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Band of Air Changes - Preview Feedback Thread

nitocris83nitocris83 Member, Cryptic Developer, Administrator Posts: 4,495 Cryptic Developer
Greetings!

Today we announced upcoming changes to the Band of Air. These changes are now on Preview and this thread is available for any feedback or discussions regarding the updates.

Please keep discourse civil and focused on Band of Air. For feedback on General Balance, please go to this thread.
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Comments

  • masterogamasteroga Member Posts: 474 Arc User
    edited September 2022
    Why didn't you guys listen to player feedback? Making the ring a % damage/stat boost, a 100% proc on attack with longer cooldown, some sort of aura with a cooldown

    All 3 of those would perform at exactly whatever desired power level you wanted. Instead it is still class AND build specific? 😐🤨
  • hadestemplar#9918 hadestemplar Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,176 Arc User
    edited September 2022

    Greetings!

    Today we announced upcoming changes to the Band of Air. These changes are now on Preview and this thread is available for any feedback or discussions regarding the updates.

    Please keep discourse civil and focused on Band of Air. For feedback on General Balance, please go to this thread.

    Jullia, why can't this Band of air issue been solved as how it where in Mod 6 done with Lostmouth set?


    The Lotmouth set in mod 5 did 100% weapon damage ( now damage) when you land crit hit.
    Warlocks where the bes class to use that set, due lot of DoT based powers.

    So in mod 6, developers increased internal cool down. Which in short kep proc rates in check, it was no matter if your all DoTs crit or not, set proc only every certain time duration, which kept outgoing damage in check and also balanced set among classese too.



    The Band of Air have exactly same issue, certain classes proc it way more time then others.

    After fix ring will proc only from encounter, at will and daily. For example warlocks have more DoT based powers than Cleric or FIghters,.
    Also after magnitude adjustment make this ring for Cleric, Fighter as nonsese. Cuz their hit rates are lesser than Rogues/Ranger/warlock and Wizards.
    In short this ring remain great only for specific classes/builds. And as for other classes/builds, they don't have alternative to compete with it.

    That's why magnitude adjustment will solve no problems.
    Post edited by hadestemplar#9918 on
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  • violencebf22violencebf22 Member Posts: 45 Arc User
    This is good. finally, the damage indicator will depend on the class and the skill of the player on this class and not damage bugs. so many TR play through the path of the blade because it pierces the boa every tick. Now rogues will be able to return to the build through recovery, most call it a nerf. But this can be regarded as alternative builds for your character. But I would like to pay attention to something else. We have 2 modules dedicated to dragons. But there are no new dragon companions. There is green. black. white. pseudo. But the rest are missing. I would finally see metal dragons in the game not in episodic moments, but as full-fledged party members or permanent NPCs with great lore. Oh yes, a set of rings gives too little growth. Tested for 10 minutes using the standard barbarian(80k 90% full) rotation with all skills non-stop=> boa 2.67% dark 2.87%, set 2 ring boa-2.36% dark-3.51%. I know there is a 20+-% spread in the damage of each character but the bonus from 2 rings loses too much if you take new rings or rings with 7.5% stats + 1 from the queen's rings.
  • luffyhaki123luffyhaki123 Member Posts: 68 Arc User
    I say the only problem is , band of air will only be good for rogue and warlock which again makes a huge class balance problem, so rogue and warlock will benefit from band of air while the other classes wont , so this puts rogue and warlock above all the classes with band of air even with the nerf.

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

    I say the only problem is , band of air will only be good for rogue and warlock which again makes a huge class balance problem, so rogue and warlock will benefit from band of air while the other classes wont , so this puts rogue and warlock above all the classes with band of air even with the nerf.

    above 3-4% nice boost they have. Also are many companions and rings and other stuff to cover those 3-4% boost the others have with boa.
  • erevel09erevel09 Member Posts: 177 Arc User
    I knew it would happen eventually. I understand why Band of Air needed to be adjusted but it seems it's often the same story with balancing items and bonuses. Honestly, I would be happy with removing procs of procs alone, but if magnitude would have to be reduced, it should drop not from 600 to 200, but from 600 to 300 (or 350). Make that ring stand out just a bit more from other ones. Given the amount of grind needed I think it's warranted.

    The other thing is the Band of Ait and Ring of Darkness set bonus. Still the same issue as before. Separately those rings are better than together. Really weird combo.

