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Returning to the game, still lots of balance issues, any thoughts?

doriangreighdoriangreigh Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 707 Arc User
I've been away from the game maybe 2 years now. Coming back some of my higher level geared characters may be OK with some of these changes, but there are places where evening running non-dungeon content seems too punishing. So I started a new character did not put any account access gear i have on him, so basically play through as though a brand new player would.

I have to say I do not know how brand new players would enjoy the game to even get to end game play. There are several areas where the sheer number of mobs is excessive resulting in repeated death, this is just for doing leveling content. Most early content mobs are spread out enough you can control your aggro and deal, but after around 20 or 30 there are places where mobs are just close enough that you aggro 2 or more groups, the number of mobs is excessive based on the game state. Some boss fights summon as many as 15 adds where you have limited healing limited dmg dealing power. Now this may be class related as i played as a wizard and saw a barbarian at level 32 just running crazy tearing everything to pieces some how, but i did not inspect to see if they were equipped with anything high end. It seems enchantments are not quite as impactful as they were so that part is nice to see, but surely you need to limit the number of adds and mobs / encounter while leveling.

My first thought is the new system, which seems like a great step in balancing, does not really mesh well with leveling content. For example some of the rings have stat values at say 1700 pts, where as all your other gear pieces have 270, i'm thinking that not all the stats were scaled or adjusted but there was a focus on making rings high stats?

Potions seem to be oddly misbalanced, healing has been updated doing 60 - 100k (up to level 50ish that i got up to). However stat potions are giving like 270 bonus? Under the new system how is that helpful? As it stands in most states i'm 5 - 6 away from being at the 50% cap and yet a potion giving me 260 points in something seems to be worthless, in fact there seems to be more value in selling the potion than using it. Rejuvenation is a joke, a regular healing potion gives like 60k - 100K health but if you take a rejuvenation, you are going to get 12k max, again how is this helpful?

With base gear and normal gear while leveling it seems nearly impossible to even get 50% stat in anything. I find it funny that years and years later you still have green gear and blue gear of the same level with the exact same stat pool there is ZERO difference, isn't blue supposed to be better than green? In some cases equal level gear green has had better stats than a blue piece of the same level.

I assume as always some classes fair better than others, but there seems to be a lot of work that still needs to be done to update gear, potions, and mob groups to accommodate this new system. It just doesn't seem new player friendly to have to get a group just to complete your leveling mission. Sure i get that you should get a group for heroics and dungeons, but come on lighten up the difficulty on just doing story missions. I never used shield so much in my time playing but even by level 50 shield isn't doing much but wasting an encounter as the mobs have depleted it in less than a second got pushed across the screen and immediately swarming or range attacking me to death.

Now having said all that in solo play, i have to say there seems to be an odd situation in dungeons. After my solo experience i was dreading a dungeon, but thought just to clear quest tracking and get some AD to buy some companion equipment i'd run some. Much to my surprise the dungeon was much more enjoyable than the solo quests. People had to tackle the dungeon as intended getting the small groups at each location rather than run to the end and aoe everything down. However my wizard who was getting shredded in teh solo content suddenly was #2 dps even compared to wizards that were level 80, how did my 40 - 50 toon end up out dpsing a level 80 player of the same class by significant amount? This happened twice with different players so i'm a little perplexed at that. My poor gear, white companions (except the purple stone and mount that came with the dragon born) and R5 enchants (no armor or weapon at this level), and some how my toon was a major contributor to dmg?? So does the scaling favor those with lesser gear? Again that almost seems unfair but at least makes running a dungeon for lower level lower gear people much more palpable, but how does that make people who spend time gearing up feel?

Keep in mind this is the leveling dungeons, not the epics, i'll expect that epics there will be a dramatic shift in difficulty as even the massive adds in the cloak tower can at times overwhelm a group quickly. Now this may be due to DPS being high enough to trigger multiple groups of adds before they were killed off, but it's been awhile and i can't remember if the adds spawn based on boss health depletion or if based on time elapsed and causing them to continuously spawn every x amount of time, which again in this new system isn't the best given how even trash mobs can take multilple rotations of powers to kill.

I intend on giving this some more time to adjust to but so far I have tried playing some undermountain on another character that i had left off right at the beginning of undermountain and at level 70 and level 70 entry level undermountain starter gear that character is being torn to pieces by the sheer number of mobs that wonder around due to being unable to kill off a group fast enough to flee the scene before the wondering mobs show up again. That character is a barbarian tank, but switched to swordmaster who seemed to fair a little better but still isn't tearing through the area as it seems like he should and this is a character that has more boons than my wizard i started fresh on.

Right now the solo play feels nearly unplayable unless you spend tons of money on the zen store to get a bunch of purple companions and mounts. Which by the way that is a very promising aspect, finally you made companions and mounts account wide and even lowered some of the cost, many items i feel are still over priced but again this is a nice step in the right direction. I have mixed feelings on the mount collars, the white ones on AH are over 200k and you still have to upgrade and get other resources to do that to make them even useful, the purple ones that can be bought are $10 and you would need 5. This feels excessive.

