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Ratings, Difficulty, and Challenge

As M18 preview is approaching, we wanted to take a moment to clarify the differences between ratings and the challenge level of content.

While ratings are a good indication of general difficulty, they do not speak to the challenge level of content. The big example of this would be Tower of the Mad Mage. The rating caps on ToMM are not particularly hard to hit for a player who has 24k item level. Despite this, it is particularly challenging content and this is due to the mechanics and damage used by Halaster.

The new dungeon in M18 is currently 23k IL to enter (although this could change as we go through open beta). Despite this, the critters have higher ratings than ToMM. If someone were to use ratings as the only factor in how difficult they expected content to be, then they would expect the M18 dungeon to be even more difficult than ToMM. And that's why we wanted to make this post prior to preview. The M18 dungeon is easier than ToMM and is more accessible to the general player base. In fact, the M18 zone and the M18 dungeon have the same ratings, yet the zone is certainly easier than the dungeon.

So why do we have a piece of content with a higher item level entry requirement, but lower critter ratings? That is due to two reasons. First is that ToMM was an experiment to see how players would interact with extra challenging content. This content didn't fit neatly into our current progression and because of that it ends up being a bit of an outlier. Suggestions have come up to have a special display/label for challenge content like that and we will likely explore those options in the future.

The second reason is that when M16 came around, we set critter ratings down lower than the ideal amounts to ease the transition over as it would take a while for players to gain a good understanding of ratings and how to gear their character as best they can. As a result of that we are bumping up critter ratings more in new modules than we would just from player progression alone as we gradually close that gap to where the ratings ideally should be.


We encourage everyone who has the time to do so to try out the new content when it arrives on preview and share their feedback.
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Comments

  • mamalion1234mamalion1234 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,415 Arc User

    As M18 preview is approaching, we wanted to take a moment to clarify the differences between ratings and the challenge level of content.

    While ratings are a good indication of general difficulty, they do not speak to the challenge level of content. The big example of this would be Tower of the Mad Mage. The rating caps on ToMM are not particularly hard to hit for a player who has 24k item level. Despite this, it is particularly challenging content and this is due to the mechanics and damage used by Halaster.

    The new dungeon in M18 is currently 23k IL to enter (although this could change as we go through open beta). Despite this, the critters have higher ratings than ToMM. If someone were to use ratings as the only factor in how difficult they expected content to be, then they would expect the M18 dungeon to be even more difficult than ToMM. And that's why we wanted to make this post prior to preview. The M18 dungeon is easier than ToMM and is more accessible to the general player base. In fact, the M18 zone and the M18 dungeon have the same ratings, yet the zone is certainly easier than the dungeon.

    So why do we have a piece of content with a higher item level entry requirement, but lower critter ratings? That is due to two reasons. First is that ToMM was an experiment to see how players would interact with extra challenging content. This content didn't fit neatly into our current progression and because of that it ends up being a bit of an outlier. Suggestions have come up to have a special display/label for challenge content like that and we will likely explore those options in the future.

    The second reason is that when M16 came around, we set critter ratings down lower than the ideal amounts to ease the transition over as it would take a while for players to gain a good understanding of ratings and how to gear their character as best they can. As a result of that we are bumping up critter ratings more in new modules than we would just from player progression alone as we gradually close that gap to where the ratings ideally should be.


    We encourage everyone who has the time to do so to try out the new content when it arrives on preview and share their feedback.

    what are the m18 critters ratings?
  • darthpotaterdarthpotater Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,259 Arc User
    This makes sense, as I was so surprised in M16 that you could cap all offensive and defensive ratings in every class with no effort. You could tell this at M16 release so people could knew that was intended.

    Lets see how it goes.
    Lescar PvE Wizard - Sir Garlic PvE Paladin
    Caturday Survivor
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  • zimxero#8085 zimxero Member Posts: 876 Arc User
    edited December 2019

    On the one hand, I can see the merits in further moving away from the power-stacking meta that was encouraged by the low caps for LOMM. There is a wide range of gear that simply sees no use in the present game, despite that the game routinely bombards us with such items and presents them as end-game rewards.

