While I'm all for the monsters having some variety to their stats, the 50,000 boost to some of the monster stats seems a bit high.
And here's why I say that: My ~12,000, level 70 OP OP hybrid tank on live, coming into preview before these changes.
Versus a level 70 monster On the defensive: 0% Combat Advantage Bonus for the monsters 0% Critical Strike for the monsters 32% Damage Ignored for me 12% Deflect for me
On the offensive: 49% Combat Advantage Bonus for me 38% Critical Strike for me 0% Damage Ignored for the monsters 0% Deflect for the monsters
After the changes, using the level 70 example provided by @noworries#8859 On the defensive: 47% Combat Advantage Bonus for the monsters 38% Critical Strike for the monsters 23% Damage Ignored for me 13% Deflect for me
On the offensive: 37% Combat Advantage Bonus for me 29% Critical Strike for me 36% Damage Ignored for the monsters 37% Deflect for the monsters
Looking only at my numbers prior to this change you could say I was over-powered, and leveling to 80 would be too easy. I agree, it wasn't much of an issue. I had one problem during my first expedition.
However, looking at my numbers after the changes. Not only will the monsters be able to kill me faster, but due to the decrease to encounter and daily magnitudes, it will take me longer to kill them (even with the reduction to their hit points.)
Again, I agree with these changes, except for the 50,000 stat boost. That number is too high for the average player to be up against.
Well, that might be true. But really the question boils down to who the stats are intended to be balanced against. If you balance stats against lowmid range players content is "too easy". If you balance it against midhigh range players content is "too hard". How do they win this debate? Is it better for stuff to be easy or for stuff to be hard? There's never going to be a "just right" so which way is the right way to tilt the platform?
> @kythelion#3210 said: > ...so which way is the right way to tilt the platform?
Somewhere in the middle And while this may be in the middle for a fresh-out-of-the-gate level 70 versus a best-in-slot level 70, that fresh-out-of-the-gate level 70 is going to die horribly (even in areas where they should be.)
And yes, "lowmid range" describes my Paladin pretty well. I have more campaigns to complete than I have finished. However, finishing those campaigns now is relatively inconsequential. Yes, leveling to 80 was too easy, but these changes are overkill to all the content I "should be doing" to progress my character.
As it was often wanted, give the Dungeons more levels, light, mid, heavy, nightmare with different statvalues ist easy to do, and reward can be adjusted too. Thats where any fresh char can start and learn and progress to get up to the harder content. Quests can be with levels and adjusted reward also. That way is more wanted by Players i think.
Ex: level 70 critters will have 7,000 rating for Critical Resist, Accuracy, Awareness, and Armor Pen. They will have 57,000 ratings for Defense, Deflect, Combat Advantage, and Critical Strike. At endgame, the higher ratings are always 50,000 more than the lower ratings.
Scaling related confusion here - At "endgame" there's "always" 50,000 difference between the high and low ratings. To me endgame is now 80. But the example given was actually level 70.
So is anything in the level 70-80 range endgame for this (what is endgame)? Or should the difference for level 70 really less than 50k? Or is the difference for level 80 actually higher than 50k?
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arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
Ex: level 70 critters will have 7,000 rating for Critical Resist, Accuracy, Awareness, and Armor Pen. They will have 57,000 ratings for Defense, Deflect, Combat Advantage, and Critical Strike. At endgame, the higher ratings are always 50,000 more than the lower ratings.
Scaling related confusion here - At "endgame" there's "always" 50,000 difference between the high and low ratings. To me endgame is now 80. But the example given was actually level 70.
So is anything in the level 70-80 range endgame for this (what is endgame)? Or should the difference for level 70 really less than 50k? Or is the difference for level 80 actually higher than 50k?
50k is the difference between the low and high. Let's say that the level 80 low stat is 16k, the high one would then be 66k. And yes I would assume that 70-80 is endgame considering we have a lot of level 70 content.
50k is the difference between the low and high. Let's say that the level 80 low stat is 16k, the high one would then be 66k. And yes I would assume that 70-80 is endgame considering we have a lot of level 70 content.
But its not going to be 50k for lower levels like 60, 50, 40 ...10 so I was confused why its the same value for 70 and 80. We saw a lot of scaling occurring up until now when level 80s went to level 70 zones, so it confused me that this was the same value being used for 70 and 80. Might be just too much math this week.
Also, I thought meaningful play style choices were key to this discussion. Things like X power vs. Y power with Z feat selected, not “clear content normally” vs. “take a really long time to kill stuff by building counterintuitively.”