    Unless the grind for reagents is made easier I don't see a reason for smashing that ring that much.
  • thewretched1982#9721 thewretched1982 Member Posts: 34 Arc User
    edited September 2022
    Proc % Doesn't solve class balance...

    I find it odd you want to make this ring still not equal on all classes. Some classes attack much faster than others. Take off % procs and make it do it's actions while in combat...

    The Band of Air could have a Gush of Wind (small AoE) at the start of combat and then repeat this AoE every X seconds. If the range is small then it would incentivize people to group up and this would help the healers.

    The Ring of Darkness could have a single target DoT activated on first target when entering combat then reapply X seconds after the DoT wears off.

    Making the rings unique for different types of fights could incentivize different builds and would make the decision of which to go for first have weight and both rings useful.

    Set Bonus something similar based on being in combat.

    I don't see any other way to balance it.
  • lol#8795 lol Member Posts: 4 Arc User
    I believe we requested the drop rates increased over a year ago and the response was a No, because it was meant to be a Chase Item and that it would be the strongest ring the devs would ever make.
    But now that it suits your financial gain to make everyone switch builds at the same time to the same items with inflated prices all Three points are blatant lies, furthering that your Blog's claims are hallow since your word changes to suit you.
    Legally its called a "Bait and Switch" but here its called a "ZenShop Sale", how many times have you sold Journals in the last year? Why do you think we bought the Journals? The extra hit for at best 1k? Or because you were capitalizing on BoA+Journal's synergy?
  • darthpotaterdarthpotater Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,259 Arc User
    I think you need to change the items that procs on 10% dmg of your total HP, like the Ribcage, Goristro or the new gear from dragonhunts.

    BoA was helping with this procs, and now most people will struggle to make a good use of this items. I suggest 5% instead of 10%
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  • fritz#8093 fritz Member Posts: 439 Arc User
    edited September 2022


    Jullia, why can't this Band of air issue been solved as how it where in Mod 6 done with Lostmouth set?


    The Lotmouth set in mod 5 did 100% weapon damage ( now damage) when you land crit hit.
    Warlocks where the bes class to use that set, due lot of DoT based powers.

    So in mod 6, developers increased internal cool down. Which in short kep proc rates in check, it was no matter if your all DoTs crit or not, set proc only every certain time duration, which kept outgoing damage in check and also balanced set among classese too.



    The Band of Air have exactly same issue, certain classes proc it way more time then others.

    After fix ring will proc only from encounter, at will and daily. For example warlocks have more DoT based powers than Cleric or FIghters,.
    Also after magnitude adjustment make this ring for Cleric, Fighter as nonsese. Cuz their hit rates are lesser than Rogues/Ranger/warlock and Wizards.
    In short this ring remain great only for specific classes/builds. And they don't have alternative to compete with it.

    That's why magnitude adjustment will solve no problems.

    Wanted to post something along these lines as well. I think no item should contribute to the class disparity, especially in a case where the already best classes get an additional boost. The smart thing to do indeed seems to be to add a CD on procs and then raise the magnitude of said procs so that all classes can benefit from them equally.

    I think it's annoying that this means you can't have the equipment diversity that would theoretically be possible. Like this proc based ring means classes build around generating as many procs as possible, leading to slight variants that you normally wouldn't have seen. But with the current state of class balancing, where the reaction to obvious discrepancies usually takes over a year, you have to take the safe approach and make sure no class benefits from stuff more than others.
  • fritz#8093 fritz Member Posts: 439 Arc User

    Greetings!

    Today we announced upcoming changes to the Band of Air. These changes are now on Preview and this thread is available for any feedback or discussions regarding the updates.

    Please keep discourse civil and focused on Band of Air. For feedback on General Balance, please go to this thread.

    I think the changes are fair taking into account the balancing goals you published on the blog, but at the same time I doubt farming HC VoS for such a negligible gain is really worth it. Less than half the classes can now effectively utilize the ring so the population interested in running HC VoS will decrease dramatically anyway.

    More than that, I'm concerned what this means to similar formats in the future. The Band of Air back then was interesting because it was overpowered. I wouldn't have put in the effort for the current version and I got lucky with the reagents and "only" had to do 70+ runs. Yeah the droprates are increased now, but the rate of failure as the system was introduced was fairly high and I doubt anyone would have gone through the trouble if a ring from the normal version (Red Eyes Glare) gets you pretty much the same DPS increase or even more on some classes.
  • First congratulations for the great writing that was put in the Developer post. What caught my attention the most was exactly the part of having players with not very solid constructions, which, because they had the ring, were more effective in causing damage than players like me who do, hahahahaha. I was happy when I was at the top DPS or very close to someone who owned it, it showed me how correct my choices were, and that if I dedicated myself to having the ring, it would definitely be a more effective DPS than the others. Many like me, were penalized for not having the ring, even though they were skillful or capable of executing old content such as RC or even more recently in Dragon hunts.

