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Official Feedback Thread: M12 Armor Pen and Damage Vulnerability Debuff Changes
rgutscheradev
Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 188Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
With the Chult release, we’ve done a revamp of the Armor Pen system and some related systems. The original purpose of the revamp was to relieve a bit of the lag on the servers (the old armor pen system was very server intensive). But we’ve used the opportunity to make a few design changes that we had been wanting to make.
Some of those changes are PvP-related and are discussed in a separate thread:
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1231983/official-feedback-thread-m12-armor-pen-changes-and-pvp
The other big change is a revamp to how damage vulnerability debuffs work (powers like the Lantern of Revelation’s “enemies take 12% more damage for 6 seconds”).
Here’s how those powers used to work:
* There was a hard cap of +200% bonus total damage from such powers
* A few (more or less random) powers weren’t part of that hardcap
* Tooltips added to the confusion by sometimes referring to these powers as “reducing enemy damage resistance” and sometimes as “enemies take X% more damage” (this had nothing to do with whether they were hardcapped or not, and was just an inconsistent phrasing choice).
The system as a whole was not great, because it was very confusing and inconsistent. For beginning players, the fact that a power labeled as “reduces enemy damage resistance” could result in you doing more than 100% damage (something that does not happen with Armor Penetration, although it's described in a similar way) was not at all intuitive. For players doing the hardest group content, it was necessary to learn which powers were in the hardcap group, get to +200% with those powers, and then stack as many of the miscellaneous uncapped powers as possible. Also, there was a feeling among many players that the minor +% damage powers in the capped group were basically worthless because groups would reach the hardcap with the big +% damage powers.
Here’s how things work now:
* The +200% hard cap is gone. Every additional debuff will help at least a little.
* There are diminishing returns capped at +300% bonus damage from these debuffs, ie, diminishing returns to bonus damage so that the total can never exceed (or even quite reach) +300%.
** Just to give a rough idea, at +1% to +60%, you won’t see much if any change. At +100%, you’ll get reduced to +92%. At +200% (the old hardcap) you’ll be at about +160%, and so on.
** Note bonus damage from Power and from various buffs on the attacker is not part of this system, and hasn’t changed in any way.
* Tooltips have been clarified to phrase everything as “enemies take more damage” to make it clear that (unlike with Armor Penetration) you CAN overcome an enemy’s defenses and do more than 100% damage.
Our intention with the new system is for all damage vulnerability debuff powers to have a chance to be relevant (without just breaking the game), and to have the whole system clearer and easier to understand.
How You Can Help
Here are some things to look out for:
* Armor Pen itself is working correctly (in the same way it did before).
* Powers that make enemies take more damage work, and are described in a clear and consistent way.
* Powers that make enemies take more damage interact correctly with Armor Pen (as before, you should get the benefits of both).
Note that no individual powers are meant to have been buffed or nerfed with these changes (beyond what’s described above). So if you see an individual power whose behavior has changed, definitely let us know about that!
Some of those changes are PvP-related and are discussed in a separate thread:
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1231983/official-feedback-thread-m12-armor-pen-changes-and-pvp
The other big change is a revamp to how damage vulnerability debuffs work (powers like the Lantern of Revelation’s “enemies take 12% more damage for 6 seconds”).
Here’s how those powers used to work:
* There was a hard cap of +200% bonus total damage from such powers
* A few (more or less random) powers weren’t part of that hardcap
* Tooltips added to the confusion by sometimes referring to these powers as “reducing enemy damage resistance” and sometimes as “enemies take X% more damage” (this had nothing to do with whether they were hardcapped or not, and was just an inconsistent phrasing choice).
The system as a whole was not great, because it was very confusing and inconsistent. For beginning players, the fact that a power labeled as “reduces enemy damage resistance” could result in you doing more than 100% damage (something that does not happen with Armor Penetration, although it's described in a similar way) was not at all intuitive. For players doing the hardest group content, it was necessary to learn which powers were in the hardcap group, get to +200% with those powers, and then stack as many of the miscellaneous uncapped powers as possible. Also, there was a feeling among many players that the minor +% damage powers in the capped group were basically worthless because groups would reach the hardcap with the big +% damage powers.
Here’s how things work now:
* The +200% hard cap is gone. Every additional debuff will help at least a little.
* There are diminishing returns capped at +300% bonus damage from these debuffs, ie, diminishing returns to bonus damage so that the total can never exceed (or even quite reach) +300%.
** Just to give a rough idea, at +1% to +60%, you won’t see much if any change. At +100%, you’ll get reduced to +92%. At +200% (the old hardcap) you’ll be at about +160%, and so on.