Generally it wouldn’t matter to anyone else even if a player wanted to play a tank wizard in a solo loadout, but the game shouldn’t be balanced to cater to that extremely niche option.
It shouldn't make it impossible either. "Catering" to a "niche option" isn't the same thing as allowing it to be possible. Frankly, to me your comment sounds like, "I think that's just stupid so why should it let you do that?"
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arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
Being able to reduce 80% or more of incoming damage consistently off just defense, is way too much in my opinion. Especially now that one-shots are being phased out. Most soloable content does at most 200k damage in a hit (not including stuff that has yet to be balanced by the devs), and this is in master expeditions with runic stuff to strengthen the monsters. 80% DR would reduce that down to 40k, which is a whooping 13% of a modest HP pool of 300k. This is for BIG hits, that is easily canceled out by using a potion or just avoiding the attack all together. Even if it's group content and values are doubled, that is easily healed back by the cleric and doesn't removed much HP at all. In fact, this lends to groups not really needing to bring a healer along in the first place, which is what we are seeing already. The devs have to lower the DR cap to make content challenging and to make healers relevant in group content. Let's take the above example with a 50% DR cap, that 200k hit will instead be 100k before deflect, and is 1/3rd of that same HP pool. Still able to be potioned away, or dodged entirely, but makes the player think more about positioning and potion or stamina management. I know this may be only one hit in several, but with the current pace of combat and limiting your pulls, you shouldn't be taking too much damage where you are faced in a position where 80% DR is even needed. Mind you, this isn't even taking into consideration Deflect chances. I can understand wanting to be more defensive, especially if you don't have a healer, but getting upset because you can't have a broken amount of DR which would make all other content trivial is a bit ridiculous.
@arazith07 what makes you think 80% will be easy to get to consistently? Tanks might get it consistently, but I don’t expect to see it much anywhere else.
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0
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
@arazith07 what makes you think 80% will be easy to get to consistently? Tanks might get it consistently, but I don’t expect to see it much anywhere else.
I was talking about if the cap remained at 80% DR, and trying to reason with hustin1 who seems to be extremely upset by the change to 50% cap.
Also, I thought meaningful play style choices were key to this discussion. Things like X power vs. Y power with Z feat selected, not “clear content normally” vs. “take a really long time to kill stuff by building counterintuitively.”
Generally it wouldn’t matter to anyone else even if a player wanted to play a tank wizard in a solo loadout, but the game shouldn’t be balanced to cater to that extremely niche option.
It shouldn't make it impossible either. "Catering" to a "niche option" isn't the same thing as allowing it to be possible. Frankly, to me your comment sounds like, "I think that's just stupid so why should it let you do that?"
What use do tank roles have for actual tanking cooldowns and strategies when they can achieve maximum effectiveness through stat allocation alone? What use do they have for healers? This balance issue is about more than your unusually resilient non-tank characters.
Frankly, to me your argument sounds like, "I want the game to support how I choose to play in any way I choose regardless of how other parts of the game may be affected or regardless of whether or not it makes realistic sense within the game design."
I get that players don't like to be told what to do when it comes to their characters (this much, at least, isn't so different from tabletop D&D). But let's be a little bit forgiving of a few guard rails, especially if what's obviously intended to be a tank and healer role balance tweak may potentially impact an extremely small pool of non-tank characters who are not focused on their actual roles.
Also, I thought meaningful play style choices were key to this discussion. Things like X power vs. Y power with Z feat selected, not “clear content normally” vs. “take a really long time to kill stuff by building counterintuitively.”
Generally it wouldn’t matter to anyone else even if a player wanted to play a tank wizard in a solo loadout, but the game shouldn’t be balanced to cater to that extremely niche option.
It shouldn't make it impossible either. "Catering" to a "niche option" isn't the same thing as allowing it to be possible. Frankly, to me your comment sounds like, "I think that's just stupid so why should it let you do that?"
What use do tank roles have for actual tanking cooldowns and strategies when they can achieve maximum effectiveness through stat allocation alone? What use do they have for healers? This balance issue is about more than your unusually resilient non-tank characters.
Frankly, to me your argument sounds like, "I want the game to support how I choose to play in any way I choose regardless of how other parts of the game may be affected or regardless of whether or not it makes realistic sense within the game design."
I get that players don't like to be told what to do when it comes to their characters (this much, at least, isn't so different from tabletop D&D). But let's be a little bit forgiving of a few guard rails, especially if what's obviously intended to be a tank and healer role balance tweak may potentially impact an extremely small pool of non-tank characters who are not focused on their actual roles.
