapon echant exchange vendor for those who have boa Vorpal or even for those who have vorpal in general ?

ravenkkin

wow nerf again? what about ppl who put in millions of ad to upgrade their vorpals?
you really doing a great job at pushing away this small player base you have left

matii

You changed Vorpal, but what about critical severity gained from class features, combat powers and feats? Did you forget to balance it with the new formula?

For example:
Ranger Warden - Skirmisher's Gambit give 30% critical severity
Ranger Hunter - Critical Action 6% critical severity per stack
Rogue - Lashing Blade adds 50% ciritical severity

sobi

trgluestickz said:

@noworries#8859

From what the players looking at the math are saying so far, it sounds like gear buffs and class buffs need to be separated instead of being in the same category.

Essentially they are saying that gear buffs will be more potent for some classes than others if class buffs and gear buffs are in the same category. How strong these gear buffs are for you depends on how many class buffs you have; this will cause new class balance issues that get progressively worse as new gear gets added to the game over time.

Can you elaborate on this? Which class/s benefit more from gear buffs not being separated from class buffs?

Lastly, i don't know why the dps's are crying over nerf to vorpal. Clearly you got a buffed crit sev which now is multiplied separately instead of being added with your CA, so both of these stats effectiveness has been increased.

However, i can see why healers are distressed. Since crit heals take power:crit ratio into account and then multiply by critsev but that is not changed at all with this change so a nerf to vorpal is a nerf to healers.

sobi

@noworries#8859 Did you increase the At-will speed for Barbs and increase their damage? Currently they are doing 500k+ dps (ST) with CA, without decante (which is bugged). Is this intended? Other classes are like doing half of that.

kovu

In addition to what @thefabricant mentioned: Here are some examples of broken damage buffs.

Heavy Slash on Fighter



First Strike on Rogue



Invisible Infiltrator on Rogue



Lurkers Assault on Rogue



Controlled Momentum on CW is bugged aswell, dont have a screenshot tho.
EDIT:



Im going to edit this post if I find more.

EDIT:

Aspect of the Serpent on Ranger



Arcane Empowerment on Wizard



Anointed Army on Cleric (with Anointed Arms Feat)



Battle Fury on Barbarian



Relentless Slash on Barbarian

aandrethegiant

Are you guys kidding me!?

Changing the math this much .. especially when it's in the form of a Nerf Bat... is going to make people leave the game... especially your (OUR) long time players. People that play a long time tend to form a bond with the character they build. Break the bond, and pay the consequences (that's before even whipping out the Cryptic accountant to divvy up the time and money people spent buffing stats/effects such as vopal etc)! Sure then you can make your sales pitch to the PW/Cryptic bean counters ("Hey look Boss... server load decreased 35% this month!!") Yeah, but WHY?

When you make changes this drastic to every day play, it costs us players, FRIENDS. And another thing it costs us is FUN.

I don't comment much these days, but these changes have hurt our moral and that brings back the 'Giant!

Queue changes \o/ Yay?
Vorpal nerfs /o\ BOO!?
Warlock changes ?????
New Tales event without addressing the last ones total failure?

And still no word or comment about this:

1. TANK 40% Bonus HP gone!! Still crickets in this thread?

2. Tank 140% HP not applying to companion equip power HP.

** the bottom half of my post was written by a fellow guildie, a long time player and friend.

dialectus

If you have worked for year or more for a Vorpal rank 14 you will have a vorpal of rank 7 in the end of the day...

nl54

There are potions that give 10% crit sev, feats that give 25%, food and pets that gives 5%, etc. Are you guys really gonna mess around with everything....again...just to make the 15% from a maxed vorpal feel relevant? 15% is too low, imo. Ya'll have a bad habit of going to extremes. Things are either overpowered or worthless. Is it that hard to find a middle ground? How about 30% at max rank, so it's still the best crit sev buff you can attain?

lordaeolos

sobi#1980 said:

Can you elaborate on this? Which class/s benefit more from gear buffs not being separated from class buffs?

Sure this is a simple matter of basic math.

Take the Wizard for example:

With the arcanist paragon we can have a near full time damage buff of 15% just with arcane mastery

Meanwhile the thaum paragon (assuming you run CC and SD Class features would be 2%)

So lets toss another buff on that say from the Demon Lord Set which averages to around 10%

then we can just use a bland base number, and exclude crit/ CA in order to extract the damage increase that the demon lord set is actually giving each of these characters

final damage = Base * (1+(class buffs + gear/ other buffs))

Thaum Without Demon Lord Set = 1150= 1000 * 1.15
Arcanist = 1250 = 1000 * (1+(.15 + .10) = 1000 * 1.25 - Demon Lord Set Increases damage by 8.7%

Thaum Without Demon Lord Set = 1020 = 1000 * 1.02
Thaum = 1120 = 1000 * (1+(.02 + .10) = 1000 * 1.12 - Demon Lord Set Increases damage by 9.2%

So classes that have more percent based damage buffs gets less effectiveness out of any other items in game that also give percent based damage buffs... be it weapon enchantments, gear, mount powers, or buffs granted by tanks or healers...

So the dev team could for example perfectly balance classes not taking other buffs items in the game into account, and at the end of the day we will see some pretty big disparities too.. and the more extreme end we could see some classes with 15% more DPS just because they were balanced to start with, and have fewer class based buffs.

The only real options to not have this disparity that I see are to either remove/ replace class based damage buffs entirely... So arcane mastery would need to be changed to say do an extra hit for x magnitude damage (same with seekers vengeance on the ranger, etc..), in this scenario the only Percent based buffs on a player could only be buffs that get applied to all allies, or through items that any character could equip.

Or the damage formula needs to be split out like:

Final Damage = Base * Class Buffs * Crit * CA * All Other Buffs

Splitting the formula like this ensures that "other buff" items are applied equally to all classes... and that people that are forced to run certain paths and powers are not being punished by the math engine in game.



This change does increase everyone's damage, but in no way does it further class balancing, in fact it more than likely makes it harder to balance classes.