    I very much hope, however, that there is an attempt to redress the design issue that already feels present with TOMM: a set of gear assembled to complete higher-cap content will perform notably worse in lower-cap content, due to the discrepancy between the Power stat (always beneficial) and the suite of offensive and defensive stats (zero benefit beyond cap.) Thus, if a player does not actively downgrade her gear every time she runs older content, so as to stack Power once again, the end result is that her character feels weaker in content she once mastered on her way to the endgame. (And on top of this, add scaling.)

    Of course one set of equipment shouldn't be adequate for all content, and choices and sacrifices are welcome. But for me it's also vital that my character, after succeeding at some new and novel challenge, is able to translate that growth to some older, familiar adventure. I'd hate to eventually find myself with a specific loadout for every mod's dungeon, each one being a "downgrade" to the caps before.

    One way to do this could be allowing stats to excced the 50,000 (50%) barrier:

    Every 2,000 Combat Advantage gives 1% extra CA bonus after 50,000 (new cap at 150%)
    Every 3,000 Deflect gives 1% extra deflect chance after 50,000 (new cap at 75%)
    Every 4,000 Crit gives 1% extra critical chance after 50,000 (new cap at 75%)
    Every 5,000 Defense gives 1% extra defense after 50,000 (new cap at 75%)

    the above suggestion reduces combat advantage gain after 50%.. but expands its limit. Double damage from CA is a little too easy to get right now. This 'expansion' allows characters to specialize where they want... if willing to sacrifice other stats. Power stacking is not eliminated... but is joined by competing options. An advantage of such a system is that effects will always add to stats, not just a few that were programmed to bypass the 50% limit.
  • admiralwarlord#3792 admiralwarlord Member Posts: 611 Arc User
    This will probably be a module I call repair. After a module with difficult content, then comes another that despite demanding more status, delivers new equipment that allows new players or those who could not finish the final content, have more chances to finish the content that they lack. For example, when the Barovia campaign was launched, new equipment with more status came to compensate for the 80% to 85% increase in armor penetration required, and made life much easier for non-CoDG players, as many died of hit kills from AoE, or at least reduced the time to kill Boss which would imply many Push - Pulls in a single run.

    As someone mentioned above, ToMM is not difficult, although it requires more concentration because it has very fast mechanics. Maybe there would be more players finalizing this content if the classes had really been balanced, something I have no hope of ever really going to do.
  • fsf4livefsf4live Member Posts: 29 Arc User
    Sobi, you are right. Class balance is a huge issue in that game. Tanks are balanced I think. But DPS and Healers? Palaheal is most requestet and can heal ToMM as a single healer. For DPS the CW (and maybe TR) is the only class needed. That is frustrating, because with the 'false' class not a single random group want you and it would be hard/impossible to beat halaster...
  • rikitakirikitaki Member Posts: 926 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    Raising a cap can bring another interesting problem - specifically for paladins.
    You see, atm you can more or less use one setup for all purposes - tank, heal, dps for daily stuff. If the caps rise, you would not only notably split requirements for tank and heal (which is desirable in my opinion), but might force out one bonus build for daily stuff - which would be unique amongst all the classes.
  • milehighxr#1299 milehighxr Member Posts: 461 Arc User

    As M18 preview is approaching, we wanted to take a moment to clarify the differences between ratings and the challenge level of content.

    While ratings are a good indication of general difficulty, they do not speak to the challenge level of content. The big example of this would be Tower of the Mad Mage. The rating caps on ToMM are not particularly hard to hit for a player who has 24k item level. Despite this, it is particularly challenging content and this is due to the mechanics and damage used by Halaster.

    The new dungeon in M18 is currently 23k IL to enter (although this could change as we go through open beta). Despite this, the critters have higher ratings than ToMM. If someone were to use ratings as the only factor in how difficult they expected content to be, then they would expect the M18 dungeon to be even more difficult than ToMM. And that's why we wanted to make this post prior to preview. The M18 dungeon is easier than ToMM and is more accessible to the general player base. In fact, the M18 zone and the M18 dungeon have the same ratings, yet the zone is certainly easier than the dungeon.

