Official - Combat Changes - PvP

noworries · December 2020

This is a thread for feedback/bugs with PvP in regards to the combat changes.

PvP has not had internal testing with the changes yet but will before it goes live. Any feedback on the current state of the changes is welcome.

fuxion · December 2020

Jared , Are you guys planning on doing some pvp testing with new changes ?

im also trying to get some players to assist with testing on preview

fuxion · December 2020

fuxion · December 2020

noworries#8859 said:
This is a thread for feedback/bugs with PvP in regards to the combat changes.

PvP has not had internal testing with the changes yet but will before it goes live. Any feedback on the current state of the changes is welcome.

Also - On preview in pvp map it shows companion bonusses on characters - pets/companions should not ever be part of pvp please !!! this is general consensus of the core pvp community ...pets just allow risk for bugs etc which is the biggest issue in pvp ..

Please remove any companion bonusses from PVP

Item lvl calculations for match making should exclude any ratings tht companions give please (just no pet anything in pvp)

trgluestickz · December 2020

I haven't had as much time as I'd like yet to do in depth fully-maxed-under-mod-20-system testing and will be posting more in this thread over time when I learn more. To get the ball rolling, here is what is currently apparent:

Players Are Too Tanky On Preview:

Players as things currently stand on preview are really really tanky. Obviously PVP won't be fun if nobody dies and the skill ceiling drops too much. I also don't want to see tankyness in PVP return to like it was in mod 16 or during some of the eras with tenacity stat combined with weapon dps being too low. What I'm currently seeing on preview implies mod 20 PVP would be even worse than those uber tanky eras.

The values players can reach for defensive stats and percentages in PVP need to be looked at, and so does player incentive to stack defensive stats compared to offensive stats. Defense, deflect, deflect severity, ect. HP also is currently too high in PVP on preview. Armor pen being removed also doesn't help matters.

Healing insignias work still and might be too strong in the new system.

Certain Aspects of Companions Work in PVP On Preview:

Companion active bonuses for sure are working in PVP on preview, and so are other aspects of them like companion item level and boosts to player HP.

i'm hoping this is unintended and will be fixed but in case it is intentional, companions shouldn't work in PVP period. There is currently a vote going on in one of the PVP discord servers about whether or not companions should work in PVP and as of right now the vote is overwelmingly against it. Historically companions working in PVP hasn't gone well and it makes no sense for any aspects of them to work in PVP considering you can't summon them in PVP. They are made primarily with PVE in mind and add a lot of unnecessary variables to balancing PVP, they have always been broken OP in PVP the times they worked in the past and its the same story on preview right now.

Item Level Is Essentially Replacing Weapon Damage (edit: this concern was answered):

High weapon damage is currently very important to have in PVP on live. If you lack a pair of the 3 latest weapon sets (blessed, lionheart, celestial), you are unable to compete. This system was very restrictive already and the new item level system would worsen this considerably and cause a lot of currently functional PVPers to fall really far behind.

I understand the company needs to make money, but if you make the requirements for gearing up too steep, a lot of people simply won't be able to afford it and will just hang up the towel. That is exactly the danger posed by requiring players to have a maximum item level and max out millions of AD worth of companions just to be able to PVP.

Edit: I was recently informed that the devs plan to upscale player item level while on PVP maps.

Armor Enchantments and Other Items In PVP:

I know less about this one so far, but from what I've heard, armor enchantments and probably several more items need to be looked at to see how they will function in mod 20 PVP. I've heard some players mention shadowclad might be too strong in mod 20 PVP.

2 friends of mine recently tested elven battle on preview and depending on how hard it will be to stack deflect and whether or not shadowclad DR is OP in mod 20, elven battle could become the new universal BIS enchantment for PVP.

Personal Damage Boosts in PVP VS magnitude increases:

This is the concern I've seen I currently know the least about, but I've heard personal damage boosts may too weak now as part of the magnitude increases made to player powers. This and other things might effect class balance.

fuxion · December 2020

I have also noticed the tankiness now possible from initial tests..... Maybe a personal damage Boost tht only works in PVP and mitigates defenses to some degree might be an option ? But i will leave this thinking and resolution to Jared and the team .... i have also mentioned this in comms to Noworries

i mean we should definitely move away from one-shot kills thts for sure ... but with good application of skills and with a good build and rotations a kill should be made ....

fuxion · December 2020

if a kill takes more effort and time the respawn time should be increased as well ... or we should change to a deathmatch format which could also be a fun option

...mmmmh who to kill first ???

im sure the dev team will sort something out so tht pvp synergises with new system ...

fuxion · December 2020

maybe we should test new system for a season to really see what and if certain changes are required ....

trgluestickz · December 2020

@fuxion#7775 With damage in PVP, I liked that mod 17 and after made PVP feel a lot more refreshing than it was in tanky eras like mod 16. Tanky eras are super boring.