Im with vorphied. The last thing I want is we are back to the meta when tank and dc are not needed in the party. Although player are free to spec whatever they want and put in whatever stat they want, the end result of a tank wiz should not be more effective than a regular tank. It should help him to survive more in a battle but not enough for it to reprise the tank role. Since the dungeon has already define the role for tank, healer & dps, its best we respect that. Wouldn't wanna to see the 5man cw meta back again don't we?
Being able to reduce 80% or more of incoming damage consistently off just defense, is way too much in my opinion. Especially now that one-shots are being phased out. Most soloable content does at most 200k damage in a hit (not including stuff that has yet to be balanced by the devs), and this is in master expeditions with runic stuff to strengthen the monsters. 80% DR would reduce that down to 40k, which is a whooping 13% of a modest HP pool of 300k. This is for BIG hits, that is easily canceled out by using a potion or just avoiding the attack all together. Even if it's group content and values are doubled, that is easily healed back by the cleric and doesn't removed much HP at all. In fact, this lends to groups not really needing to bring a healer along in the first place, which is what we are seeing already. The devs have to lower the DR cap to make content challenging and to make healers relevant in group content. Let's take the above example with a 50% DR cap, that 200k hit will instead be 100k before deflect, and is 1/3rd of that same HP pool. Still able to be potioned away, or dodged entirely, but makes the player think more about positioning and potion or stamina management. I know this may be only one hit in several, but with the current pace of combat and limiting your pulls, you shouldn't be taking too much damage where you are faced in a position where 80% DR is even needed. Mind you, this isn't even taking into consideration Deflect chances. I can understand wanting to be more defensive, especially if you don't have a healer, but getting upset because you can't have a broken amount of DR which would make all other content trivial is a bit ridiculous.
Also, I thought meaningful play style choices were key to this discussion. Things like X power vs. Y power with Z feat selected, not “clear content normally” vs. “take a really long time to kill stuff by building counterintuitively.”
Generally it wouldn’t matter to anyone else even if a player wanted to play a tank wizard in a solo loadout, but the game shouldn’t be balanced to cater to that extremely niche option.
It shouldn't make it impossible either. "Catering" to a "niche option" isn't the same thing as allowing it to be possible. Frankly, to me your comment sounds like, "I think that's just stupid so why should it let you do that?"
What use do tank roles have for actual tanking cooldowns and strategies when they can achieve maximum effectiveness through stat allocation alone? What use do they have for healers? This balance issue is about more than your unusually resilient non-tank characters.
Frankly, to me your argument sounds like, "I want the game to support how I choose to play in any way I choose regardless of how other parts of the game may be affected or regardless of whether or not it makes realistic sense within the game design."
I get that players don't like to be told what to do when it comes to their characters (this much, at least, isn't so different from tabletop D&D). But let's be a little bit forgiving of a few guard rails, especially if what's obviously intended to be a tank and healer role balance tweak may potentially impact an extremely small pool of non-tank characters who are not focused on their actual roles.
Then the cap should be lowered IN GROUP CONTENT ONLY.
For the cheap seats: in group content only. I couldn't care less what the devs do with group content. I spend 1% of my time there. My problem is with the effects on SOLO content.
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2
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
Hustin1, 50% DR is more than enough. Unless you plan on being afk surrounded by enemies while soloing it is pretty hard to die. Try out the game with the changes now that they are in effect on preview...I've been trying to look for stuff that even puts a dent into my HP to warrant that much DR.
We shall see. This is what I'm going in with. I'll do some questing in Vanrakdoom and see what happens. I've run VR before on my SW and no joke I was ready to ragequit. We shall see what happens now. Thia is the tankiest character I have who is not an actual tank.
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0
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
Well in Vanrakdoom, before today Assassins and Vamps were doing more damage than intended, seems they did fix it though.
Just finished the expedition to VR. So far it looks like I should just send Knox in by himself, because he sure as hell doesn't need me. That is, unless the Commandment for Rangers is, "If Thou art a Ranger, Thou shalt play as a Glass Cannon. Thou shalt not waste any points on Defense."
If that's the case, then I'll be sitting the mod out. That said, I'll see what VR is like first.
Female character turning into a male cultist. Yeah, that makes sense...
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I haven’t looked much, but first impressions are not great.
With a reasonable selection of end game gear, I went from over capped on armor pen, to not even having enough to cap level 70 enemies while running 990 and 1k gear.
I still need to review gear, but it’s ridiculous that with reasonably balanced level 80 gear from end game I am not over cap for everything at level 70. I’m not talking about scaled stats, I’m talking about my resting stats with the same gear and pet that I had yesterday.