    So why do we have a piece of content with a higher item level entry requirement, but lower critter ratings? That is due to two reasons. First is that ToMM was an experiment to see how players would interact with extra challenging content. This content didn't fit neatly into our current progression and because of that it ends up being a bit of an outlier. Suggestions have come up to have a special display/label for challenge content like that and we will likely explore those options in the future.

    The second reason is that when M16 came around, we set critter ratings down lower than the ideal amounts to ease the transition over as it would take a while for players to gain a good understanding of ratings and how to gear their character as best they can. As a result of that we are bumping up critter ratings more in new modules than we would just from player progression alone as we gradually close that gap to where the ratings ideally should be.


    We encourage everyone who has the time to do so to try out the new content when it arrives on preview and share their feedback.

    tomm isnt hard.

    I beg to differ. On xbox at least, it is nearly impossible to get a group in the first place, let alone one that stays together after the first respawn. Once a group is found, the mechanics require so much communication, that it is almost undoable, unless you buy the ToMM gear that those fortunate enough to have completed it are selling. Add to that the "snobs" that are spamming for BiS toons only, or 800k HP tanks only, and this trial becomes "pay to play". After having spent a few hundred dollars on the game on xbox in the last 2.5yrs this is unacceptable.
  • milehighxr#1299 milehighxr Member Posts: 461 Arc User

    This makes sense, as I was so surprised in M16 that you could cap all offensive and defensive ratings in every class with no effort. You could tell this at M16 release so people could knew that was intended.

    Lets see how it goes.

    I'd like to know how this is done without spending $500.00 in one shot. I have 4 toons on xbox, and only one has the important stats for ToMM capped. Even that took 6 legendary comps, almost all r13-14 enchants, r14 bondings, r10-11 runestones, and the IL1010 comp gear. All my alts have have IL 1010, or 990 comp gear and are no where near ready for LoMM IMHO, let alone ToMM. How will these guys fare in M18???
  • milehighxr#1299 milehighxr Member Posts: 461 Arc User

    On the one hand, I can see the merits in further moving away from the power-stacking meta that was encouraged by the low caps for LOMM. There is a wide range of gear that simply sees no use in the present game, despite that the game routinely bombards us with such items and presents them as end-game rewards.

    I very much hope, however, that there is an attempt to redress the design issue that already feels present with TOMM: a set of gear assembled to complete higher-cap content will perform notably worse in lower-cap content, due to the discrepancy between the Power stat (always beneficial) and the suite of offensive and defensive stats (zero benefit beyond cap.) Thus, if a player does not actively downgrade her gear every time she runs older content, so as to stack Power once again, the end result is that her character feels weaker in content she once mastered on her way to the endgame. (And on top of this, add scaling.)

    Of course one set of equipment shouldn't be adequate for all content, and choices and sacrifices are welcome. But for me it's also vital that my character, after succeeding at some new and novel challenge, is able to translate that growth to some older, familiar adventure. I'd hate to eventually find myself with a specific loadout for every mod's dungeon, each one being a "downgrade" to the caps before.

    Easiest fix is to REMOVE SCALING.
  • milehighxr#1299 milehighxr Member Posts: 461 Arc User
    fsf4live said:

    Sobi, you are right. Class balance is a huge issue in that game. Tanks are balanced I think. But DPS and Healers? Palaheal is most requestet and can heal ToMM as a single healer. For DPS the CW (and maybe TR) is the only class needed. That is frustrating, because with the 'false' class not a single random group want you and it would be hard/impossible to beat halaster...

    Tanks are not balanced IMHO. My tankadin on xbox at 25k IL is always losing aggro to any DPS class that has at least 30k more power than he does. It doesn't matter the content, LoMM, ToMM, old content.
  • jules#6770 jules Member Posts: 709 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    I


    The new dungeon in M18 is currently 23k IL to enter (although this could change as we go through open beta). Despite this, the critters have higher ratings than ToMM. (...)
    The M18 dungeon is easier than ToMM and is more accessible to the general player base. In fact, the M18 zone and the M18 dungeon have the same ratings, yet the zone is certainly easier than the dungeon.