** Note bonus damage from Power and from various buffs on the attacker is not part of this system, and hasn’t changed in any way.
* Tooltips have been clarified to phrase everything as “enemies take more damage” to make it clear that (unlike with Armor Penetration) you CAN overcome an enemy’s defenses and do more than 100% damage.
Our intention with the new system is for all damage vulnerability debuff powers to have a chance to be relevant (without just breaking the game), and to have the whole system clearer and easier to understand.
How You Can Help
Here are some things to look out for:
* Armor Pen itself is working correctly (in the same way it did before).
* Powers that make enemies take more damage work, and are described in a clear and consistent way.
* Powers that make enemies take more damage interact correctly with Armor Pen (as before, you should get the benefits of both).
Note that no individual powers are meant to have been buffed or nerfed with these changes (beyond what’s described above). So if you see an individual power whose behavior has changed, definitely let us know about that!
Post edited by rgutscheradev on
5
Comments
Am I reading this wrong or is this really a hard cap of 300%?
So even though you can stack as much debuffs as you want, the soft cap will kick in, and never actually let you reach +300% ... which is essentially a hard cap??
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Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
SHARPIE will have a field day with this.
Voodoo - MoF debuffer
Atlantes - SW Temploc
Borland - GWF
Thats assuming it works as they described.
When my bondings kick in, I hve 59.9% RI....and this is what I get:
[Combat (Self)] Your Fire of the Gods deals 3451 (10209) Physical Damage to Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Ouch.
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For example, let’s take a level 70 character with capped Armor Penetration. If you use the Earth of the Black Dragon at dummies its debuff is 14,96% (slightly less than 15% due to the new curve with diminishing return), but only 11,23% vs level 73 enemies. Why? It made sense when it was multiplicative with other debuffs and it could exceed the cap; but since now, as far as I can tell, all debuffs are additive and the hard cap was removed, it’s just weaker without any reason. Other debuffs instead keep the same effectiveness when fighting level 73 mobs. For example Sellsword is 9,99% both at dummies and vs level 73 mobs.
This means that tooltips are not trustworthy yet and you have to check every single debuff to know if it has the same effectiveness or not when you fight enemies with 3 more level than you.
These are the debuffs I'm referring to:
- Heart of the Black Dragon
- Token of Chromatic Storm
- Ambush Drake
- Greenscale Bowman (probably, but I can't test it personally)
- Repentant Dragon Cultist
- Dread enchantment
- Flaming enchantment
- Frost enchantment
- Plague Fire enchantment
- Terror enchantment
With the capping you're looking at putting in place, does it make sense to let everything stack even if you have two players in a group with Trans Plaguefire, for example? Although this poses some risk of a consensus that one enchant becomes BiS due to the biggest debuff and not needing to diversify, it also simplifies gameplay where players without access to multiple enchants don't have to fret that the one they own will be irrelevant due to duplication.
Or does it make more sense to only have one debuff from any specific source be able to be in effect because there are so many sources and the intent is that none will be less relevant due to capping?
There are some bugs with debuff weapon enchants right now too that I'll have to dig up reference threads for later if someone doesn't beat me to it. Things like first Plaguefire rank debuff being applied taking precedence over highest rank possible.
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For reference:
This was while I was testing to see how debuffs are Scaling as I approach 300%. The final thing on that list is:
2x Swath of Destruction, Lantern of Revelation, Combustive Action, Daring Shout, Divine Glow, Terror, 2x Ray of Enfeeblement, Bitter Cold, 5x sellsword debuff (they still stack), weapon master's strike.
I checked on the WMS hit itself and the effectiveness with all of those debuffs up is 287.17%. So, if it is quite possible (and something you can reasonably do in a 5 man team) to stack debuffs over 300% I am really interested in knowing how you do it, since keeping up all those debuffs is not something easy to do and it clearly takes something other than the debuffs on that list to reach 300%.
I really want to see a team of 5 manage to keep up 300% effectiveness, consistently, in a dungeon run.
I see at least 0.21 more that can be added there
Also I think better to test only what was capped buffs, I'm not sure if all the uncapped are now also go into this or some does and some doesn't.
Or can we get the actual function for level 70 chars?
The reason I ask is because you state that at +100% you gain 92% effectiveness and then go on to specify that at +200% (the old hard cap you gain 160%. At the values for the old hard cap, I have an effectiveness of 192% (which is matching 100% less than the value in your post) and at an expected effectiveness of 300%, I get values of 257% (which is roughly 160% more than base.) This leads me to believe you actually mean the hard cap is at 400% (1+300%) and everyone here is confused because of this.
Although really tbh, I think we would all just rather you provided us with a function.
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min