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Just finished the expedition to VR. So far it looks like I should just send Knox in by himself, because he sure as hell doesn't need me. That is, unless the Commandment for Rangers is, "If Thou art a Ranger, Thou shalt play as a Glass Cannon. Thou shalt not waste any points on Defense."
If that's the case, then I'll be sitting the mod out. That said, I'll see what VR is like first.
Female character turning into a male cultist. Yeah, that makes sense...
If you're basing your estimation of what will or won't work on your performance in the new areas, I really wouldn't just yet. There are far too many bugs that have been contributing to players taking more damage than necessary, not to mention that overall balance adjustments are ongoing.
There is no way that Cryptic is actually intending players to require anything close to capped defenses just to do open world, solo-friendly content. If content ends up overtuned at launch, they'll dial it back, but it's far too early to get very concerned.
I don't think any of us are actually trying to pile up on you and shame you for your gameplay choices; it just seems that you would have a far smoother and more enjoyable experience by playing to your characters' strengths (e.g. dealing damage) and making modest nods to defense for quality of life reasons rather than going in so hard on defensive stats and starving them in stats that help them do what they excel at. In that case you wouldn't care one bit if your DPS characters couldn't hit 80% damage reduction.
Well, I finished running Thia through Vanrakdoom including the dragon fight. The lowest she got HP-wise was 50% with her original level 70 gear except for the Prospector bracers replacing her Seer's bracers for a little extra armpen. I couldn't find any enemy ratings listed anywhere so I have no idea how much armpen I needed. Now, with all her runestones and enchants at R14, an R13 Lifedrinker and R13 Bloodtheft, she damned well shouldn't have had it any worse when you think about it. I didn't even bother raising her ability scores when she reached 80 partway through -- their effect is so minimal as to be laughable so I didn't waste the effort.
Now, for a little brutal honesty. The major reason why it went so smoothly was from Knox doing roughly 20x as much damage. The only role I really served was as bait (which I posted somewhere on another preview thread). Had Knox been, for example, stuck via pathing issues, every single fight would have taken an eternity. Picture a Greater Vampire with 200k HP or so (of which there are no shortage). Let's not even count the other critters in such an encounter: with at-wills doing in the 2k-3k range, imagine how long that fight would take. Now try to gauge how fun most people will find such a fight.
I'm going to be blunt. Anyone who thinks that acting as bait for a companion that does all the killing will even remotely be considered fun is grossly out of touch. Maybe a BiS PVP'er who spends 24/7 in the never-ending PVP arms race will like it. Maybe a number-crunching theorycrafter will like it. I gurantee you, 95% of the casual players in my alliance will not. It's tedious, plain and simple.
I don't expect this to get through to the devs. Truly, I don't. History has proven time and again that when they have set their course on a particular philosophy, nothing short of a cataclysmic result will get them to acknowledge a mistake. They are misreading their player base on this one -- I firmly believe it.
At any rate I've proven that my ranger who goes where angels fear to tread can handle it. She is built specifically for the sadism that was Mod 6: she is as close to "impossible to kill" as I know how to make her. You wouldn't believe how many purple Courage insignia she has on. I know for a fact that many of my other alts will not be, starting with my CW. The Commandment there appears to be, "Thou shalt not build Thyself around Crowd Control."
Will I run my HR through it when it goes live? I don't know. Honestly, I don't. If I do, I won't be in any hurry. I play games for fun, not tedium. Maybe I'll start writing fiction again. Chapter 20 has been mocking me for some time and maybe I'll devote some attention to it. I'm certainly not planning on running any of the other 15 characters through it. To me that's a no-brainer.
Post edited by hustin1 on
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Maybe a number-crunching theorycrafter will like it. I gurantee you, 95% of the casual players in my alliance will not. It's tedious, plain and simple.
Nah, I don't even think the theorycrafters like this change.
The stat change is not fun, it slows down the combat and makes the system even more confusing. It is a very odd way to make all stats "useful" and exasperates the "all or nothing" problem of Mod 16 even worse.
If I even want to deal normal damage roughly half the time, I need to have 57,000 ArmorPen.
Additionally, why should I care about CA Bonus if it's less than <47000? Or Crit Strike? Or Defense?
Yes, if I have 27000 vs 0 Accuracy, there <i class="Italic">is an effect of making enemies Deflect less. And yes, I know combined rating gives me a rough base of ~20,000+ on all stats to work with, so I only merely need to invest a mere 30,000+ extra to get an effect from those stats.
But if the stat values have not been properly updated for the new system, then why should I care about investing into stats that give me 0 effect until a certain large threshhold?
