Actually, as funny as it was, I'd like it fixed because the bug also affected the directions you could shield...
Bug: Constantly Facing One Direction
There was bug that would cause your character to face one direction and only that direction, despite panning the camera in different directions. This would also cause your character to only be able to shield in that one specific direction, and the only way I could sort of force myself to shield in a different direction was to use Aggravating Strike in a different direction. The bug would not reset on death but did reset upon leaving the instance.
The moonwalk in question came from inputting any non-forwards walking movement, where your character would use the forwards walk animation but be moving backwards or sideways and it was hilarious.
I am not sure how to reproduce the bug, I tried to reproduce the moonwalk for the fun of it and could not get the bug to ever happen.
I recall it had to do something with Seethe/Dig In and an enemy attack drained the rest of my shield just as I was trying to use regular Guard to get out of Dig In. I got the bug in Master of the Hunt, but I do not think it is limited to Master of the Hunt.
We've seen this bug very occasionally during internal testing and on the closed beta shard... but as you've seen it can be quite difficult to reproduce! I apologize that it has not yet been fixed, but it's rising higher on our priority list, and will take care of it as soon as we can. In the meantime, if you do manage to get a consistent reproduction case, let us know!
Dig In: On Vanguard, add party protection (eg. OP Divine Protector) and threat generation while kneeling in Dig-In.
Doesn't that fit the theme (dedicated tank)?
Allow me to give public praise to @asterdahl . You have a thankless job, enduring 48 hours of non-stop complaint. I admire your professionalism, restraint and timely responses. This is the best dev response to feedback I've seen in 5 1/2 years in NW. Regards.
Aww shucks, I appreciate the kind words! Glad to respond, these changes have been in the works for a very long time, and now that they're out and people are getting a chance to play with them, obviously we're all very excited to see the response! Of course, this is preview, so particularly with all the bugs skewing everyone's experience, we're expecting it to be pretty rough, but I truly believe that we'll be able to get things in a good place over the coming weeks.
On the topic of Dig In—the changes will mostly be defensive, as we are definitely focusing on the vision of fighter being the heavy, ultra-durable style tank. I'd like to steer away from directly increasing aggro while in dig-in, because generating aggro passively while you are not actually hitting the enemy is something we are looking to not do.
However, I do understand that there is concern about losing aggro when using dig in, so I'll be looking to see what sort of changes we can make. Ultimately, it may be the case that aggro just gets a buff across the board so you can use dig in more freely without worrying about losing it. We want to see how aggro plays out as everyone gets used to the new changes.
An "across the board" aggro buff to Vanguard would be nice. Ty.
My point (and I did have one) was... Vanguard is the new GF Protector: the unwanted step-child. The dedicated tank that is not good at anything else... and mediocre at tanking also.
With the loss of tab-mark, neutered DPS, hard-taunts on cool-down (eg. ET) and our tab function an aggro-less 5 second "time-out", Vanguard needs something special and useful that makes it stand out as a valuable addition to the party.
Thanks for considering.
I appreciate the continued feedback. In regards to ensuring that each tank provides a unique benefit to the group—It's something I'll be focusing on in the coming weeks. First and foremost its my goal to ensure that all 3 tanks are equally capable, and feel different to play.
I did want to clarify one thing, however, that all 3 tanks have a single AoE snap aggro, and all 3 are on cooldowns. (Including Paladin's, Vow of Enmity, which is not a divinity spender.) Between Vanguard, Justicar, and Sentinel—I don't feel that any have a particularly huge advantage at keeping threat right now. It's possible that Justicar is a little ahead, due to Justicar's Charge, but I will be keeping a careful eye on the differences between the 3, and making sure no one pulls far ahead.
Of course, our goals don't matter if you're not enjoying yourself—so I'd like to ask for a few more details on what you aren't enjoying. You mention that everything feels too slow, can you go into more detail about what feels slow, and which parts of that slowness feel more or less egregious to you? Obviously, we've slowed down a lot of things—no recovery means slower encounters and dailies, scaling in lower level dungeons means no 5 minute runs, and both of those things mean the average enemy encounter lasts a bit longer.
I am not the person you're responding to, but I did mention loving NW's speed and aggression at some point. I don't speak for every player, but I figured that if I tried to describe what I meant, the dev team would understand why people are calling this mod slow and possibly remedy this feeling.
On the live server, players move decently fast fast and generally do a ton of damage.
I feel aggressive: I want to bring the fight to the enemy, I can constantly dance in and out of enemy attacks, and it's enemies can't really do much as I destroy them. I want to be on the offensive & keep the pressure on my enemies, which makes you feel like the epic hero that is destined to save the world that the game really wants to sell you on.
But right now, I feel very encouraged to play very conservative. The long cooldowns and marginal decreases from cooldown reducing feats, combined with the low base damage on At-wills, gives me the implicit message that "I am only allowed to deal damage with encounters and daily attacks". I am only encouraged to fire off my encounters, toss in my daily attack if I can, and then spend my next 20 seconds pitifully chipping enemies with At-wills while waiting for another opportunity to be allowed to do damage.
Speaking of which, the new system only encourages me to fire off my encounters as fast as possible due to a lack of meaningful buffs/debuffs. I don't see the point in waiting 5 more seconds for my Commander's Strike to add another 40,000 damage to my Anvil of Doom when I can just deal that same damage with my At-wills. While you might say that some buffs do exist, the numbers aren't very impactful when they're things like "1.03x damage from a daily attack that ends in 10 seconds and only gets fired every 2 minutes".
I get that the intention was to avoid the situation where enemies die in 3 button presses, and for the most part, all of us are okay with that. But the tiny, non existent buff percentages don't give me a big enough incentive to work with my team, in addition to sending other messages to us.
