My list of things that all in part affect mitigation tanking in this game:
2) Lifesteal high dps and no diminishing returns on lifesteal from large AE attacks.
thing is, life-steal just saves on pots as anyone wanting to survive will chug a pot instead of waiting on a cleric heal
actual healing from clerics is mainly needed if a spike of damage occurs that outpaces pots which is rare as every dps has learned to avoid taking damage
Here.... I'll tell you the dirty little secret and why the CWs likely wont ever be nerfed... First you have to understand that the upper level dungeons are add fests of a good 10+ mobs almost always.... an the boss fights are even worse.
Then you have to understand how the CW was actually designed to understand why the Devs painted themselves into the corner on this.... The CW was supposed to be a controller, it had two ways of doing this... Single Target Crowd control, (ie, the chokes, and freezes, and stuns).
And... Damage... BUT ONLY on HUGE groups of mobs... not on individual targets (ie, control through damage).
CWs have Passive Feats, that literally increase the damage the more and more mobs you throw at them. Soo... they actually self nerf the fewer and fewer mobs there are. Their damage starts to escalate higher and higher the larger the crowd of mobs you throw at them.
Throw 10 mobs at the CW he looks like a god... throw 1 or 2 strong ones? Well not so much....
(unless he's an MoF, but then he doesn't have the crowd damage escalation the Spellstorm does).
Its designed that way so when the party gets overwhelmed the CW can step in and save their bacon. But... if there's no mass mobs or crowds like that, then the other single target damagers actually overshadow him.
Problem: (And how the devs painted themselves into a corner.) The upper level dungeons are literally add fests and eat entire parties for breakfast unless they've got some kind of crowd control. You can really see this in most of the boss fights. (think CN). They are not survivable for any party without the current damage per mob escalation the CW was designed around. So... nerfing the CWs only hurts all the other classes and makes the dungeons uncompletable.
Well the game on the pve side is broke. Which is why I see the orientation becoming more and more pvp. Easier to do that than fix a completely broken pve game. A possible pve fix is the introduction of more classes that can handle/buff the party to handle massive amounts of adds without a cw. Bard is a good choice imo, even druid.
Dungeon/mob redesign would be awesome. I have said this many times before. Specialized strongs that have things like damage kickback (think split the sky), some that are simply immune to all spells and need to be tanked down, some that have an "anti-magic" massive circle around them, protecting themselves and other mobs in the circle against spells. Again, needing to be tanked down. More diverse range of threats from mobs and less mobs overall = a better game.
PanzerJäger HR Hybrid Jugger Conq GF
....
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silverquickMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
Dungeon/mob redesign would be awesome. I have said this many times before. Specialized strongs that have things like damage kickback (think split the sky), some that are simply immune to all spells and need to be tanked down, some that have an "anti-magic" massive circle around them, protecting themselves and other mobs in the circle against spells. Again, needing to be tanked down. More diverse range of threats from mobs and less mobs overall = a better game.
They don't even have to go that far. Yeah you SHOULD expect to see mass mob attacks,
.....but that shouldn't be 90% of the encounters in all dungeons. Some areas with only like 2 huge mobs in the hall that hit hard and can't be CCd are huge. A dungeon with actual Frost Giants that melee would be a huge help. Throw in a couple of easier to wipe out Winter Wolves, along with one or two Frost Giants you end up with an encounter where the mages can nuke only a couple of times... and then they end up on a single target where the AoEs become useless and the Single Target damagers can make short work of.
Heck you can still throw in of rooms with massive numbers of Giants. But if you've got like 15 encounters in your dungeon... that should be like 7 mass mob encounters max. The other 8 rooms on the way should be more varied.
One of the things I watched throw a real monkey wrench into the party dynamic were Gelatanous Cubes in VT.
Why? Their AoE was nasty and... the AoE powers did not affect them. Only single target powers did. So it was the GFs and GWFs who have to handle them. Heck even the Rangers were better on them (which is odd though as arrows shouldn't hurt them much). Admittedly their AoE was nasty on Rogues too. Obviously an army of Gelatenous Cubes isn't going to be the answer either.
.....but that shouldn't be 90% of the encounters in all dungeons. Some areas with only like 2 huge mobs in the hall that hit hard and can't be CCd are huge. A dungeon with actual Frost Giants that melee would be a huge help. Throw in a couple of easier to wipe out Winter Wolves, along with one or two Frost Giants you end up with an encounter where the mages can nuke only a couple of times... and then they end up on a single target where the AoEs become useless and the Single Target damagers can make short work of.
The problem here is, that if those "huge mobs" are still slow and predictable, and not dangerous at all (as most of these kind of mobs are), CW parties will simply run through the dungeon, collect them all and nuke them all together, thus not wasting their AoE.