For a mod that wants players to not have to have spreadsheets to succeed, you really have to play the numbers game to even pretend like you aren't chipping enemies to death.
The At-will change was not very well executed. The enemy HP nerf and player multi-target At-will buff don't really compensate the damage loss from stat changes and encounter nerfs.
Under the old system, I think most players wanted most At-wills to have nearly double the damage (~40-60 magnitude on AoE At-wills, 100+ magnitude per hit on single target At-wills), rather than just deceiving people with a change in the proportion of where your damage comes from.
To be honest, I feel like the damage proportion between Encounters and At-wills got even worse: At-wills only seemed to be dealing 10-15% of my overall damage on average, while daily attacks, feats, and procs like Teneberous were dealing a far larger proportion of my overall damage due to poor base damage.
I also noticed that the (mostly) global "-30% encounter damage, -30% enemy health, +30% AoE At-will damage" change just feels awful. Instead of the old feeling of "really powerful when pressing encounters/daily attacks and meh without ", now everything (except for my companion and the occasional daily attack) just feels like I'm doing no damage.
I recall asterdahl said that the dev team doesn't want players to deal a ton of damage by merely holding down At-wills, which is why At-will base damage wasn't simply increased.
I would argue that having feats and passives that encourage you to mix your powers in various ways would ensure the best DPS wouldn't be "hold down leftmouse", though many builds seem to lack encouragement to mix things up.
I also noticed this seemed to be the source of the complaints of most players being reduced to holding down At-wills. This is because you don't really feel like you're fighting or having a strategy on how you use your powers due to very few feats and passives giving you an incentive to do much besides "fire off all encounters as fast as possible and then dodge/hold down At-wills while waiting".
One example of a setups that encourages you to do something besides hold down At-wills all day is the Combat Ranger, which encourages you to mix in your At-wills after firing off your encounters. However, I'd note it still feels pretty bad due to mediocre melee At-will base damage and the odd stat changes.
One example of a setups that encourages you to do something besides hold down At-wills all day is the Combat Ranger, which encourages you to mix in your At-wills after firing off your encounters. However, I'd note it still feels pretty bad due to mediocre melee At-will base damage and the odd stat changes.
Blade Hurricane also doesn't work with melee encounters as of today's patch.
After adjusting my gear so that I had over 60k ArP, Crit and Defense I ran around and did a 1 rune Expedition and worked my way to the first boss of LotMM.
Aside from the ridiculous Gelatinous Cubes in LotMM (hitting for 550k no defense effect) this went well.
It wasn't super fast, but it was doable and with a party I can see the extra value provided by the Tank and Heals in play through LotMM.
It will take some adjusting, but ultimately, despite my initial misgivings this adjustment seems to work towards achieving various design goals.
Now with 3 weeks left can we get some bugs squashed?
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
After adjusting my gear so that I had over 60k ArP, Crit and Defense I ran around and did a 1 rune Expedition and worked my way to the first boss of LotMM.
Aside from the ridiculous Gelatinous Cubes in LotMM (hitting for 550k no defense effect) this went well.
It wasn't super fast, but it was doable and with a party I can see the extra value provided by the Tank and Heals in play through LotMM.
It will take some adjusting, but ultimately, despite my initial misgivings this adjustment seems to work towards achieving various design goals.
Now with 3 weeks left can we get some bugs squashed?
I go to master expedition 57K armor penetration 100%
Then i go to barovia scalled to 70 and to deer hit on 77% effectivness with ARP 75K - with all to ARP for check.
80K Arp in chult dummy 100% effectivness, and 57K accurance no dodge dummy.
@ruslan1404#8974 that qualifies as a bug does it not? And it belongs in the Unexpected Difficulty thread created for such reports. *shrug*
If we are really going to show the first decimal place of stats (really we need the 10000th percentage on the screen?) can we just have all the stats go to .0 so that they are not all over the shop visually?
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
@ruslan1404#8974 that qualifies as a bug does it not? And it belongs in the Unexpected Difficulty thread created for such reports. *shrug*
If we are really going to show the first decimal place of stats (really we need the 10000th percentage on the screen?) can we just have all the stats go to .0 so that they are not all over the shop visually?
Its not bug may by it's new scalling, different places different numbers give different results.