    Second, I found the adjustments that the rings underwent interesting.

    Third, as mentioned before, I didn't have the ring, but in a way I understand the pain that the players who did are suffering. I survived module 16, so you will survive these changes too!
  • werdandi#8366 werdandi Member Posts: 335 Arc User
    My main concern with this nerf is that it will be again very difficult to proc goristro horns/serene hood/sharp circlet of dragon hunter etc properly, and even more on the classes with low magnitudes encounters (e.g cw, sw ) .
    As for the class balance, this nerf will undoubtfully nerf the classes that took the most of this ring. You have to monitor this nerf very carefully, knowing that anyway most of the players did not have this ring.
  • sickwolf#8288 sickwolf Member Posts: 1 Arc User
    Even after the changes, I personally feel BOA is still an unequal ring. It favors class that got fast attack speed but disfavor those that hit hard but slow like fighter, ranger and cleric. The changes will make it even less useful to those slow attack speed class forcing them to use other rings because it become proc even less for them while those fast attack speed class like rogue will not be affected much. I suggest adding something to it to make it more balance. By adding a feature of doing 10% of a player max health points on a single attack with at will attack will also add to a chance to proc the extra damage will make it balance since those slow attack speed class got high mag at will giving them a chance to proc it even when they attack slow, balancing it to those with fast attack speed class that do low mag at will damage like rogues, thank you.
  • My main concern with this nerf is that it will be again very difficult to proc goristro horns/serene hood/sharp circlet of dragon hunter etc properly, and even more on the classes with low magnitudes encounters (e.g cw, sw ) .
    As for the class balance, this nerf will undoubtfully nerf the classes that took the most of this ring. You have to monitor this nerf very carefully, knowing that anyway most of the players did not have this ring.

    That's not such a problem, believe me, I didn't have the ring and I can easily keep 10 stacks of the Serene helmet in ST. For the best use of the helmet that gives 7.5% of acc that you buy via seal or if you have space to allow you to use the professional helmet, this is perhaps the most recommended.There is still the option for helmets that I consider bis which are the % damage for LoMM/ToMM and Sharandar.

  • stof#3099 stof Member Posts: 40 Arc User
    Just a suggestion: whatever you do with the band of air / ring of darkness, try to implement it for the M24 release, and not before it. Otherwise, people will perceive a sudden lack of power, which can be demotivating.

    That way people will have a goal to replace it with the new items on M24. Since if done during the end M23, the motivation by the players part to change the build will be close to zero, since m24 is on the horizon
  • far21100far21100 Member Posts: 10 Arc User
    Not only was there little to no interaction with the community during the time BoA was good (no reaction to bugs causing wipes such as missing indicators, no reaction towards people asking for an increase in droprates). You began to interact but then chose to ignore all feedback and push the nerf to live. Wow :astonished:

    "It will remain bis for quite a bit"...sure :V how to loose trust 1x1 that was so recently gained - very few people are against the nerf I spoke to but at least communicate clearly that the intention is to make the ring useless for the majority of dps classes. The way this was done is very very off-putting.

    Greetings!
    Today we announced upcoming changes to the Band of Air. These changes are now on Preview and this thread is available for any feedback or discussions regarding the updates.

    Please keep discourse civil and focused on Band of Air. For feedback on General Balance, please go to this thread.

    So what actually is the point of this thread if our feedback is going to be completely ignored? I don't know about everyone else in this thread, but I actually find it more offensive that Cryptic pretend to listen to our feedback instead of simply telling us "this is what's happening suck it up".
    x2
  • fritz#8093 fritz Member Posts: 439 Arc User
    Well best you can hope for is that they might review this thread and adjust BoA later, but history tells us it's not very likely. So I'll add my irritation that they apparently never truly intended to gather feedback first and just felt like the changes they've done are good enough to make final (spoiler: they're not, per usual).