That said, dps did increase too much over time (on live), especially from the recent overpowered one shot mounts issue.
I agree ideally nobody should be dieing in one shot, especially not when it takes little effort to kill in one shot, but not sure what to suggest to make this become a reality again without people being too tanky and causing a drop in the skill ceiling.

There are two rarely talked about beneficial side effects of the broken damage mounts and spike in player damage present on live, both of which could have been fixed by other means of course. One was that it significantly reduced the issues posed by cancerous defense builds. The second was that games with 3+ healers on one team stopped being quite as unbalanced, the other team actually is able to beat that kind of team.

fuxion · December 2020

Maybe a new weapons set tht is available to all from Trade of Blades tht only works in pvp ? its hard to say atm as more testing is required and will only be possible once companions/pets have been removed from preview server ....

fuxion · December 2020

Yeah , i agree with you so lets see what Jared and his team come up with ... for me i would like to continue testing but needs the companions removed first cause the tests wont yield realistic results atm

like i said ideally every class / player should be killable even if it does take two players with good rotations and applying the correct skills to for example kill a healer or tank but oneshot kills from stealth is a complete no-go for me cause any players should have the time to try apply a counter attack or some sort of defense ...

and if all are killable but do take more planning and effort it will be fair to increase the respawn timer in order to balance the fact tht if it for example took two players to kill a tank or healer to get back and cap the node thts missing a player now etc etc
That would make sense ...

readytoredrum · December 2020

Players Are Too Tanky On Preview:

With the removal of armor pen and making it easy for players to cap Defense and Deflection chance, initial testing on preview seems to show that players are too tanky and healers are almost unkillable.

I noticed that the devs made adjustments to make stamina regeneration slower in PVP than PVE, might I suggest decreasing the effectiveness of the defense/deflection severity stat as well specifically only for PVP?

If there is one thing worse than people dying too quickly, its players who never die and PVP resulting in 0 or 1 death games.

xvimn134 · December 2020

a vote in pvp discord. It is still open for vote here: https://discord.gg/ncB52GN
Hope this can help devs ro decide which should be on top of the pvp fix list

xvimn134 · December 2020

99% of the players do not want to see companion stuff/item level to affect pvp, please fix as soon as possible, thanks
I undertstand the companion bonus would not affect pvp, so i have hope they will fix it (although now your stats is still affected by companion active bonus).

Also I do not think it is fair to let companion item level to affect pvp. People have to be forced to upgrade companion/bolster to perform pvp well. The item level impact is actually huge since it affects your damamage/hp, etc.
this will make pvp more dead in my opinion, also 99% people agree item level of companion should not affect pvp as can be seen from the vote. 80% of the serious pvp players do not play pve a lot from my observation, and I bet this will push a lot of pvp players to be out of the pvp or even out of game if the companion item level gonna affect the domination

fuxion · December 2020

Please can we have companions( any bonusses. ratings etc) removed from PVP maps on preview - Please confirm when this has been done so we can continue testing

This is critical. Thanks

trgluestickz · December 2020

This is more of a note to other people testing going forwards than it is feedback:

Both class and role balance in PVP are probably messed up right now on preview, focus some of your testing here.

fuxion · December 2020

trgluestickz said:
This is more of a note to other people testing going forwards than it is feedback:

Both class and role balance in PVP are probably messed up right now on preview, focus some of your testing here.

where is " here " ?

tonyvincent · December 2020

trgluestickz said it very well.

However, I do like the fact that crit CHANCE and deflect CHANCE cannot be countered, though the enemy can counter the severity. That is good. It is also a great thing to reduce the critical severity, which you did on preview, because crit severity is too high on live server. Though as of right now, it's too easy to cap multiple stats in PvP on preview. It would be better to force players to choose what stats to focus on. This assumes that players have a way to really customize their builds, which is not the case on preview. Players should be able to choose very much themselves what stats to focus on and that this decision really has an impact on the stat ratings. I am mostly referring to enchantments, mount passives and insignias not having much impact at all compared to combined ratings and stats from Item Levels on gear. Also, players shouldn't be able to reach near cap on all defensive ratings such as deflect chance, critical avoidance, defense.

I support the fact that players can counter the severity of deflect/critical strike and not the CHANCE, though the severity on both of these stats should by default be quite much higher that the default counterparts which is accuracy and critical avoidance. This is not the case right now. By default, all geared players will counter these stats. But players should, however, be able to completely counter the high severity of these stats, but at the cost of low ratings on other defensive stats.