Test in omu and barovia, if it bug that bug augment, 80K ArP and 57K accurance and 70K power only whith augment after scalling. sorry scrinshot in Russian language
1. A lot the companion equip bonuses are divided by 10 for no good reason. For example Erinyes of Belial instead of 4% Crit sev and 2k defense now gives .4% Crit Sev and 200 Def. I noticed at least 7 comps with similar problem;
2. A lot of monsters are way too fast especially when they activate a special power. For example White Dragons in ESoT while spinning gain speed that even The Flash will envy;
3. Scaling seems way off. I can understand that you want everything to be equally challenging and I applaud that but this can't be right. I optimized my stats for Lair of the mad Mage (all rank 15 enchants, the new gear, rank 15 rune stones, etc.). I then queued for ESoT and for every single offensive stat I was at least 3-4k below the opposing enemy rating. What's the point of upgrading stuff if you gonna do that to us? I mean I can understand lowering my power to half it's value or something but to do that and also get my arm pen to 40k when the enemy defense is 57k and do the same for every other offensive stat is not cool. At least tune every stat to match the opposing enemy stat. For example if I normally have 80k arm pen and the enemies in the dungeons I'm getting in are with 50k defense - lower my arm pen to 50k not 40k and do the same with all stats except power and HP which can be lowered more than the others if you still feel players are running the content to easily or fast. I sincerely hope this is a bug and not something you intend to put to live
4. A lot of the old bugs (already reported) still lingers
Feedback: Aside from the bugs, the changes are not as bad as I initially thought but they are still bad. I play-tested the latest changes only with my fighter and it felt a lot less stale and more fun in general. However I'm doing less overall dps while soloing and at-will magnitude increase is just unnoticeable. In addition to that encounter dmg decrease is very much noticeable which leaves only dailies with some actual damaging power and at-wills and encounters are just to tickle your enemy and to give you something to do while you wait for your daily. The good part about it is that at least I'm not hiding behind my shield for 30 sec just to push 3-4 buttons and go hide again. This change might actually be good if you guys tweak it a bit further and if players will be able to amass the ridiculous amount of arm pen you're enforcing on us
Comments
And here's why I say that:
My ~12,000, level 70 OP OP hybrid tank on live, coming into preview before these changes.
Versus a level 70 monster
On the defensive:
0% Combat Advantage Bonus for the monsters
0% Critical Strike for the monsters
32% Damage Ignored for me
12% Deflect for me
On the offensive:
49% Combat Advantage Bonus for me
38% Critical Strike for me
0% Damage Ignored for the monsters
0% Deflect for the monsters
After the changes, using the level 70 example provided by @noworries#8859
On the defensive:
47% Combat Advantage Bonus for the monsters
38% Critical Strike for the monsters
23% Damage Ignored for me
13% Deflect for me
On the offensive:
37% Combat Advantage Bonus for me
29% Critical Strike for me
36% Damage Ignored for the monsters
37% Deflect for the monsters
Looking only at my numbers prior to this change you could say I was over-powered, and leveling to 80 would be too easy. I agree, it wasn't much of an issue. I had one problem during my first expedition.
However, looking at my numbers after the changes. Not only will the monsters be able to kill me faster, but due to the decrease to encounter and daily magnitudes, it will take me longer to kill them (even with the reduction to their hit points.)
Again, I agree with these changes, except for the 50,000 stat boost. That number is too high for the average player to be up against.
> ...so which way is the right way to tilt the platform?
Somewhere in the middle
And yes, "lowmid range" describes my Paladin pretty well. I have more campaigns to complete than I have finished. However, finishing those campaigns now is relatively inconsequential. Yes, leveling to 80 was too easy, but these changes are overkill to all the content I "should be doing" to progress my character.
So is anything in the level 70-80 range endgame for this (what is endgame)? Or should the difference for level 70 really less than 50k? Or is the difference for level 80 actually higher than 50k?
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
The devs have to lower the DR cap to make content challenging and to make healers relevant in group content. Let's take the above example with a 50% DR cap, that 200k hit will instead be 100k before deflect, and is 1/3rd of that same HP pool. Still able to be potioned away, or dodged entirely, but makes the player think more about positioning and potion or stamina management. I know this may be only one hit in several, but with the current pace of combat and limiting your pulls, you shouldn't be taking too much damage where you are faced in a position where 80% DR is even needed.
Mind you, this isn't even taking into consideration Deflect chances. I can understand wanting to be more defensive, especially if you don't have a healer, but getting upset because you can't have a broken amount of DR which would make all other content trivial is a bit ridiculous.
Tanks might get it consistently, but I don’t expect to see it much anywhere else.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Frankly, to me your argument sounds like, "I want the game to support how I choose to play in any way I choose regardless of how other parts of the game may be affected or regardless of whether or not it makes realistic sense within the game design."