I read somewhere that drop box rate has improved. i'm not sure that .5 % turning into 1.5% is that big of a deal, i had 70 keys from my last VIP saved up, i blew through them once i had enough of the newest lock box, yeah i did not get anything so that statement of 3 times better chance at rare loot seems to still be a low chance than the equivalent of about 75$ still doesn't get you squat. Paid content should result in significant benefits, gambling is a vice and catering to that should at the very least give more than some enchantments to sell and 1 cube of augmentation, seriously didn't that used to be like 4 or more at one point? now you only get 1? Why not make lock boxes escalating like you did with preservation wards, every time you open one you get a point towards getting the highest drop until eventually it will be 100%. Not sure if you could lock the result so that once you did get the highest item you couldn't get another one at that point. Or at least make lock boxes like the winter fest that after you open so many you got ever escalating chances at the reward even if its not a guaranteed it is much higher than 1%.

Keep in mind i'm returning after about 1 - 2 years of not playing. But if any new players can relate their experience or if an older player who actually played using a bare toon with not much more than what a brand new player never in the game before would have, can verify if this is class specific and wizards are just nerfed into uselessness or if this is something other classes can find themsleves struggling with?

It does not seem right to expect brand new players to come in and some how have purple companions mounts, high end companion gear, upon first entering the game learning how to play initially, to be able to do content leveling. And yes i know the argument may be this is an MMO, however there are not that many people that will group for this lower end stuff, not everyone is doing the same thing at the same time, so expecting to group while leveling seems harsh, it can take DPS 45 minutes to queue a dungeon let alone sitting around zone chat asking people for help, sure sometimes you can get a good Samaritan to hlep but you can also spend you entire game time allotment trying to get help and never find a taker.

Here is a thought, maybe add some sort of incentive that rewards players for grouping and help others, maybe give some bonus AD for completing quests with other players, not sure how to keep that from being abused but still an idea to make it a little more beneficial for experienced players sitting in PE or other zones and pay attention to calls for help in zone chat.

Yes i'm aware that may be what guilds are for, but still that is relying on new players being expected to jump in a guild right off the bat, maybe that is not desired while getting through some entry level parts of the game, maybe joining the guild feels cumbersome because the first guild you are exposed to puts all sorts of rules and restrictions that just don't feel great to a new player just coming in.

Any helpful thoughts on pre-level 80 play and experience from other classes using non-inherited gear from previous characters. If you play a wizard and had no trouble at all in some areas such as ebon downs (mobs of zombies my lord), vellosk (final lair), chasm (final lair) although the first lair had several locations that had way too many mobs packed together, i would love to hear what you did, how you were geared because i'm a pretty experienced wizard as my main level 80 character and i got trounced playing a fresh character in this system.

Not that it has changed much but right now it feels the game is taylored for people running around in legendary and mythic gear to make it hard for them when the game is supposed to be difficult for low gear but easier the better the gear. Feels like at the moment at least for wizard, the game feels like it may be impossible for anything under legendary everything. Hopefully this is just class balance issue, seems like there nondps classes that have magnitude powers that exceed 1000 and the poor wizard is at 500ish.

On a final note on wizard, why on earth did you take a classic fireball spell and turn it into a single target spell? are you trying to make wizard more single target instead of AOE? What was so out of balance with fireball having a bigger radius and slightly better dmg when on tab that you had at to make it a single target?

Comments

  • flyball#6248 flyball Member Posts: 219 Arc User
    I started about 2-3 months before the combat rework on PC and then moved to console. The new combat system requires more precision movement than I can get with KB and Mouse on PC and I have not been ale to get a PS$ controller to work properly on my PC. Luckily the game is the same on all platforms.

    My first toons were GWF dps. I relished charging into combat and sweeping enemies right and left, I had just reached level 80 when the rework hit. Areas that I had cleared easily became nearly impossible. I could not move fast enough to avoid being hit and was constantly overwhelmed in areas like Ebon Downs. It became so frustrating that I could not accomplish any steps towards quest or campaign completion.

    After reading many posts by far more experienced players, I decided to start anew. this time testing out the rogue class and going with the rogue assassin.

    I found dodging incoming attacks much much easier with the rogue and even the ranger hunter/trapper. Which make some sense as fighter and GWF barbs charge in where the others maneuver through and around. I have recently also started a warlock class which is going well.

    With the changes new playstyles were needed. If we went back to the old system and used these new playstyles...we all would be playing far better.

    I think some of the things that hurt the most though were stat changes and the removal of bonding stones that some had spent $$ an AD on. Yes rank 15 stones could be sold for a lot of AD, but it did not make up for all that a person had paid. Plus the stat changes messed up stat expenditures in terms of reaching caps. What I have noticed is that as your ITL increases, the % listing changes down. So lets say I max out a t Itl20k, assuming no real equipment changes beyond a color change. and my ITL increases to 24k I am no longer capped as my itl went up but stat bonuses from gear remain the same (relatively). You are also limited to how far above your itl and individual stat can be.
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