The reason @fisenfis loathed the DC changes on day 1 of owlbear is because of the implicit message that comes from "DC is only healer". It tells me that I am not allowed to be pro-active and contribute to fights, even if I'm not intended to be the star of the show (aka the DPS). I am not allowed to run away, hide, and babysit peoples' HP bars for when they (inevitably) make a mistake.
Same thing with tanking: I am not allowed to contribute to the fight aside from taunting bosses and directing them away from enemies. I am only supposed to sit, taunt enemies, wait for the DPS to get their act together, and occasionally cover them if they decided red areas are good.
Right now, runs end up being 5 solos that tenuously need to communicate when a mechanic threatens to "do it or die", rather than an entire team planning and preparing their attack phases.
There is a lot more to this module that affects the pacing and fun factor of NW, but that is all I feel I can analyze for now without running out of characters and not sleeping.
Thanks for attempting to clarify your feelings on the pace of combat, I really do appreciate it, and I'd like to ask even more follow up questions.
First, in regards to at-will damage: obviously, there's a very real mathematical difference between you choosing to use or not to use at-wills. I spent some time fighting through Omu on a fighter today, fought a variety of enemies, from undead to a Razortyrannus Rex, and while at-wills definitely don't do huge chunks of damage, you only need to swing your sword for about half as many seconds as your encounter's cooldown to do the same damage. (Comparing AoE at-will to AoE encounter, or single target at-will to single target encounter.)
I found that I could usually open up with 2 AoEs encounters, drop a single target encounter on a priority enemy, then cleave down the rest of the minions health before finishing off the the priority enemy with a single target at-will. Only in larger pulls needing to resort to a second round of encounters.
I think there's a huge sticker shock element going on here, and I recognize that ultimately perception is more important than reality, but I am curious, if you had to do put a number on it, what do you feel would be an acceptable amount of damage for at-wills to be dealing relative to encounters? We are absolutely considering making changes by the way, we'd just like to let everyone sit on the changes for at least a week or two before we adjust things. Obviously, we wouldn't have made these changes without thinking it was an improvement, and with any big changes, it can be slow to adapt. So while it may seem like we're being unresponsive to not change things immediately, we'd just like to not overreact to an initial shock.
On the topic of buffs, setup, and synergy. So, I've definitely played in groups where all the buffs and debuffs are stacked up to the point that you can unleash a godlike fury and crush even the strongest bosses in seconds. You mention that compared to those groups, group play in the new world really doesn't require communication.
Can you go more in-depth about the kind of communication or coordination or careful timing those old groups involved that you really enjoyed? Ultimately, I found that there is a lot of upfront research into what buffs and debuffs you need to take, and a little communication when forming the group (though far less as everyone is more experienced with their role) and then when the actual fighting starts, there is no real need for coordination, it usually boiled down to, throw up all the buffs and debuffs and when the bar hits critical mass, execute the boss with extreme prejudice. That was just my experience though, so I would love to hear more about things you liked.
Obviously, we're not going to do a major reverse course on buffs—we do strongly believe that we're bringing the game to a better place, one where more styles of gameplay, where more roles and more classes are welcome, and where we can provide new and more varied challenges that we could before. But that doesn't mean we don't want to learn about the things you loved that may be gone now, so that hopefully we can make improvements in the future.
And I do totally get it—I'm an old school MMO player, I still play a lot of MMOs nowadays, but I also look back most fondly on gameplay systems that encouraged or even forced players to communicate with one another. It can be hard to get everyone on the same page for those sorts of mechanics these days, but we would like to do what we can. I also believe that we will be able to offer much more interesting encounter mechanics when we can ensure that everyone is actually having a somewhat similar experience with the fights. We have some exciting plans for future encounters.
Finally—on the topic of tanks and healers only being able to tank or heal. I would like to stress that in many of my posts I've addressed this, particularly in response to some posters being confused about feats or class features that increase the DPS of a tank or healer: we're not aiming for tanks and healers to only tank and heal. When you're not busy using mitigative abilities as a tank, or healing as a healer, you should absolutely be DPSing. So we want to give healers and tanks the opportunity to do that, and as groups get better, there is more room for that. We're not aiming for them to be able to eclipse a pure DPS, but absolutely they can contribute. DPS checks in hardcore endgame content will be balanced around the tanks and healers contributing as well.
For some unknows reasons my character stands up while dig in is in effect and my stamina is not empty while i'm atacked by Undertakers Sniper
Steady Vegngeance feat works while out of combat when blocking
Momentum feature affects mount speed, atleast looks like it ( visual effects apear around character and movement speed change in character window.)
Griffon's Wrath tooltip is missleading for me, it sais:
"Delivers treefold attack to target enemy, dealing physical damage each hit"
by this i would presume i smash enemy 3 times when i hit that skill but i need to hit it 3 times for it to go into cool and if i don't it went into cool after some time. Unless its bug and not intended.
Heavy Slash animation doesn't fit at-will which should fluently flow from hit to hit. Looks like this overhead slash was finisher just cut out from some other longer animation and put there as at-will. As I said it doesn't fit at-will power.
Feedback: Guarded Strike(replaced Aggravating Strike) - PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get rid of the small forward lunge! This has been requested for years, it is terrible and will get you killed in tight situations. If you don't know what I'm talking about, if your character does not hit an enemy hitbox when you use Guarded Strike you will be lunged forward a couple feet. This can happen even if you play perfectly due to lag or sometimes the enemies lose their hitbox (which I sincerely hope is a bug and not intentional).
On the topic of buffs, setup, and synergy. So, I've definitely played in groups where all the buffs and debuffs are stacked up to the point that you can unleash a godlike fury and crush even the strongest bosses in seconds. You mention that compared to those groups, group play in the new world really doesn't require communication.