////

Also,

Please look into reducing the damage on all single target and AoE mount powers, as well as healing/restoration mount power.

If we are going by magnitudes, maybe try reducing the single target damage mount powers to 1000 magnitude and AoE damage mount powers to 500 magnitude.

Additionally, please consider giving a clear animation and a longer casting time to all damage single-target mount powers. And make players able to dodge mount powers (i.e. Toad), unless it's fixed already.

If players are saying we are too tanky on preview, maybe look into nerfing Shadowclad because no other enchantment are coming close to how Shadowclad gives a huge amount of deflect and damage resistance.

trgluestickz · December 2020

In the case of companions, I wanted to clarify that even just the item level working in PVP is problematic, the HP we are getting from it combined with other issues from defensive stats is too high, I'll say it again, everyone is too tanky.

trgluestickz · December 2020

fuxion#7775 said:

trgluestickz said:
This is more of a note to other people testing going forwards than it is feedback:

Both class and role balance in PVP are probably messed up right now on preview, focus some of your testing here.
where is " here " ?

Focus some of your testing on this subject. Class and role balance.

scrublord · December 2020

I mostly agree with xvim granted he uses what he himself and the majority of PvPers on PC seem to dislike, i feel it's only due to the meta in PvP. I very firmly feel summoned companions should not affect pvp at all, no item level, no stats. active companion bonuses however, like the deepcrow and alpha compy for example i feel should affect pvp as they're similar to boons in a sense of flat bonuses, if insignias count why shouldn't companion bonuses? same with mount powers like tunnel vision or the stats you get from mounts, if no comp bonuses count there shouldn't be any mount based powers aside from mounting and mount speed count. based on how stats are working i feel it should work where if i have let's say 20k crit and you have 20,001 crit avoid i can't crit you at all. stats should always be counterable unless you want unkillable tanks that 1 shot any other class like pre mod 16 again. I feel the rewards should be based on ranking in PvP too but this current way we have of ranking people is assinine and doesn't exactly show a good PvPer is. it should be based on flat score from assists/killing/capping/wins, a win gives let's just give it 1k score, capping stays 300 as is now, kills 50 as now with the bonuses for defending/flag rushing staying 25 but add additional bonuses for multi kills like another 25 if you kill 2 people so you get 50 per kill for 100 points then an additional 25 for killing 2 players in a short time (presumably defending or rushing a flag) add another 25 for a total of 250 points, this rewards AVID PvPers and not those who join for rewards only as you'll need to gain score to place high in rankings for rewards which will mean you'd need to play a fair bit of games throughout the season. that will make sure that if someone REALLY wants those rewards and doesn't enjoy pvp will have to play more and essentially push them away from a game mode if they're only throwing themselves through a ringer for 1-2mil AD. in regards to the queues, domination vs domination solo is a matter of premades vs luck at the current build on PC, with that score system in place it will improve the quality of games in domination solo and still allow premades, however a premade team can go pug stomping which will mean a few players i won't name will simply group up to farm ranks from a poor group of randoms in domination, meaning normal domination should require a 5 player team so it's really a premade vs premade and domination solo stays the way it is. I feel a premade team could still stomp however so it should be noted a normal domination game could just be worth (throwing out a number for this one) 60% and a match which the teams have very uneven scores 20% of the score value, i say this because of the premade game syncing that occurs, a single group can just bot a few matches so the queue pops, they farm score off of them, and theres boosted rankings, which should be cracked down on immensely, pvp ~~ban~~ suspension for the rest of the season of PvP and revokation of all scoring, rankings, and rewards for the season which the ban occured.

gweddry · December 2020

Seconding pretty much everyone in the thread:

defense (and also deflect and deflect severity) is way too strong, players are too tanky
companions should be completely removed from PvP, including the item level bonus
mounts magnitude should go down to at most 1000 for single target powers, 500 for AoE

fuxion · December 2020

Rather abit more tanky than one shotted tbh ... so this should be looked at very carefully

longer battles are more fun and also a better reflection of skills & rotation application

maybe a season worth of testing and data analysed before any sudden changes are made

Chris also stated that they want to get new combat system sorted before they look at pvp ...

To remove any companion influence in pvp should not be too much effort so that should be done as priority please

readytoredrum · December 2020

fuxion#7775 said:
Rather abit more tanky than one shotted tbh ... so this should be looked at very carefully

We all know where the one-shots are coming from, mounts. Lowering magnitude from these mounts would solve too many balancing concerns both in PVP and in PVE where every DPS is using it as well.