I get that players don't like to be told what to do when it comes to their characters (this much, at least, isn't so different from tabletop D&D). But let's be a little bit forgiving of a few guard rails, especially if what's obviously intended to be a tank and healer role balance tweak may potentially impact an extremely small pool of non-tank characters who are not focused on their actual roles.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
[Combat (Self)] Critical Hit! Your Indomitable Battle Strike deals 7137 (80304) Physical Damage to Tyrannosaur.
Does that mean that my armor penetration was very low compared to Tyrannosaurus' defense?
Another question is about the enchants, how exactly does mathematics work?
For the cheap seats: in group content only. I couldn't care less what the devs do with group content. I spend 1% of my time there. My problem is with the effects on SOLO content.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
If that's the case, then I'll be sitting the mod out. That said, I'll see what VR is like first.
Female character turning into a male cultist. Yeah, that makes sense...
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
With a reasonable selection of end game gear, I went from over capped on armor pen, to not even having enough to cap level 70 enemies while running 990 and 1k gear.
I still need to review gear, but it’s ridiculous that with reasonably balanced level 80 gear from end game I am not over cap for everything at level 70. I’m not talking about scaled stats, I’m talking about my resting stats with the same gear and pet that I had yesterday.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
There is no way that Cryptic is actually intending players to require anything close to capped defenses just to do open world, solo-friendly content. If content ends up overtuned at launch, they'll dial it back, but it's far too early to get very concerned.
I don't think any of us are actually trying to pile up on you and shame you for your gameplay choices; it just seems that you would have a far smoother and more enjoyable experience by playing to your characters' strengths (e.g. dealing damage) and making modest nods to defense for quality of life reasons rather than going in so hard on defensive stats and starving them in stats that help them do what they excel at. In that case you wouldn't care one bit if your DPS characters couldn't hit 80% damage reduction.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Now, for a little brutal honesty. The major reason why it went so smoothly was from Knox doing roughly 20x as much damage. The only role I really served was as bait (which I posted somewhere on another preview thread). Had Knox been, for example, stuck via pathing issues, every single fight would have taken an eternity. Picture a Greater Vampire with 200k HP or so (of which there are no shortage). Let's not even count the other critters in such an encounter: with at-wills doing in the 2k-3k range, imagine how long that fight would take. Now try to gauge how fun most people will find such a fight.
I'm going to be blunt. Anyone who thinks that acting as bait for a companion that does all the killing will even remotely be considered fun is grossly out of touch. Maybe a BiS PVP'er who spends 24/7 in the never-ending PVP arms race will like it. Maybe a number-crunching theorycrafter will like it. I gurantee you, 95% of the casual players in my alliance will not. It's tedious, plain and simple.
I don't expect this to get through to the devs. Truly, I don't. History has proven time and again that when they have set their course on a particular philosophy, nothing short of a cataclysmic result will get them to acknowledge a mistake. They are misreading their player base on this one -- I firmly believe it.
At any rate I've proven that my ranger who goes where angels fear to tread can handle it. She is built specifically for the sadism that was Mod 6: she is as close to "impossible to kill" as I know how to make her. You wouldn't believe how many purple Courage insignia she has on. I know for a fact that many of my other alts will not be, starting with my CW. The Commandment there appears to be, "Thou shalt not build Thyself around Crowd Control."
Will I run my HR through it when it goes live? I don't know. Honestly, I don't. If I do, I won't be in any hurry. I play games for fun, not tedium. Maybe I'll start writing fiction again. Chapter 20 has been mocking me for some time and maybe I'll devote some attention to it. I'm certainly not planning on running any of the other 15 characters through it. To me that's a no-brainer.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
The stat change is not fun, it slows down the combat and makes the system even more confusing. It is a very odd way to make all stats "useful" and exasperates the "all or nothing" problem of Mod 16 even worse.
If I even want to deal normal damage roughly half the time, I need to have 57,000 ArmorPen.
Additionally, why should I care about CA Bonus if it's less than <47000? Or Crit Strike? Or Defense?
Yes, if I have 27000 vs 0 Accuracy, there <i class="Italic">is an effect of making enemies Deflect less. And yes, I know combined rating gives me a rough base of ~20,000+ on all stats to work with, so I only merely need to invest a mere 30,000+ extra to get an effect from those stats.
But if the stat values have not been properly updated for the new system, then why should I care about investing into stats that give me 0 effect until a certain large threshhold?
For a mod that wants players to not have to have spreadsheets to succeed, you really have to play the numbers game to even pretend like you aren't chipping enemies to death.
The At-will change was not very well executed. The enemy HP nerf and player multi-target At-will buff don't really compensate the damage loss from stat changes and encounter nerfs.