    Maybe in about a year we get a lengthy blog post that they now installed a "Nerf Council" next to their "Rewards Council" which reviews every nerf. *yawn*.
  • stof#3099 stof Member Posts: 40 Arc User
    In order to understand the changes behind the Band of Air (BoA), it is fundamental to also understand how Neverwinter combat stats also work.The first observation when looking at the equations for damage is that they are mainly linear (accuracy/deflection being an exception).This means that every %add is expected to cause the same increase of raw damage added.However, when dealing with incremental changes (aka gear upgrades), in theorycrafting is customary to look at the incremental increase in damage, i.e. the %dmg increase from the previous state.By changing the point of view of the analysis, the linear scaling for stats is no longer linear but now presents diminishing returns, i.e., for each additional %stat gained, there is a reduction in %dmg increased from the previous state.This is normally modeled as %dmg_increase = 1 + (dmg_previous_state + increase_damage)/dmg_previous_state, which by increasing the dmg_previous_state the effect of increase_damage reduces.Due to that, in order to maximize the damage is better to have even distribution over all damage multipliers (lower deviation) than to have one big stat and the other mediocre.However, in the current state of Neverwinter, DPS can mostly cap 4 of 5 offensive stats (ignoring accuracy because its scaling is awful).

    When theorycrafting a build, there is a term denominated Opportunity cost. This means that for every decision made when choosing a piece of gear, there is something that must give up, either an effect or stats. This point is often forgotten when players make builds.However, when you can easily cap the stats, there is not much opportunity cost lost.Consequently, in order to improve the damage, players must look towards other damage multipliers, which are for the Neverwinter case:
    • Base damage (ilvl)
    • Number of hits
    • % of damage increases sources
    The listed items also have linear scaling and therefore diminishing returns when analyzing incremental changes.
    All these modifiers then multiply each other to give the total damage done by the players and dividing by time we have the damage per second (DPS). Which for damage dealer class is what we are trying to maximize (and not the total damage).

    However, in Neverwinter, there is an additional damage source, often denominated "procs". These procs are not a straight multiplier to the total damage mentioned below but are better modeled as sourced of damage is added instead of multiplicative since some of the previous scaling methods mentioned before do not apply to them. The procs can be divided into two categories and two groups each: with an internal cooldown and without // with or without proc chance (100% proc chance).

    For procs with an internal cooldown and without proc chance, the DPS done during a fight depends on the fight duration itself, for shorter, the damage contribution is higher and decreases asymptotically with the fight duration, with peaks that match the internal cooldown. Obs. Mount power like tunnel vision can be included in this group, for example, due to the high cooldown time.

    For procs without internal cooldown and without proc chance, the DPS done during a fight is a linear correlation with the number of hits per sec a class can perform. An example of this is the Mythallar set or poisoned thorn weapon enchant. Usually, the magnitude is extremely low for these types of procs, so it does not become extremely overpowering in fast-hitting classes (e.g Rogues).

    Now for procs with a proc chance, which in my opinion are way harder to analyze intuitively due to the probabilistic nature, but still can be performed mathematically.For a given P chance to proc, the mean number of hits to proc, after the cooldown is finished, if it has it, will be 1/P. However, we are interested in DPS, so the analyses need to account for the time, which in this case is the mean-time for the proc to occur. The mean time to proc (MTP) can be modeled as function of the hits_per_second (HPS) as MTP = CD + (1/P)/(HPS). The proc total damage (PDPS) is then a function of the proc damage (PD) and MTP as PDPS = PD / MTP. Performing some manipulations we obtain PDPS = PD * P * HPS / (CD * P * HPS + 1), which will be final equation we will analyze.

    Our objective is then to maximize PDPS under certain constraints (gear,skills,...). If someone wants more detail, I recommend starting the search "optimal decision problem." Nevertheless, here will do a crude analysis on what can be made to balance a proc.

    Looking at the equation for the PDPS, we see that by changing PD, there is a linear relation: eg. reducing the damage by 66% will reduce the DPS contribution of the proc by 66%.Now the product of P and HPS. We see that for small values of it the PDPS will increase linearly; however, as it increases, the PDPS will asymptotically approach the value of PD/CD, which it has a strong diminishing return.Finally, by increasing the CD we see asymptotically decay towards zero of the PDPS.This behavior is problematic since it is not intuitive when performing decisions, without perfoming a numerical analysis.