The answer is, probably, mobs with higher AoE resistance. Or "elites" that grant AoE resistance or CC immunity to nearby mobs until killed.
Well the game on the pve side is broke. Which is why I see the orientation becoming more and more pvp. Easier to do that than fix a completely broken pve game.
.....seriously?
Yeah, PvP isn't broken in the slightest. No sir. O_o
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silverquickMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
The problem here is, that if those "huge mobs" are still slow and predictable, and not dangerous at all (as most of these kind of mobs are), CW parties will simply run through the dungeon, collect them all and nuke them all together, thus not wasting their AoE.
The answer is, probably, mobs with higher AoE resistance. Or "elites" that grant AoE resistance or CC immunity to nearby mobs until killed.
Its not possible in the way you think but, Having been in those shoes before generally its not possible except with extremely high gear scores. Not the standard 12k kind these dungeons are designed for, they can't survive that.
And you don't need AoE resistence when the built it limiter on AoEs is actually just single or smaller amounts of mobs, I an personally attest to this. The actual way you stop speed running is with weak, but fast mobs that harries party like the Kobalds. Then throw in one big one.
But honestly high gear scores, as in overgeared like 15k+, can burn through the content regardless of class. There's nothing you can do about that when 15k's+ are running content designed around an 11k GS or at almost double the gear score you balanced it for. That's going to throw class balance off regardless of what you do.
Well the game on the pve side is broke. Which is why I see the orientation becoming more and more pvp. Easier to do that than fix a completely broken pve game. A possible pve fix is the introduction of more classes that can handle/buff the party to handle massive amounts of adds without a cw. Bard is a good choice imo, even druid.
Honestly its broken on the PvP side too. Why is everyone playing... of all things.. Halflings for a battle game?
You cannot balance a game based on PvE group play for PvP and expect any kind of real balance. It was just never intended for it.
In PvE you can balance the content in the dungeons to accommodate the classes. You cannot do the same in PvP. you can only nerf things there. And D&D was never designed for that.
But a True CC class that heals, like a Druid who could use AoE Entanglement and and things like that to root mobs in place or "mez" them would actually provide that. I do like that idea.
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mazel76Member, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 28Arc User
edited April 2014
I agree with many of you that its not the GF's fault "Design" but the way the Dungeons are set up. Also we have to put some blame on the Players for not running off game script when running Dungs. (GF,DC,CW,GWF, HR/TR) Understanding its not on purpose but outta necessity, due to Dungeon Mobs, and GS scores. To have a GF "Tank" run in circles is not Tanking its a stupid act. Plus the act of kiting is to run around while firing at enemies. You can not do this in NW! Kiting in this game doesn't happen. So it should be called skidding!!!! Because you run around than have to come to a complete stop wait to fire and run again. It's as if someone if forgetting to fire and says oh wait I need to fire at the enemy ErrrrrrT!!!!!!.
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doriangreighMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 707Arc User
edited April 2014
I'd like to throw in my two cents on the usefulness of the GF. First off i'll start by agreeing that by common opinion and dungeon design their use is not generally seen as helpful. Aside from dungeon design there is one major problem that is perpetuating this issue, its the speed dungeon runners. Many dungeon encounters on the way to a boss are generally balanced for a group to deal with, typically a handful of mobs mixed of trash and some form of elite. However speed runners and HAMSTER want to try to rush past pulling everything or attempt to skip something and end up pulling tons more than they should, others just like to pull that for reasons such as it being too easy to deal with mobs as they are distributed and secondly (probably firstly) is its too slow.
Dungeons are laid out to be deal with in a certain time frame which is about 45 minutes, some people just aren't happy unless its finished in 10 ... why? Because they have probably done it too many times to want to spend the proper amount of time on it, they are by virtue of extremely bad rotations of loot drops encouraged to run as many as possible to get a chest at the end from a DD event (a nice feature but its about the only times people want to run a dungeon). These create and sustain a GF being not useful.
GF are good at tanking and things do need tanking. For you speed runners out there, GF might not put out DPS but what it does do is keep big hard hitting mobs focused on them while the rest kill the trash then come en masse to destroy the last big thing standing. This keeps squishy DPS and healer types out of the crosshairs usually or not as much to allow for fast destruction of trash. I know there are people that just surely relate what a pain in the HAMSTER it is to be running around avoiding trash attacks or being unable to hit all the mobs you want due to them running around or being knocked around. A GF can mass taunt them to him and get them clustered up if control classes have burned their ability to do so and allows for AoE nuking. A GF in that scenario isn't going to last but that isn't supposed to be the case, if they could just be constantly immune to damage or have 500k health then it wouldn't be much skill in tanking. Tanking involves shield management and proper taunting techniques.