Can you go more in-depth about the kind of communication or coordination or careful timing those old groups involved that you really enjoyed? Ultimately, I found that there is a lot of upfront research into what buffs and debuffs you need to take, and a little communication when forming the group (though far less as everyone is more experienced with their role) and then when the actual fighting starts, there is no real need for coordination, it usually boiled down to, throw up all the buffs and debuffs and when the bar hits critical mass, execute the boss with extreme prejudice. That was just my experience though, so I would love to hear more about things you liked.
I am not @rjc9000, so apologies for highjacking this post to respond to this. My feeling about what people liked about the old system was the co-ordination involved. For example, in the buff world, there are 3 types of groups:
Those who do not use buffs.
Those who use buffs but do not time them to create a buff window.
Those who use buffs and time them.
Group 3 has some amount of communication and synergy between them. The difference between group 1 and 2 is huge, but the difference between group 2 and 3 is also huge. The 3rd group is the one which is 1 shotting and trivializing everything, while group 2 simply has a convenient time.
The thing is, I don't believe buffs are necessary for this type of co-ordination, but the alternative is having very heavily mechanically focused dungeons, which, outside of wither's control station, we don't really have in Neverwinter and unfortunately the mechanics for withers would have been better utilized in a 10 man raid. I think that boss could have made a great 10 man raid, so I am disappointed that the mechanics side of that boss failed the way it did.
With that being said, there is 1 thing about the buff system that is in my opinion very good and doesn't need to be removed and that is that it heavily rewards taking many different types of class, not just stacking a single dps. I think we can keep that aspect in Neverwinter, whilst still removing buffs.
I recommend for every different class in the party, everyone in the group gains a 5-10% damage buff and takes 5-10% reduced damage. Whilst I find it unlikely the classes will be balanced within 1-2%, getting it within 5-10% should be possible and by providing a bonus for taking different classes along with you, it incentivizes taking along different classes where otherwise stacking a single class would technically be optimal.
Thank you for the feedback! We'll definitely make some improvements to threat generation if its still a problem after people get more used to the current system.
That being said, I did want to say—there will be absolutely no hard taunts moving forward. Additional threat generation, and snapping yourself to the top of the list will be the only types of positive threat management. (Negative threat management, such as Cleric's Divine Glow which halve your current threat, are also available in some cases.)
This is a deliberate decision we have made so that the gameplay surrounding threat is both more straightforward to understand and more predictable. It also allows for us to put in place things like tank swapping in 10-man trials. If things like at-wills snap you to the top of the list, this would also be bade and destroy the opportunity for those sorts of mechanics to exist. So with that in mind, that's why you won't see at-wills with that effect, or hard taunts in the game.
That being said, as I stated, we'll be adjusting threat up if everyone is continuing to have a problem with it once they've gotten used to the mechanics. In our own internal playtests I'm having no trouble keeping threat on paladin or fighter right now, so I'm hesitant to swing the dial too heavily in the other direction, but I'm also skeptical that everyone here is doing optimal DPS! So please keep sending your feedback along, we will absolutely be making adjustments.
After further testing of Fighter aggro mechanics, it seems to me like this is actually an issue tied to scaling to lower lvl content. In CN for example, I have a very hard time holding aggro from lvl 70 DPS players (me scaled down from 80). In the new Mad Mage dungeon, Vanguard feels A LOT better and aggro issues are almost purely based on my own playstyle
First, in regards to at-will damage: obviously, there's a very real mathematical difference between you choosing to use or not to use at-wills. I spent some time fighting through Omu on a fighter today, fought a variety of enemies, from undead to a Razortyrannus Rex, and while at-wills definitely don't do huge chunks of damage, you only need to swing your sword for about half as many seconds as your encounter's cooldown to do the same damage. (Comparing AoE at-will to AoE encounter, or single target at-will to single target encounter.)
I found that I could usually open up with 2 AoEs encounters, drop a single target encounter on a priority enemy, then cleave down the rest of the minions health before finishing off the the priority enemy with a single target at-will. Only in larger pulls needing to resort to a second round of encounters.
I think there's a huge sticker shock element going on here, and I recognize that ultimately perception is more important than reality, but I am curious, if you had to do put a number on it, what do you feel would be an acceptable amount of damage for at-wills to be dealing relative to encounters? We are absolutely considering making changes by the way, we'd just like to let everyone sit on the changes for at least a week or two before we adjust things. Obviously, we wouldn't have made these changes without thinking it was an improvement, and with any big changes, it can be slow to adapt. So while it may seem like we're being unresponsive to not change things immediately, we'd just like to not overreact to an initial shock.
Seeing some of the other posts, I think I see the picture where the dev team balanced powers around some "Damage versus time" function. I am guessing that is why At-wills have low damage, since they are meant to be spammed and don't have high values so they don't overtake Encounters in terms of damage.
I think that you would need to adjust classes on a per class basis, with additional factors accounted for, such as recharge speed, attack speed, or range.
--------- If the class has a reasonable about of cooldown recharging feats/passives (ie, not to the point where every class has an Arcane Empowerment effect all the time) or if their At-wills are supported by a hefty amount of extra damage, then I think it would be reasonable to keep their lower level of damage, as these classes are intended to be encounter heavy classes.
I think Wizard has the best example of this, with their At-will damage being even weaker than that of the Fighter/Barbarian classes. At-wills are not supposed to be the main focus on this class, your encounters and daily attacks are the focus. Even if the damage on, say, Scorching Burst is low, Smolder's damage is backing it up so.
For these types of classes, I'd leave their At-will damage alone and make the cooldown reducing passives/feats a little more effective and available much earlier (so new players don't need to wait for level 80 to finally be able to do something besides spamming At-wills when everything is on cooldown).
----- For classes intended to have little to no cooldown recharging feats/passives, I think you would want to globally buff these classes' At-wills and lower their encounter damage & daily damage, so their damage isn't concentrated in just daily attacks and encounters.
And remember to design feats/passives that encourage you to mix up your use of At-wills/Encounters!