Under the old system, I think most players wanted most At-wills to have nearly double the damage (~40-60 magnitude on AoE At-wills, 100+ magnitude per hit on single target At-wills), rather than just deceiving people with a change in the proportion of where your damage comes from.
To be honest, I feel like the damage proportion between Encounters and At-wills got even worse: At-wills only seemed to be dealing 10-15% of my overall damage on average, while daily attacks, feats, and procs like Teneberous were dealing a far larger proportion of my overall damage due to poor base damage.
I also noticed that the (mostly) global "-30% encounter damage, -30% enemy health, +30% AoE At-will damage" change just feels awful. Instead of the old feeling of "really powerful when pressing encounters/daily attacks and meh without ", now everything (except for my companion and the occasional daily attack) just feels like I'm doing no damage.
I recall asterdahl said that the dev team doesn't want players to deal a ton of damage by merely holding down At-wills, which is why At-will base damage wasn't simply increased.
I would argue that having feats and passives that encourage you to mix your powers in various ways would ensure the best DPS wouldn't be "hold down leftmouse", though many builds seem to lack encouragement to mix things up.
I also noticed this seemed to be the source of the complaints of most players being reduced to holding down At-wills. This is because you don't really feel like you're fighting or having a strategy on how you use your powers due to very few feats and passives giving you an incentive to do much besides "fire off all encounters as fast as possible and then dodge/hold down At-wills while waiting".
One example of a setups that encourages you to do something besides hold down At-wills all day is the Combat Ranger, which encourages you to mix in your At-wills after firing off your encounters. However, I'd note it still feels pretty bad due to mediocre melee At-will base damage and the odd stat changes.
Aside from the ridiculous Gelatinous Cubes in LotMM (hitting for 550k no defense effect) this went well.
It wasn't super fast, but it was doable and with a party I can see the extra value provided by the Tank and Heals in play through LotMM.
It will take some adjusting, but ultimately, despite my initial misgivings this adjustment seems to work towards achieving various design goals.
Now with 3 weeks left can we get some bugs squashed?
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Then i go to barovia scalled to 70 and to deer hit on 77% effectivness with ARP 75K - with all to ARP for check.
80K Arp in chult dummy 100% effectivness, and 57K accurance no dodge dummy.
And it belongs in the Unexpected Difficulty thread created for such reports. *shrug*
If we are really going to show the first decimal place of stats (really we need the 10000th percentage on the screen?) can we just have all the stats go to .0 so that they are not all over the shop visually?
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Test in omu and barovia, if it bug that bug augment, 80K ArP and 57K accurance and 70K power only whith augment after scalling.
sorry scrinshot in Russian language
or we have different versions? us NW.20190325a1
1. A lot the companion equip bonuses are divided by 10 for no good reason. For example Erinyes of Belial instead of 4% Crit sev and 2k defense now gives .4% Crit Sev and 200 Def. I noticed at least 7 comps with similar problem;
2. A lot of monsters are way too fast especially when they activate a special power. For example White Dragons in ESoT while spinning gain speed that even The Flash will envy;
3. Scaling seems way off. I can understand that you want everything to be equally challenging and I applaud that but this can't be right. I optimized my stats for Lair of the mad Mage (all rank 15 enchants, the new gear, rank 15 rune stones, etc.). I then queued for ESoT and for every single offensive stat I was at least 3-4k below the opposing enemy rating. What's the point of upgrading stuff if you gonna do that to us? I mean I can understand lowering my power to half it's value or something but to do that and also get my arm pen to 40k when the enemy defense is 57k and do the same for every other offensive stat is not cool. At least tune every stat to match the opposing enemy stat. For example if I normally have 80k arm pen and the enemies in the dungeons I'm getting in are with 50k defense - lower my arm pen to 50k not 40k and do the same with all stats except power and HP which can be lowered more than the others if you still feel players are running the content to easily or fast. I sincerely hope this is a bug and not something you intend to put to live
4. A lot of the old bugs (already reported) still lingers
Feedback: Aside from the bugs, the changes are not as bad as I initially thought but they are still bad. I play-tested the latest changes only with my fighter and it felt a lot less stale and more fun in general. However I'm doing less overall dps while soloing and at-will magnitude increase is just unnoticeable. In addition to that encounter dmg decrease is very much noticeable which leaves only dailies with some actual damaging power and at-wills and encounters are just to tickle your enemy and to give you something to do while you wait for your daily. The good part about it is that at least I'm not hiding behind my shield for 30 sec just to push 3-4 buttons and go hide again. This change might actually be good if you guys tweak it a bit further and if players will be able to amass the ridiculous amount of arm pen you're enforcing on us