    All this is saying is that you are dimnishing the choices players have with gear by relying less on mechanics to make the difficulty of your new content and relying more on higher ratings.
    Imo that means content accessable to players with M16+ gear.
    Hooray to ppl continuing only to play M16+, no reason to do anything at all, if Tomm remains the hardest (so newer ppl will pay and try and skip, or just skip) but the newer content has higher ratings (no brain needed to detect the best suited options when you will just use the new stuff).
    I could meet the stats for Tomm, with orcus and dmg gear and whatnot, but the trend is there and people are already losing all the little interest they still had in playing content like Chult/Omu/Barovia at all...

    Not that this is news exactly, but you will see how happy you will be with a playerbase like this.

    A second thought about sharing feedback/interaction/communication:
    Were there any changes to gathering feedback/communicate with preview testers/working with opinions/sharing of priorities? Are you all considering this as just another preview test similar to M16 in levels of interaction with the community?


    - bye bye -
  • devilxjkdevilxjk Member Posts: 97 Arc User
    ok so, critter will be stronger, and i suppouse that kill them will be easy for someone, but hardest for others, what about balance classes?
  • darthpotaterdarthpotater Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,259 Arc User

    This makes sense, as I was so surprised in M16 that you could cap all offensive and defensive ratings in every class with no effort. You could tell this at M16 release so people could knew that was intended.

    Lets see how it goes.

    I'd like to know how this is done without spending $500.00 in one shot. I have 4 toons on xbox, and only one has the important stats for ToMM capped. Even that took 6 legendary comps, almost all r13-14 enchants, r14 bondings, r10-11 runestones, and the IL1010 comp gear. All my alts have have IL 1010, or 990 comp gear and are no where near ready for LoMM IMHO, let alone ToMM. How will these guys fare in M18???
    If you read my post I was talking about mod 16, not mod 17 so the caps were 66K not 80K. And I was capped in every stat including defensive ones just putting the new companion gear
    Lescar PvE Wizard - Sir Garlic PvE Paladin
    Caturday Survivor
    Elemental Evil Survivor
    Undermontain Survivor
    Mod20 Combat rework Survivor
    Mod22 Refinement rework Survivor
  • kin2leonidaskin2leonidas Member Posts: 3 Arc User
    Even if the > @"noworries#8859" said:
    > Scaling
    >
    > Always a popular topic so let's give a very brief history to this point and talk about the work going on for M19 and beyond.
    >
    > I joined the Neverwinter team as Cloaked Ascendancy shipped. At that time there wasn't any useful scaling, although the game did attempt to level scale players in certain situations. As I'm sure many people remember during that time, if a player was level scaled up, they just got crushed (Ghost Stories). If a player was level scaled down, they didn't really notice it and just one shot everything.
    >
    > We wanted much better scaling than that in the game. Unfortunately, there was not any real base structure for this to be built on. We did some initial backend work that I think was first included in the m14 build (didn't go back to verify while writing this post). With M15 we used this as part of the Acq Inc structure for running the dungeons at minimum item level. While this was the first time there was any noticeable effect from scaling, it was still far from ideal and still not very effective. The main aspect at this point was that we could now scale enchantments, although the way that worked is it would actually make the enchantments a lower or higher rank to change the effects.
    >
    > With M16 we were now tackling a lot of core and backend structure of the game to allow the game to grow in a lot more ways. This isn't directly evident with what players saw as so much of the work was structural and organizational to allow faster and better work in the future. One of those tasks was to create a much bigger backend for scaling. The result still wan't ideal scaling either for us or for players, but it was a lot closer. Scaling now had a tangible effect, even if it wasn't as accurate as it could be and scaling up is still problematic in some ways. The main method scaling now takes is adjusting the item level of the different parts of the character, as all of the stats are based off of that item level (a change that we made in M16).
    >
    > With M19 we plan to take the next pass on scaling. It is too early to guarantee how it will turn out/function/etc., but we can discuss the basic goals. Now that the backend exists, we can refine it and improve it. This is going to have a major change that most players will like which is that players stats will scale relative to the content's stats. In other words, the goal of this scaling is that if the player is capped on ratings at their unscaled item level, whatever content they're scaled down or up to, they remain capped on those ratings because they are scaled proportionally to the content. That will solve the major issues of having to worry about changing gear as you are scaled due to scaling tackling each equipment piece individually resulting in some over/under scaling on certain parts of the player that we have now. There are other benefits coming with this next step of scaling that include even easier adjustments on content difficulty allowing us to tune faster and better.