On At-wills for these classes, I'd guess an average of about 100-150 magnitude per hit (whether it be versus multiple targets or against a single target), combined with decreasing encounter damage and daily damage by ~15%, would make these classes feel a lot better.
Funnily enough, I think people would like Fighter and Barbarian a lot more if the dev team transplanted Ranger level magnitude onto Fighter/Barbarian with these classes keeping their current feats. I recall Ranger's Clear the Ground hits 1 target and has magnitudes of 100 on the first two hits and 150 on the last hit while encounters like Cordon of Arrows has magnitude of 215. --- Also, I do hope that a certain Owlbear tester isn't telling you Fighter is fine just because they are using Into the Fray's ridiculous AP Gain bonus to constantly spam daily attacks (ie, Earthshaker, Shockwave, and Mow Down is 50% of their damage) while every other class is barely getting any daily attacks outside of ITF ...
Edgy, feel free to answer buffs, because I don't have enough time in the day or the post space to analyze buffs too.
I recommend for every different class in the party, everyone in the group gains a 5-10% damage buff and takes 5-10% reduced damage. Whilst I find it unlikely the classes will be balanced within 1-2%, getting it within 5-10% should be possible and by providing a bonus for taking different classes along with you, it incentivizes taking along different classes where otherwise stacking a single class would technically be optimal.
5-10% each, for a possible total of 25-50% for a party of five? That seems way too high based on the minimal buffs I'm seeing on preview right now.
Also, I don't think penalizing a party because two friends/guildmates/whatever both have invested heavily in their Clerics for example, and both want to play that character today or for the week. I've seen this "rainbow party bonus" suggested so many times, going back to the early days of the game, and if you follow the logic you are creating exclusion in the name of inclusion.
"Sorry friend, we can't take you on this dungeon run, we are running a 'rainbow party' and we already have a Rogue. We really don't want to exclude anyone based on their class, hope you understand."
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
I recommend for every different class in the party, everyone in the group gains a 5-10% damage buff and takes 5-10% reduced damage. Whilst I find it unlikely the classes will be balanced within 1-2%, getting it within 5-10% should be possible and by providing a bonus for taking different classes along with you, it incentivizes taking along different classes where otherwise stacking a single class would technically be optimal.
5-10% each, for a possible total of 25-50% for a party of five? That seems way too high based on the minimal buffs I'm seeing on preview right now.
Also, I don't think penalizing a party because two friends/guildmates/whatever both have invested heavily in their Clerics for example, and both want to play that character today or for the week. I've seen this "rainbow party bonus" suggested so many times, going back to the early days of the game, and if you follow the logic you are creating exclusion in the name of inclusion.
"Sorry friend, we can't take you on this dungeon run, we are running a 'rainbow party' and we already have a Rogue. We really don't want to exclude anyone based on their class, hope you understand."
It is only 5-10% less if you have 2 of 1 class and 10-20% less if you have 2x 2 of 1 class, or 3x1 of 1 class. It doesn't penalize taking 1 or 2 duplicates too heavily, but it heavily penalizes stacking 5 of the same. The point is, the dungeon will still be complete able, but it will take longer, which is good because it prevents stacking multiples of the same class in the name of meta.
dread4moorMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,154Arc User
> @manipulos said: > Feedback: Guarded Strike(replaced Aggravating Strike) - PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get rid of the small forward lunge! This has been requested for years, it is terrible and will get you killed in tight situations. If you don't know what I'm talking about, if your character does not hit an enemy hitbox when you use Guarded Strike you will be lunged forward a couple feet. This can happen even if you play perfectly due to lag or sometimes the enemies lose their hitbox (which I sincerely hope is a bug and not intentional).
And I was late to report it. Search archives, you'll find at least 3 other threads before mine ar far back as 2014.
Response from each report: Crickets chirping.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
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dread4moorMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,154Arc User
> @wilbur626 said: > Thank you for the feedback! We'll definitely make some improvements to threat generation if its still a problem after people get more used to the current system. > > That being said, I did want to say—there will be absolutely no hard taunts moving forward. Additional threat generation, and snapping yourself to the top of the list will be the only types of positive threat management. (Negative threat management, such as Cleric's Divine Glow which halve your current threat, are also available in some cases.) > > This is a deliberate decision we have made so that the gameplay surrounding threat is both more straightforward to understand and more predictable. It also allows for us to put in place things like tank swapping in 10-man trials. If things like at-wills snap you to the top of the list, this would also be bade and destroy the opportunity for those sorts of mechanics to exist. So with that in mind, that's why you won't see at-wills with that effect, or hard taunts in the game. > > That being said, as I stated, we'll be adjusting threat up if everyone is continuing to have a problem with it once they've gotten used to the mechanics. In our own internal playtests I'm having no trouble keeping threat on paladin or fighter right now, so I'm hesitant to swing the dial too heavily in the other direction, but I'm also skeptical that everyone here is doing optimal DPS! So please keep sending your feedback along, we will absolutely be making adjustments. > > > After further testing of Fighter aggro mechanics, it seems to me like this is actually an issue tied to scaling to lower lvl content. In CN for example, I have a very hard time holding aggro from lvl 70 DPS players (me scaled down from 80). In the new Mad Mage dungeon, Vanguard feels A LOT better and aggro issues are almost purely based on my own playstyle
I'd sure like to hear your rotation. 'cause my "Vanguard Took", formerly farting threat in all directions in Mod 15, is screaming "pay attention to me!" with little success in endgame content on Preview.
Maxed all threaty boons, feats, encouters... tried multiple U.weap enchants... still struggling. Playing a constant game of tag on large mob packs to grab aggro and bosses quickly lose interest as my Vanguard's DPS is somewhere between harsh language and a lashing with a wet noodle.
Do tell. What's the secret formula?