I have run with my guild with GF pretty often and I find the runs with a GF a bit easier to manage adds and mobs. Sure the endless adds at the end are not something a tank can deal with in the traditional way but what we use a tank for is to keep a boss faced where we want it, most notably with a dragon/dracolich where a tank can just stand there and keep the boss faced in one direction so its not shooting cones or attacks all over the place. GWF's can't do this as they constantly have to leave which causes a boss to chase after him or lose aggro from having to stop attacking.
In response to a poster who mentioned dracolich hands, I will say this, one thing my guild has noticed is that when we have a GF tanking the Draco the hands always pop up in an area cone shaped right in front of the draolich, which means CW and or DC or GWF can stand in relative safety off to the side and hammer away. This isn't alway the case but happens more often than not, howeve when there is no GF tanking the hands pop up all over the **** place.
I agree that the game should consider making things more role intensive and designed around having a proper group to finish as opposed to having a massive amount of AoE/control to win (as in having 3+ cw with singularity). With the current boss fights of neverending add spawns this does make it difficult to justify loss of dps/control for adding a tank (which mind you taunting and holding a boss in place or facing in a direction is better control than knocking it around the screen).
Having said all that, i'll end with this snippet, if you have played a dungeon too much (yes cryptic should consider this as a problem) to get gear and now feel that to earn AD or gear you must speed run all dungeons or not do them if you can't is a serious problem and if you can't take the time to do a dungeon proper then don't do them. I never get on to run a dungeon when I don't have time to finish it in that hour of the event. If I can only do one if its done in 10 - 15 min i just wont' go.
I think Crytpic responded to Dungeons being viewed as too long with the Malabog and VT having only short runs or only 2 bosses to fight. However since all that stuff is BoP I noticed people dont' like to run them as there is no "profit" in them, you can't resell hard to get loot drops.
So many things contribute to classes being useful, from the community and its veterans tired of doing things the "right" way to people who just don't know any better witnesses a GWF practically solo mobs and bosses, its really a amazing the game has people that still play regularly that aren't bored with it or frustrated that their class is viewed as useless.
At times I still think there should only be two classes with two races but that would probably dampen the companies marketing as a game of choices and options and diversity. I already see the icewind dale materials promoting the game as having players with lots of "customization" from classes down to appearance when in reality this isn't really the case.
Comments
thing is, life-steal just saves on pots as anyone wanting to survive will chug a pot instead of waiting on a cleric heal
actual healing from clerics is mainly needed if a spike of damage occurs that outpaces pots which is rare as every dps has learned to avoid taking damage
Well the game on the pve side is broke. Which is why I see the orientation becoming more and more pvp. Easier to do that than fix a completely broken pve game. A possible pve fix is the introduction of more classes that can handle/buff the party to handle massive amounts of adds without a cw. Bard is a good choice imo, even druid.
Dungeon/mob redesign would be awesome. I have said this many times before. Specialized strongs that have things like damage kickback (think split the sky), some that are simply immune to all spells and need to be tanked down, some that have an "anti-magic" massive circle around them, protecting themselves and other mobs in the circle against spells. Again, needing to be tanked down. More diverse range of threats from mobs and less mobs overall = a better game.
Jugger Conq GF
....
They don't even have to go that far. Yeah you SHOULD expect to see mass mob attacks,
.....but that shouldn't be 90% of the encounters in all dungeons. Some areas with only like 2 huge mobs in the hall that hit hard and can't be CCd are huge. A dungeon with actual Frost Giants that melee would be a huge help. Throw in a couple of easier to wipe out Winter Wolves, along with one or two Frost Giants you end up with an encounter where the mages can nuke only a couple of times... and then they end up on a single target where the AoEs become useless and the Single Target damagers can make short work of.
Heck you can still throw in of rooms with massive numbers of Giants. But if you've got like 15 encounters in your dungeon... that should be like 7 mass mob encounters max. The other 8 rooms on the way should be more varied.
One of the things I watched throw a real monkey wrench into the party dynamic were Gelatanous Cubes in VT.
Why? Their AoE was nasty and... the AoE powers did not affect them. Only single target powers did. So it was the GFs and GWFs who have to handle them. Heck even the Rangers were better on them (which is odd though as arrows shouldn't hurt them much). Admittedly their AoE was nasty on Rogues too. Obviously an army of Gelatenous Cubes isn't going to be the answer either.
But mixing things up would help a great deal.
The problem here is, that if those "huge mobs" are still slow and predictable, and not dangerous at all (as most of these kind of mobs are), CW parties will simply run through the dungeon, collect them all and nuke them all together, thus not wasting their AoE.
The answer is, probably, mobs with higher AoE resistance. Or "elites" that grant AoE resistance or CC immunity to nearby mobs until killed.