    You keep mentioning mod 19 do you mean 18?
  • gweddrygweddry Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 278 Arc User

    snip

    The only way those numbers are even remotely close to being true is perhaps if you include (catastrophically) failed runs. There is sure going to be a lot of those so they will have a huge impact. Training runs with one or two strong dps players the same. Also because most of those dps specs aren't accepted for runs, I doubt some of the numbers (dps GF is probably the best example) have any significance.
  • darthpotaterdarthpotater Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,259 Arc User
    edited December 2019

    In other words, the goal of this scaling is that if the player is capped on ratings at their unscaled item level, whatever content they're scaled down or up to, they remain capped on those ratings because they are scaled proportionally to the content. That will solve the major issues of having to worry about changing gear as you are scaled due to scaling tackling each equipment piece individually resulting in some over/under scaling on certain parts of the player that we have now.

    Thank you for the clarifications and insights, but sorry, scalling should not go live without this objetive implemented. You could avoid lots of player frustration just ensuring that if a player had stats capped for max level, it was capped in every scaled content.

    That said, Im much more positive now just seing what kind of things you are implementing to reach goals, and that tells a lot about the future of the game.

    Also (I have to tell this), bug fixing is still a pain, and is unnaceptable that bugs supposed to be fixed (in patch notes) are still there. We understand that bug fixing is sometimes hard, but if you tell that something is fixed, it should be fixed. No excuse.
    Lescar PvE Wizard - Sir Garlic PvE Paladin
    Caturday Survivor
    Elemental Evil Survivor
    Undermontain Survivor
    Mod20 Combat rework Survivor
    Mod22 Refinement rework Survivor
  • mathnotevenonce#2925 mathnotevenonce Member Posts: 34 Arc User
    edited December 2019

    As M18 preview is approaching, we wanted to take a moment to clarify the differences between ratings and the challenge level of content.

    While ratings are a good indication of general difficulty, they do not speak to the challenge level of content. The big example of this would be Tower of the Mad Mage. The rating caps on ToMM are not particularly hard to hit for a player who has 24k item level. Despite this, it is particularly challenging content and this is due to the mechanics and damage used by Halaster.

    The new dungeon in M18 is currently 23k IL to enter (although this could change as we go through open beta). Despite this, the critters have higher ratings than ToMM. If someone were to use ratings as the only factor in how difficult they expected content to be, then they would expect the M18 dungeon to be even more difficult than ToMM. And that's why we wanted to make this post prior to preview. The M18 dungeon is easier than ToMM and is more accessible to the general player base. In fact, the M18 zone and the M18 dungeon have the same ratings, yet the zone is certainly easier than the dungeon.

    So why do we have a piece of content with a higher item level entry requirement, but lower critter ratings? That is due to two reasons. First is that ToMM was an experiment to see how players would interact with extra challenging content. This content didn't fit neatly into our current progression and because of that it ends up being a bit of an outlier. Suggestions have come up to have a special display/label for challenge content like that and we will likely explore those options in the future.

    The second reason is that when M16 came around, we set critter ratings down lower than the ideal amounts to ease the transition over as it would take a while for players to gain a good understanding of ratings and how to gear their character as best they can. As a result of that we are bumping up critter ratings more in new modules than we would just from player progression alone as we gradually close that gap to where the ratings ideally should be.


    We encourage everyone who has the time to do so to try out the new content when it arrives on preview and share their feedback.

    tomm isnt hard.