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
How are you getting Deep Breath to work (kneel for 5 seconds doing nothing) without losing Boss aggro?
I dont use Tab mechanic at all, as it (in its current state) brings absolutely nothing good to the Fighter Vanguard. Maybe I need to learn how to tank, but I fail at finding a reason to stop protecting the party to protect myself from something that stops attacking me as soon as I activate the Tab mechanic( @asterdahl )
Elite Whaleboy
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dread4moorMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,154Arc User
How are you getting Deep Breath to work (kneel for 5 seconds doing nothing) without losing Boss aggro?
I dont use Tab mechanic at all, as it (in its current state) brings absolutely nothing good to the Fighter Vanguard. Maybe I need to learn how to tank, but I fail at finding a reason to stop protecting the party to protect myself from something that stops attacking me as soon as I activate the Tab mechanic( @asterdahl )
I fully agree. But if you don't bother with Dig In, then why are you using Deep Breath at all? Stronghold at least boosts your healing. You could just "cop a quick squat" and use DigIn to heal up?
Hopefully none of that matters. They will turn Dig In into an awesome party-protecting aggro generating ability that will make Vanguard the premiere pure tank of NW. Right, asterdahl?
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
Been dueling against a GF yesterday all evening, being a new DPS cleric, trapper hunter, TR and a paladin. Well my impression is that anvil of doom just one shots people. I mean one shots everyone. Even though this skill has a loong CD, it still shouldn't 1 shot every single class out there. There is a bug with "into the frei" daily that gives ALOT of AP. Literrally GF can have infinite amount of shields, this has to be looked at for sure. Speaking on behalf of Russian community that plays PVP. SHIELD THROW is an insane skill that stun locks target for 4 sec (even though tooltip sais 3sec) but also is bugged due to the fact that elven battle do NOT reduce stun duration whatsoever. I mean non of the control reducing effects are working on it. Its just a game breaker, Shield throw -> bulcharge --> Anvil... pretty much EVERY class is dead.
I recommend for every different class in the party, everyone in the group gains a 5-10% damage buff and takes 5-10% reduced damage. Whilst I find it unlikely the classes will be balanced within 1-2%, getting it within 5-10% should be possible and by providing a bonus for taking different classes along with you, it incentivizes taking along different classes where otherwise stacking a single class would technically be optimal.
5-10% each, for a possible total of 25-50% for a party of five? That seems way too high based on the minimal buffs I'm seeing on preview right now.
Also, I don't think penalizing a party because two friends/guildmates/whatever both have invested heavily in their Clerics for example, and both want to play that character today or for the week. I've seen this "rainbow party bonus" suggested so many times, going back to the early days of the game, and if you follow the logic you are creating exclusion in the name of inclusion.
"Sorry friend, we can't take you on this dungeon run, we are running a 'rainbow party' and we already have a Rogue. We really don't want to exclude anyone based on their class, hope you understand."
It is only 5-10% less if you have 2 of 1 class and 10-20% less if you have 2x 2 of 1 class, or 3x1 of 1 class. It doesn't penalize taking 1 or 2 duplicates too heavily, but it heavily penalizes stacking 5 of the same. The point is, the dungeon will still be complete able, but it will take longer, which is good because it prevents stacking multiples of the same class in the name of meta.
I don't think losing 5% or even 20% damage is too bad, but TAKING 5-20% more damage would be more noticeable. The devs have enough to balance right now, pretty sure adding something like this is not even on their radar. My point still stands, you would end up with people being excluded from a party because of the class they are playing, which is exactly what this idea is supposed to "fix". If classes are close in "balance" it's a waste of resources, and the current meta on live servers is a "rainbow" party. Anyway I think we're a bit off topic here.
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blindfury11Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 52Arc User
I'm not quite sure where the "fun" of playing a DPS Fighter is coming from in mod 16. You are basically telling us to "take 5" while the meter builds up. You are actively telling us to spend a few seconds every fight not doing anything. Neverwinter combat was fun because it was so dynamic before, but from my testing on preview, that's gone. Any interrupt in combat is a negative, worse when you have to take yourself out of combat yourself.
Feedback: The new Counter Stats system combined with the removal of Armor Class(AC) and threat being generated primarily through dealing damage makes it harder on tanks to get the stats they need to be effective.
You want tanks to manage threat by dealing damage, but since AC is removed from gear tanks will have to stack more defense along with all the other defensive counter stats and hit points. Meanwhile, you have to get to 24K on armor penetration and accuracy, and then start stacking power or combat advantage or something to help you do more damage so you can generate more threat. I mention AC because at least with that system you would have more AC on a piece of platemail versus a piece of leather or cloth for example, and therefore the tank had a built in way of getting a little extra defense outside of just stacking stats.
I haven't tweaked all the gear and enchants on my Fighter on preview yet, but it looks like at high item levels with good legendary companions and insiginias this shouldn't be much of an issue. However I think newer players that are playing a tank will be at a significant disadvantage compared to their dps or healer counterparts.
Unless the plan is to build more defensive capailities into the tank paragon powers and feats? I'm not seeing much there right now.
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dread4moorMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,154Arc User
Feedback: The new Counter Stats system combined with the removal of Armor Class(AC) and threat being generated primarily through dealing damage makes it harder on tanks to get the stats they need to be effective.
You want tanks to manage threat by dealing damage, but since AC is removed from gear tanks will have to stack more defense along with all the other defensive counter stats and hit points. Meanwhile, you have to get to 24K on armor penetration and accuracy, and then start stacking power or combat advantage or something to help you do more damage so you can generate more threat.
^ This. @manipulos has struck the heart of the contradiction in the Mod16 "DPS or Tank" dichotomous Fighter philosophy. Dreadnaught is suppose to be DPS. Fine. They should be augmented by armor pen, accuracy, power and combat advantage.