.....seriously?
Yeah, PvP isn't broken in the slightest. No sir. O_o
Its not possible in the way you think but, Having been in those shoes before generally its not possible except with extremely high gear scores. Not the standard 12k kind these dungeons are designed for, they can't survive that.
And you don't need AoE resistence when the built it limiter on AoEs is actually just single or smaller amounts of mobs, I an personally attest to this. The actual way you stop speed running is with weak, but fast mobs that harries party like the Kobalds. Then throw in one big one.
But honestly high gear scores, as in overgeared like 15k+, can burn through the content regardless of class. There's nothing you can do about that when 15k's+ are running content designed around an 11k GS or at almost double the gear score you balanced it for. That's going to throw class balance off regardless of what you do.
Honestly its broken on the PvP side too. Why is everyone playing... of all things.. Halflings for a battle game?
You cannot balance a game based on PvE group play for PvP and expect any kind of real balance. It was just never intended for it.
In PvE you can balance the content in the dungeons to accommodate the classes. You cannot do the same in PvP. you can only nerf things there. And D&D was never designed for that.
But a True CC class that heals, like a Druid who could use AoE Entanglement and and things like that to root mobs in place or "mez" them would actually provide that. I do like that idea.
Dungeons are laid out to be deal with in a certain time frame which is about 45 minutes, some people just aren't happy unless its finished in 10 ... why? Because they have probably done it too many times to want to spend the proper amount of time on it, they are by virtue of extremely bad rotations of loot drops encouraged to run as many as possible to get a chest at the end from a DD event (a nice feature but its about the only times people want to run a dungeon). These create and sustain a GF being not useful.
GF are good at tanking and things do need tanking. For you speed runners out there, GF might not put out DPS but what it does do is keep big hard hitting mobs focused on them while the rest kill the trash then come en masse to destroy the last big thing standing. This keeps squishy DPS and healer types out of the crosshairs usually or not as much to allow for fast destruction of trash. I know there are people that just surely relate what a pain in the HAMSTER it is to be running around avoiding trash attacks or being unable to hit all the mobs you want due to them running around or being knocked around. A GF can mass taunt them to him and get them clustered up if control classes have burned their ability to do so and allows for AoE nuking. A GF in that scenario isn't going to last but that isn't supposed to be the case, if they could just be constantly immune to damage or have 500k health then it wouldn't be much skill in tanking. Tanking involves shield management and proper taunting techniques.
I have run with my guild with GF pretty often and I find the runs with a GF a bit easier to manage adds and mobs. Sure the endless adds at the end are not something a tank can deal with in the traditional way but what we use a tank for is to keep a boss faced where we want it, most notably with a dragon/dracolich where a tank can just stand there and keep the boss faced in one direction so its not shooting cones or attacks all over the place. GWF's can't do this as they constantly have to leave which causes a boss to chase after him or lose aggro from having to stop attacking.
In response to a poster who mentioned dracolich hands, I will say this, one thing my guild has noticed is that when we have a GF tanking the Draco the hands always pop up in an area cone shaped right in front of the draolich, which means CW and or DC or GWF can stand in relative safety off to the side and hammer away. This isn't alway the case but happens more often than not, howeve when there is no GF tanking the hands pop up all over the **** place.
I agree that the game should consider making things more role intensive and designed around having a proper group to finish as opposed to having a massive amount of AoE/control to win (as in having 3+ cw with singularity). With the current boss fights of neverending add spawns this does make it difficult to justify loss of dps/control for adding a tank (which mind you taunting and holding a boss in place or facing in a direction is better control than knocking it around the screen).
Having said all that, i'll end with this snippet, if you have played a dungeon too much (yes cryptic should consider this as a problem) to get gear and now feel that to earn AD or gear you must speed run all dungeons or not do them if you can't is a serious problem and if you can't take the time to do a dungeon proper then don't do them. I never get on to run a dungeon when I don't have time to finish it in that hour of the event. If I can only do one if its done in 10 - 15 min i just wont' go.
I think Crytpic responded to Dungeons being viewed as too long with the Malabog and VT having only short runs or only 2 bosses to fight. However since all that stuff is BoP I noticed people dont' like to run them as there is no "profit" in them, you can't resell hard to get loot drops.
So many things contribute to classes being useful, from the community and its veterans tired of doing things the "right" way to people who just don't know any better witnesses a GWF practically solo mobs and bosses, its really a amazing the game has people that still play regularly that aren't bored with it or frustrated that their class is viewed as useless.
At times I still think there should only be two classes with two races but that would probably dampen the companies marketing as a game of choices and options and diversity. I already see the icewind dale materials promoting the game as having players with lots of "customization" from classes down to appearance when in reality this isn't really the case.