Last season, we did a few rounds of premade 5v5 (with fully geared characters in PVP featuring top players on the leaderboards) without any mount powers and found the matches to be much more skill based, much more interactive, much more fun and much longer.

Longer battles for the sake of longer battles aren't fun or interactive or skill based at all. If everyone is incentivized to play full tank builds due to how easy it is to cap defensive stats, the game falls back to a cancerous, boring, non-skill based state with nobody dying.

Also, companions affecting PVP isn't a good idea. What is the reason to even break this?

trgluestickz · December 2020

To @noworries#8859 and any other devs listening:

State of PVP On Preview Update 12-12-20:

The changes on preview are starting to get interesting, the feel of them might still be bad but need to go look at it again.

Its becoming apparent that defense and HP may be only good defensive stats to actually stack on preview in PVP.
Accuracy and critical severity will be the dominant offense stats in PVP looks like.

As a hypothetical, if defense can't pass 50% in PVP on preview and you add a little bit of influence from deflect and deflect sev like 20%, then you get around 70% damage reduction, which is close to what it is on live when people deflect and may help nerf tank roles on preview. Now I say hypothetical since from what I understand, defense in PVP can still exceed 50%.

Some people are saying tank roles going to be stupid op but I need to look at that closer, this could be HP related.

I know very little at this time about the state of healers in PVP.

Elven battle will be the dominant enchantment in PVP as things currently stand, this is probably more of a good thing than not. This does present some balance issues of its own but its probably a better scenario than having shadowclad be the dominant enchantment in PVP. Having an enchantment like elven battle take over will probably revive some of the most aggressive play styles and also bring back certain attacks, passives, set bonuses, ect that are comprised of lots of little hits.

RNG factors from deflect and critical chance likely to be a lot less impactful in PVP on preview, which is also probably more good than not.

trgluestickz · December 2020

A couple of small suggestions:

Apparently the basic self healing mount combat power is healing for 130k ticks on preview, its 82k on live
Would nerf that in PVP

Might want to lower cost to upgrade legendary and mythic mount collars, they ludicrously expensive at moment and apparently will give lot of combined rating and IL boost, which is significant in PVP.

trgluestickz · December 2020

Build Variation/Options On Preview:

There is another pressing question for many and that is whether or not there will be enough variation between builds/options in mod 20. Its looking like pretty much everyone is going to be on a really similar build. Since the goal here is to find a way to make PVP playable and fun until it can get more extensive updates in mod 21, I don't consider build variation to be an immediate worry, but it will have long term negative impacts on how much people enjoy PVP if build variation doesn't get reintroduced at some point.

trgluestickz · December 2020

Class and Role Balance Is Probably Out of Whack Still On Preview:

Most likely balance between different dps classes was disrupted by these changes and will need to be tested and improved before mod 20 goes live. In general balance between the 3 roles of dps, tank, and healer will also need to be looked at as I mentioned before.

quickfoot · December 2020

As for companion bonuses in PvP, I think if the stat/ilvl pool is too high then they should not apply in PvP. One downside to disabling companion bonuses in PvP is that there are already very limited number of customization points for character builds, disabling them reduces this even further, while on the other hand some companion bonuses are interesting enough to qualify as an addition "customization point" other than just another source of stats.

trgluestickz · December 2020

Another PVP Preview Update:

I will mention there is something weird (probably a bug or new adjustment we can't see yet) going on with tanky builds in PVP on preview, we are trying to figure out what is causing this but players on preview weren't as tanky as the numbers on our sheets imply we should be. This started around the 12th where people tried to make really tanky builds and somehow weren't very tanky. I need to followup to be sure but the upcoming PVP season is going to take a lot of time out of testing for me so other testers likely to find it before I do.

It wasn't like that when the changes first hit preview, people were way too tanky when I ran my first few tests and other testers found similar issues. My glass cannon rogue was having trouble damaging another glass cannon rogue lol.

After asking 2 knowledgeable PVPers about the 45% defense cap proposal from a different thread, both of them said its probably too low in PVP as a universal cap. Its a much better situation than making everyone super tanky as I mentioned earlier but will be oneshot meta still. One of them suggested varying it by class since 45% defense cap across the board adds to the class balance concerns, some classes might need closer to 60%. It shouldn't be higher than 60% though and make sure to keep track of damage reduction from other defensive stats like deflect, crit avoid, awareness, ect.

For those of you who didn't see the defense proposal yet, essentially devs are proposing to cap defense at total 45%. So 25% stat based cap + 20% "other sources" cap. Here is that thread: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/comment/13169906

Official - Combat Changes - PvP

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