    I beg to differ. On xbox at least, it is nearly impossible to get a group in the first place, let alone one that stays together after the first respawn. Once a group is found, the mechanics require so much communication, that it is almost undoable, unless you buy the ToMM gear that those fortunate enough to have completed it are selling. Add to that the "snobs" that are spamming for BiS toons only, or 800k HP tanks only, and this trial becomes "pay to play". After having spent a few hundred dollars on the game on xbox in the last 2.5yrs this is unacceptable.

    I'm on xbox as well. I main a barbarian, it got too costly (time and/or money wise) to keep the rest updated. I have yet to even get into a run because I'm a barbarian. Very few callouts (near 0 for practice runs). Every exp xbox callout is pretty much 3 cws/trs+. I'm really salty Cryptic added a no-death achievement for this too. It's practically impossible for me. Thanks Cryptic. Really glad you made a dungeon where classes are explicitly left out.

    Not only that, but only one tracked achievement hunter unlocked a flawless run. This is such a poor choice.
    https://www.trueachievements.com/a284635/master-of-undermountain-achievement
  • hugienwnhugienwn Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 54 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    Ditto to gweddry's comment above. I have a very hard time believing that those numbers are accurate for successful ToMM runs; it must be all attempts.

    Class -> Damage performance in ToMM +/- %
    Arcanist +3%
    Blademaster +1.8%
    Warden +1.5%
    Assassin --
    Hellbringer -1.6%
    Dreadnaught -3%
    Arbiter -6%

    I currently have ~50 clears of ToMM (all on my main, an Arcanist), and feel comfortable saying that ALL of them have included at least 3 Arcanists in total -- usually 4-5. Assassins and Wardens comprise the remainder of the DPS in the successful runs I've participated in. In my experience, if there is a Blademaster, Hellbringer, Dreadnaught, or Arbiter clearing, they are almost always (with a few exceptional exceptions) being carried, no more than 1 at a time.

    I hope that going forward, the "challenge"-labeled content will feature more than just a 15-min single-target parsefest as far as combat goes -- some waves of adds would definitely spice things up, and would help other DPS classes earn a seat at the table. In the absence of that, I hope that all the roles below Assassin (and Blademasters) see some single-target love, because it is really demoralizing for players who used to main those DPS roles to be forced to adapt to support paragons or to beg for ToMM carries.

    On the bright side, it is nice to regularly see all three tank paragons able to effectively clear ToMM, and to see all three healer paragons clearing as well -- though it does seem that OP shields are almost a must-have, which doesn't seem right.

    And, lest I sound overly negative or critical, I love the overall level of challenge for ToMM & feel that it's just what the game needed. I just wish that changes to the DPS class balancing were made on a faster cadence than once ever mod or two, so that many more well-geared, mechanics-savvy players who happened to pick the wrong class could join in.
  • sobi#1980 sobi Member Posts: 401 Arc User
    edited December 2019

    While I am always hesitant to go off topic in a thread as it makes the information about the initial topic hard to find. In this case, at least so far, there doesn't seem to be any confusion about the information in the initial post, so I will briefly tackle the 2 main things being brought up here, but there likely won't be a lot of back and forth on those topics in this particular thread.


    Class Balance

    We agree that there is an imbalance in the DPS roles. In M19 the two main classes being adjusted for balance are the Dreadnought and the Hellbringer. When M18 comes to preview we will have information on a few adjustments to Arcanist feats/class mechanics to bring them more in line with the balance target (I realize saying this will make people think the worst, but Arcanist will still be powerful after those adjustments and the changes will be available as preview goes live for feedback).

    All of that is important context for the following part of that discussion. First is that there will never be perfect balance across the classes, and there will always be some classes that are harder to play and therefore under-perform for a more casual player, but can potentially even over-perform for a particularly skilled player. We have created a lot of analytics on class balance since M16. These include normalized damage charts, whisker plots, and percentile graphs, which we can filter by time ranges, classes, and specific content. We are actively using this information for how to tackle class balance.

    As a general point, Assassin in most charts is right around where we feel ideal balance should be right now. Since ToMM was brought up, let's take a look at the PC results from 1 Nov to this morning, and use Assassin as a baseline for where the other classes are at when running that content. I think players may be surprised at where some of the classes line up in this comparison.