Vanguard is suppose to be a dedicated tank. Fine. Tanks need to invest in HP, defense and counter stats. Except threat currently correlates to DPS which Vanguard does not have. Vanguard cannot hold aggro without investing in DPS stats without sacrificing defensive stats. It's a paradox.
Solution: Vanguard needs non-DPS-based aggro generation. Change Vanguard tab to a "top of the list" hard taunt. Boost Vanguard's threat multiplier to be greater then all DPS threat multipliers. A slap from a Vanguard should cause more threat then a punch from a Barbie. Has to be that way, because Barbie slaps harder then Vanguard.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
(...)However, we'd really like to not muck up the whole screen with Xs over every enemy's head, (...)
OK, fair enough. How about add agro indicators above party members head. It would be easier for me to see red indicator on someone standing among mobs then look for it on party list and identify who and where is he/she.
I dont know if this was reported here but: "Priestess of Sune" companion can cancel your animations making you copy her moves removing even guard and dig animations and effects.
Is the Vanguard actually holding aggro well? So far, Justicar holds it almost without trying from what I have seen, and the Sentinel can't hold it even if it was handed to him. My guess is because of the Justicar mechanic that increases threat generation, combined with some other ability of theirs... stuff that is missing on the Barbarian tank currently...
Comments
We've seen this bug very occasionally during internal testing and on the closed beta shard... but as you've seen it can be quite difficult to reproduce! I apologize that it has not yet been fixed, but it's rising higher on our priority list, and will take care of it as soon as we can. In the meantime, if you do manage to get a consistent reproduction case, let us know!
I did want to clarify one thing, however, that all 3 tanks have a single AoE snap aggro, and all 3 are on cooldowns. (Including Paladin's, Vow of Enmity, which is not a divinity spender.) Between Vanguard, Justicar, and Sentinel—I don't feel that any have a particularly huge advantage at keeping threat right now. It's possible that Justicar is a little ahead, due to Justicar's Charge, but I will be keeping a careful eye on the differences between the 3, and making sure no one pulls far ahead.
First, in regards to at-will damage: obviously, there's a very real mathematical difference between you choosing to use or not to use at-wills. I spent some time fighting through Omu on a fighter today, fought a variety of enemies, from undead to a Razortyrannus Rex, and while at-wills definitely don't do huge chunks of damage, you only need to swing your sword for about half as many seconds as your encounter's cooldown to do the same damage. (Comparing AoE at-will to AoE encounter, or single target at-will to single target encounter.)
I found that I could usually open up with 2 AoEs encounters, drop a single target encounter on a priority enemy, then cleave down the rest of the minions health before finishing off the the priority enemy with a single target at-will. Only in larger pulls needing to resort to a second round of encounters.
I think there's a huge sticker shock element going on here, and I recognize that ultimately perception is more important than reality, but I am curious, if you had to do put a number on it, what do you feel would be an acceptable amount of damage for at-wills to be dealing relative to encounters? We are absolutely considering making changes by the way, we'd just like to let everyone sit on the changes for at least a week or two before we adjust things. Obviously, we wouldn't have made these changes without thinking it was an improvement, and with any big changes, it can be slow to adapt. So while it may seem like we're being unresponsive to not change things immediately, we'd just like to not overreact to an initial shock.
On the topic of buffs, setup, and synergy. So, I've definitely played in groups where all the buffs and debuffs are stacked up to the point that you can unleash a godlike fury and crush even the strongest bosses in seconds. You mention that compared to those groups, group play in the new world really doesn't require communication.
Can you go more in-depth about the kind of communication or coordination or careful timing those old groups involved that you really enjoyed? Ultimately, I found that there is a lot of upfront research into what buffs and debuffs you need to take, and a little communication when forming the group (though far less as everyone is more experienced with their role) and then when the actual fighting starts, there is no real need for coordination, it usually boiled down to, throw up all the buffs and debuffs and when the bar hits critical mass, execute the boss with extreme prejudice. That was just my experience though, so I would love to hear more about things you liked.
Obviously, we're not going to do a major reverse course on buffs—we do strongly believe that we're bringing the game to a better place, one where more styles of gameplay, where more roles and more classes are welcome, and where we can provide new and more varied challenges that we could before. But that doesn't mean we don't want to learn about the things you loved that may be gone now, so that hopefully we can make improvements in the future.
And I do totally get it—I'm an old school MMO player, I still play a lot of MMOs nowadays, but I also look back most fondly on gameplay systems that encouraged or even forced players to communicate with one another. It can be hard to get everyone on the same page for those sorts of mechanics these days, but we would like to do what we can. I also believe that we will be able to offer much more interesting encounter mechanics when we can ensure that everyone is actually having a somewhat similar experience with the fights. We have some exciting plans for future encounters.
Finally—on the topic of tanks and healers only being able to tank or heal. I would like to stress that in many of my posts I've addressed this, particularly in response to some posters being confused about feats or class features that increase the DPS of a tank or healer: we're not aiming for tanks and healers to only tank and heal. When you're not busy using mitigative abilities as a tank, or healing as a healer, you should absolutely be DPSing. So we want to give healers and tanks the opportunity to do that, and as groups get better, there is more room for that. We're not aiming for them to be able to eclipse a pure DPS, but absolutely they can contribute. DPS checks in hardcore endgame content will be balanced around the tanks and healers contributing as well.
For some unknows reasons my character stands up while dig in is in effect and my stamina is not empty while i'm atacked by Undertakers Sniper
Steady Vegngeance feat works while out of combat when blocking
Momentum feature affects mount speed, atleast looks like it ( visual effects apear around character and movement speed change in character window.)
Griffon's Wrath tooltip is missleading for me, it sais:
"Delivers treefold attack to target enemy, dealing physical damage each hit"
by this i would presume i smash enemy 3 times when i hit that skill but i need to hit it 3 times for it to go into cool and if i don't it went into cool after some time. Unless its bug and not intended.