    Band of Air

    The band of air is a ring that does additional damage with a 10% proc rate for every hit done and has an internal cooldown of 1s. The developers and the majority of the player base agree that it is a BIS item due to how much damage its procs do. And therefore was decided to nerf it, in order to be in balance with the other items in the game.

    It was decided that the base damage of the proc would reduce from 600 to 200 magnitude and will no longer procs from other procs. So lets break it into parts.The first is the damage reduction; as we saw before, any change in the base damage of the proc will cause a linear change in the dps done by the proc. Therefore the 66% damage reduction in the base damage will cause a 66% reduction on the DPS of BoA.The justification for the amount of this nerf is, however, somewhat flawed. First, it compares with a certain magnitude value for at-wills/encounters/dailies, which, as pointed out by others in this thread, is wrong, where the actual power used by the classes is in order of 2x the ones used by the devs to compare.However, there is also one point missed: Band of Air CANNOT critical strike; this means the average the BoA lost a 1.81x damage multiplier due to crits, which at-wills/encounters/dailies have, therefore investing in critical has zero effect for BoA. In conclusion, you overestimated the contribution BoA towards the total damage by not looking at the full damage equation. (As a note, there are other procs in the game that behave like that, where only a few stats scale them, some cant crit, and others can not deal combat advantaged damage). Now that part that gets more convoluted: By reducing the base damage, some classes will not be able to keep a good uptime on stats buffs that require a certain amount of %hp damage. Therefore the effectiveness of chess/helm slots drops considerably since, for some of the class they were able to proc with band of air, which they can't.

    Now the tricky part: procs from other procs. Due to its strong scaling with the number of hits, players found that maximizing the total number of hits during the fight is the optimal strategy to increase DPS; this involved using several pieces of gear that would increase the number of hits, from weapon enchants, mount power, companions, feats and so on.This means that on average, players had 4x more hits than actions performed (at-wills/encounters/...), with some classes being over 6x.

    By removing the procs of procs scaling, the devs now separated the classes into two groups: high HPS and low HPS. As we saw before, by reducing the HPS (CD is constant in this case), classes with inherent low HPS, will suffer a linear decrease in PDPS. In other words, removing 4x number hits multipliers can cause a decrease in PDPS of the BoA of about 80%. While classes with inherent high HPS will still be in an asymptotical regime and suffer a reduced nerf in the BoA contribution.

    Therefore for classes with low HPS, the implemented changes for the BoA, the nerf can be severe as a 90% decrease in contribution, while for high HPS classes will be around 70%.The problem relies on that classes with HPS are also the classes where BoA already had more impact (20~25% of the total dps), while low HPS classes are balanced with 15% dps coming from BoA before the nerfs. Now applying the nerf, the classes with HPS will have around 6%-7% contribution from BoA, while low HPS classes will be at 2%-3% contribution.

    The devs stated they still wanted the BoA will be BIS, which is true at 6% damage contribution for the ring slot. However, that is not the case for low HPS classes, where at 2% there is clearly other options from just raw %stats perspective (like the red eyes glare), which in the worst case scenario is still 2.7% damage increase, or 10% damage based on enemy type rings which are around 5% incremental damage.So for low HPS, the player will think, why would l use a ring where I can only get 2% damage increase when I am losing the opportunity to equip other rings that will alleviate %stats pressure, allowing me to equip other pieces of gear with better effects (i.e. The opportunity cost talked earlier).

    So that is why I mentioned yesterday, do not implement the changes until M24, because right now upgrading gear to accommodate the changes to remove BoA of the gear is pointless since there will be better alternatives on M24. It is just that during today and M24, players will feel worse now than they were yesterday.



    Suggestion (knowing will be too late and pointless since most likely BoA will state the way it is now)
    Increase the proc chance of Band of Air from 10% to 100% -> this will remove the dependency of HPS and the difference in low and high HPS classes. Bonus point: you don't need to calculate rand() for every hit anymore :)
    Increase the cooldown from 1s to 3s -> low HPS will perceive this chance because the mean time to proc is already in this region, while high HPS will see a slight decrease in hits.
    Reduce the base damage nerf to be 600 to 300 instead.

    By performing these changes, the overall contribution of BoA across all classes will be around 7-8%, which is the BIS state that the devs said they wanted.

    Additional note on class balance
    By performing this nerf now, the class balance will be broken until at least M24, maybe even later. Since the classes that can use BoA efficiently will clearly have an advantaged over low HPS classes, even more than now.



    From a player that in some games had more fun theorycrafting than actually playing it.
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