    Class -> Damage performance in ToMM +/- %

    • Arcanist +3%
    • Blademaster +1.8%
    • Warden +1.5%
    • Assassin --
    • Hellbringer -1.6%
    • Dreadnaught -3%
    • Arbiter -6%

    It is clear there are outliers in Arcanist, Dreadnaught, and Arbiter. The others, however, are all very close together and in general would be considered all within an acceptable range of balance. In charts that include a wider range of content (or all content) there are larger percentage differences which shows there are more areas of balance to tackle than this one chart shows. ToMM is a useful example to see how the classes compare when played by top tier IL players, and hopefully also shows that ToMM is complete-able (and has been completed) by all classes in the game.

    Changes from this chart compared to more broad charts show a larger positive differential for Arcanist and Warden, brings Blademaster below Assassin with Hellbringer right behind that and brings Arbiter above Dreadnought. You see a wider variance when including a larger selection of content as it adds a far greater percentage of the player base into the damage pool.

    There were some paragon paths not listed there, such as Whisperknife, Hunter, and Thaumaturge. Whisperknife and Hunter are not performing where we'd like, and are paths we want to work on, however since those classes have very solid paths as their other choices, that puts the priority a bit further down the list on class work.
    Thank you for your reply, the most frustrating part of this was the silence on this matter. But i am rather skeptical about whether you compared lets say the highest encpds of each class to the highest ecdps of assassin? Think about it, the amount of skill ceiling players are obviously smaller than bad-average players, therefore the bigger the sample, the more the results will skew to being more average. If a player is able to dish out a classes maximum potential, then that maximum potential should be set out as the classes true damage because encdps doesn't lie, because that takes the damage and the time into account.

    Though i am not shocked by your findings because we have a barb that literally out dps's everyone other than skill ceiling wiz/ranger. You will be shocked to see some of the wiz's pulling some crazy encpds, i don't think that would be anywhere in the range of 3% of a skill ceiling rogues damage.

    The other thing i can advice is that currently gear does not support arbiter, all your gear requires is AP gain and procs/stacks and arbiter is the slowest in them and doesn't really benefit from its dailies when it has no cooldown on its encounters. If you bring more diverse gear i.e. that can give us divinity or etc, you'll see some changes in their performance automatically.
  • rafaeldarafaelda Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 666 Arc User

    Scaling

    With M19 we plan to take the next pass on scaling.... In other words, the goal of this scaling is that if the player is capped on ratings at their unscaled item level, whatever content they're scaled down or up to, they remain capped on those ratings because they are scaled proportionally to the content. That will solve the major issues of having to worry about changing gear as you are scaled due to scaling tackling each equipment piece individually resulting in some over/under scaling on certain parts of the player that we have now. There are other benefits coming with this next step of scaling that include even easier adjustments on content difficulty allowing us to tune faster and better.

    I said that a lot of times since the first time i've seen the scaling system and have seen soo many saying this, i really happy to read this a target now, tks a lot ! i Hope we can get there ...
  • noworries#8859 noworries Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 651 Cryptic Developer
    gweddry said:


    The only way those numbers are even remotely close to being true is perhaps if you include (catastrophically) failed runs. There is sure going to be a lot of those so they will have a huge impact. Training runs with one or two strong dps players the same. Also because most of those dps specs aren't accepted for runs, I doubt some of the numbers (dps GF is probably the best example) have any significance.

    The numbers were for ToMM runs over the period specified and it is accurate data that has been normalized for better comparison. We also have the whisker plots to see the full range of every player over the time period and where they fall.

    The point of showing the ToMM data is not to suggest that in all aspects of the game the classes are that close together. It was intended to show that 1) when top item levels and top skill levels combine, the classes potentials are a lot closer than players would typically expect and 2) ToMM is not exclusive to any sub group of classes, although it is certainly easier for some classes than others.

    We don't use that particular data set for where our major class balance efforts are targetted, we focus more on the top 10% game wide, which does show bigger percentage differences between the paragon paths, and does drop Dreadnought down quite a bit more as I had mentioned in that previous post.
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