Heavy Slash animation doesn't fit at-will which should fluently flow from hit to hit. Looks like this overhead slash was finisher just cut out from some other longer animation and put there as at-will. As I said it doesn't fit at-will power.
- Those who do not use buffs.
- Those who use buffs but do not time them to create a buff window.
- Those who use buffs and time them.
Group 3 has some amount of communication and synergy between them. The difference between group 1 and 2 is huge, but the difference between group 2 and 3 is also huge. The 3rd group is the one which is 1 shotting and trivializing everything, while group 2 simply has a convenient time.The thing is, I don't believe buffs are necessary for this type of co-ordination, but the alternative is having very heavily mechanically focused dungeons, which, outside of wither's control station, we don't really have in Neverwinter and unfortunately the mechanics for withers would have been better utilized in a 10 man raid. I think that boss could have made a great 10 man raid, so I am disappointed that the mechanics side of that boss failed the way it did.
With that being said, there is 1 thing about the buff system that is in my opinion very good and doesn't need to be removed and that is that it heavily rewards taking many different types of class, not just stacking a single dps. I think we can keep that aspect in Neverwinter, whilst still removing buffs.
I recommend for every different class in the party, everyone in the group gains a 5-10% damage buff and takes 5-10% reduced damage. Whilst I find it unlikely the classes will be balanced within 1-2%, getting it within 5-10% should be possible and by providing a bonus for taking different classes along with you, it incentivizes taking along different classes where otherwise stacking a single class would technically be optimal.
After further testing of Fighter aggro mechanics, it seems to me like this is actually an issue tied to scaling to lower lvl content. In CN for example, I have a very hard time holding aggro from lvl 70 DPS players (me scaled down from 80). In the new Mad Mage dungeon, Vanguard feels A LOT better and aggro issues are almost purely based on my own playstyle
I think that you would need to adjust classes on a per class basis, with additional factors accounted for, such as recharge speed, attack speed, or range.
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If the class has a reasonable about of cooldown recharging feats/passives (ie, not to the point where every class has an Arcane Empowerment effect all the time) or if their At-wills are supported by a hefty amount of extra damage, then I think it would be reasonable to keep their lower level of damage, as these classes are intended to be encounter heavy classes.
I think Wizard has the best example of this, with their At-will damage being even weaker than that of the Fighter/Barbarian classes. At-wills are not supposed to be the main focus on this class, your encounters and daily attacks are the focus. Even if the damage on, say, Scorching Burst is low, Smolder's damage is backing it up so.
For these types of classes, I'd leave their At-will damage alone and make the cooldown reducing passives/feats a little more effective and available much earlier (so new players don't need to wait for level 80 to finally be able to do something besides spamming At-wills when everything is on cooldown).
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For classes intended to have little to no cooldown recharging feats/passives, I think you would want to globally buff these classes' At-wills and lower their encounter damage & daily damage, so their damage isn't concentrated in just daily attacks and encounters.
And remember to design feats/passives that encourage you to mix up your use of At-wills/Encounters!
On At-wills for these classes, I'd guess an average of about 100-150 magnitude per hit (whether it be versus multiple targets or against a single target), combined with decreasing encounter damage and daily damage by ~15%, would make these classes feel a lot better.
Funnily enough, I think people would like Fighter and Barbarian a lot more if the dev team transplanted Ranger level magnitude onto Fighter/Barbarian with these classes keeping their current feats. I recall Ranger's Clear the Ground hits 1 target and has magnitudes of 100 on the first two hits and 150 on the last hit while encounters like Cordon of Arrows has magnitude of 215.
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Also, I do hope that a certain Owlbear tester isn't telling you Fighter is fine just because they are using Into the Fray's ridiculous AP Gain bonus to constantly spam daily attacks (ie, Earthshaker, Shockwave, and Mow Down is 50% of their damage) while every other class is barely getting any daily attacks outside of ITF ...
Edgy, feel free to answer buffs, because I don't have enough time in the day or the post space to analyze buffs too.
Also, I don't think penalizing a party because two friends/guildmates/whatever both have invested heavily in their Clerics for example, and both want to play that character today or for the week. I've seen this "rainbow party bonus" suggested so many times, going back to the early days of the game, and if you follow the logic you are creating exclusion in the name of inclusion.
"Sorry friend, we can't take you on this dungeon run, we are running a 'rainbow party' and we already have a Rogue. We really don't want to exclude anyone based on their class, hope you understand."
> Feedback: Guarded Strike(replaced Aggravating Strike) - PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get rid of the small forward lunge! This has been requested for years, it is terrible and will get you killed in tight situations. If you don't know what I'm talking about, if your character does not hit an enemy hitbox when you use Guarded Strike you will be lunged forward a couple feet. This can happen even if you play perfectly due to lag or sometimes the enemies lose their hitbox (which I sincerely hope is a bug and not intentional).
Yep.
Here was my thread on it from 2016.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1226416/pc-aggravating-tango-from-aggravating-strike
And I was late to report it. Search archives, you'll find at least 3 other threads before mine ar far back as 2014.
Response from each report:
Crickets chirping.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
> Thank you for the feedback! We'll definitely make some improvements to threat generation if its still a problem after people get more used to the current system.
>
> That being said, I did want to say—there will be absolutely no hard taunts moving forward. Additional threat generation, and snapping yourself to the top of the list will be the only types of positive threat management. (Negative threat management, such as Cleric's Divine Glow which halve your current threat, are also available in some cases.)
>
> This is a deliberate decision we have made so that the gameplay surrounding threat is both more straightforward to understand and more predictable. It also allows for us to put in place things like tank swapping in 10-man trials. If things like at-wills snap you to the top of the list, this would also be bade and destroy the opportunity for those sorts of mechanics to exist. So with that in mind, that's why you won't see at-wills with that effect, or hard taunts in the game.
>
> That being said, as I stated, we'll be adjusting threat up if everyone is continuing to have a problem with it once they've gotten used to the mechanics. In our own internal playtests I'm having no trouble keeping threat on paladin or fighter right now, so I'm hesitant to swing the dial too heavily in the other direction, but I'm also skeptical that everyone here is doing optimal DPS! So please keep sending your feedback along, we will absolutely be making adjustments.
>
>
> After further testing of Fighter aggro mechanics, it seems to me like this is actually an issue tied to scaling to lower lvl content. In CN for example, I have a very hard time holding aggro from lvl 70 DPS players (me scaled down from 80). In the new Mad Mage dungeon, Vanguard feels A LOT better and aggro issues are almost purely based on my own playstyle
I'd sure like to hear your rotation.
'cause my "Vanguard Took", formerly farting threat in all directions in Mod 15, is screaming "pay attention to me!" with little success in endgame content on Preview.
Maxed all threaty boons, feats, encouters... tried multiple U.weap enchants... still struggling.
Playing a constant game of tag on large mob packs to grab aggro and bosses quickly lose interest as my Vanguard's DPS is somewhere between harsh language and a lashing with a wet noodle.
Do tell. What's the secret formula?
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
Multitarget loadout:
At-Wills : Cleave + Threatening Rush
Encounters : Bull Charge + Linebreaker + Enforced Threat
Dailies : Earthshaker + Second Wind
Class Features : Greater Endurance + Ferocious Reaction
Feats : Agressive Guard + Cleaving Bull + Sheltering Wind + Deep Breath + Shake it off
Singletarget loadout:
At-Wills : Brazen Slash + Tide of Iron
Encounters : Kneebreaker + Piercing Thrust + Anvil of Doom
Dailies : Determination + Phalanx
Class Features : Steel Recovery + Anvil of Challenge
Feats : Agressive Guard + Brazen Thrust + Swordbreaker + Deep Breath + Determined Defense
Mount Insignia bonuses:
Artificers, Gladiators, Combatants, Oppressors, Champions
Legendary mount powers :
Aureal Armament + Feriocity
Summoned companion :
Energon (to avoid stupidly unbalanced companion stealing aggro)
Companion offense power :
Slyblade Kobolds Dicipline (+100% encounter dmg vs disabled or held targets)
Master boons :
3/3 Enhanced Application
Gear :
All Spy's Guild gear apart from Rusted Riders Greaves. Mountaineer weapons with Vorpal R14
Bull Charge
Piercing Thrust
Anvil Doom
Brazen Thrust
Sounds like the cast of an adult film.
Thanks. Gives me a few combos I had not tried.
Follow-up question:
How are you getting Deep Breath to work (kneel for 5 seconds doing nothing) without losing Boss aggro?
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
But if you don't bother with Dig In, then why are you using Deep Breath at all?
Stronghold at least boosts your healing. You could just "cop a quick squat" and use DigIn to heal up?
Hopefully none of that matters.
They will turn Dig In into an awesome party-protecting aggro generating ability that will make Vanguard the premiere pure tank of NW.
Right, asterdahl?
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
Well my impression is that anvil of doom just one shots people. I mean one shots everyone. Even though this skill has a loong CD, it still shouldn't 1 shot every single class out there.
There is a bug with "into the frei" daily that gives ALOT of AP. Literrally GF can have infinite amount of shields, this has to be looked at for sure.
Speaking on behalf of Russian community that plays PVP.
SHIELD THROW is an insane skill that stun locks target for 4 sec (even though tooltip sais 3sec) but also is bugged due to the fact that elven battle do NOT reduce stun duration whatsoever. I mean non of the control reducing effects are working on it.
Its just a game breaker, Shield throw -> bulcharge --> Anvil... pretty much EVERY class is dead.
This is serious imbalance in pvp for sure.
Do I have it wrong or something?
You want tanks to manage threat by dealing damage, but since AC is removed from gear tanks will have to stack more defense along with all the other defensive counter stats and hit points. Meanwhile, you have to get to 24K on armor penetration and accuracy, and then start stacking power or combat advantage or something to help you do more damage so you can generate more threat. I mention AC because at least with that system you would have more AC on a piece of platemail versus a piece of leather or cloth for example, and therefore the tank had a built in way of getting a little extra defense outside of just stacking stats.
I haven't tweaked all the gear and enchants on my Fighter on preview yet, but it looks like at high item levels with good legendary companions and insiginias this shouldn't be much of an issue. However I think newer players that are playing a tank will be at a significant disadvantage compared to their dps or healer counterparts.
Unless the plan is to build more defensive capailities into the tank paragon powers and feats? I'm not seeing much there right now.
@manipulos has struck the heart of the contradiction in the Mod16 "DPS or Tank" dichotomous Fighter philosophy.
Dreadnaught is suppose to be DPS. Fine.
They should be augmented by armor pen, accuracy, power and combat advantage.
Vanguard is suppose to be a dedicated tank. Fine.
Tanks need to invest in HP, defense and counter stats.
Except threat currently correlates to DPS which Vanguard does not have.
Vanguard cannot hold aggro without investing in DPS stats without sacrificing defensive stats.
It's a paradox.
Solution:
Vanguard needs non-DPS-based aggro generation.
Change Vanguard tab to a "top of the list" hard taunt.
Boost Vanguard's threat multiplier to be greater then all DPS threat multipliers.
A slap from a Vanguard should cause more threat then a punch from a Barbie.
Has to be that way, because Barbie slaps harder then Vanguard.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
OK, fair enough. How about add agro indicators above party members head. It would be easier for me to see red indicator on someone standing among mobs then look for it on party list and identify who and where is he/she.
"Priestess of Sune" companion can cancel your animations making you copy her moves removing even guard and dig animations and effects.