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M30 Gear Stat Adjustments
rgutscheradev
Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 188Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
The Changes
With this release, we’re making some adjustments as to how we give out rated stats on gear. Existing gear is not affected. This only affects new gear starting with M30 and going forward.
Here are the basics:
1) New gear will give out stat ratings in different amounts depending on the stat.
** For example, a piece of gear that before might have given 1000 stat points (regardless of stat) might now give out 700 points of Power, or 1300 points of Accuracy.
** The idea is that gear will give out equal amounts of value in different stats. You’ll get more of a weaker stat, or less of a stronger stat.
** Under the new system, at a given item level, gear that gives out Power or gear that gives out Accuracy now have a more equal chance to be valuable.
** In some cases, direct percent grants (“+5% to Deflect Severity”) will be scaled in the same way.
2) Player stat caps for many stats are increased.
** The following 8 stats now have a cap of 60% from ratings to a max of 120% (up from 50% and 90%):
Power, Defense, Critical Severity, Combat Advantage, Deflect Severity, Forte, Incoming Healing, and Outgoing Healing
Why Are We Doing This?
Many players faced limited gear choices under the existing system. Some stats were just better than others, so gear stat choices often reduced to chasing the best stat for your role, getting it to cap, then chasing the next best stat, and so on. Many pieces of gear that could have been good were unappealing because they didn’t fit into this narrow pattern. And the caps were low enough that players with the best gear were often capped on most of the stats they cared about, which made it even harder to find good pieces of gear for their characters.
Our hope is that by scaling the stats in proportion to their value, and raising some of the stat caps, we’ll be able to make more pieces of gear that appeal to more players.
Why Lift the Caps on Just these 8 Stats?
Some stats didn’t make sense past 100%, because they represent an actual chance for something to happen (Critical Strike, Deflect Chance).
Some stats are “opposed stats” or “counterstats”: they work in opposition to another stat. We could have increased those, but it wouldn’t have helped unless we increased the corresponding stats on enemy creatures, and that’s something we didn’t want to dive into just yet (it would alter the game’s balance in ways that could be unpleasant if not handled well). But we might consider increasing the caps on the so-called “counterstats” in the future (Critical Avoidance, Awareness, Accuracy) along with a tuning pass to enemy creatures (perhaps we’d only apply that tuning to new creatures, or only to creatures in dungeons – there are multiple possibilities here!).
Lastly, Control Bonus and Control Resist were left alone simply because number tweaking alone won’t bring these two stats in line with the other stats. (It would take a larger rework of the control system as a whole.)
Technical Wonkery
Some people will want to know how exactly we’ve tuned the stats. Since I know people like arguing about “how much of stat X is worth how much of stat Y”, here are the CURRENT values we are using (they might change!).
7 Power = 13 Accuracy = 8 Combat Advantage = 12 Critical Strike = 12 Critical Severity = 7 Defense = 8 Awareness = 11 Critical Avoidance = 15 Deflect = 15 Deflect Severity = 9 Forte = 12 Incoming Healing = 8 Outgoing Healing
(Control Bonus and Control Resist would be at 10 on the above scale, but that just represents “no change”, as discussed above.)
Keep in mind an individual piece of gear can have (for example) 40% of its rated stats devoted to, say, Accuracy, and 60% devoted to Awareness, or any other combination, so it can be a bit tricky to just look at various pieces of gear and deduce the above numbers.
Is This a Nerf?
It's not intended to be.
Note that no existing pieces of gear have changed. This just changes how we will give stats out on gear in the future. The average amount of stats you get will be the same; it's just that things will be parceled out in a way that should, if everything works well, lead to the various stats all being viable. (Note that what the stats do in the game isn't changing either; it's just the proportions in which they are given out relative to each other.)
The fact that the stat caps are increasing should mean that player power level will in fact go up some amount. Also, in addition to the caps going up, it should be easier to avoid hitting the caps in the future, because there will be more stats "deserving of investment": you won't have to keep investing in the one best stat (and thus capping it), because the other stats (or, more exactly, the other stats that are still relevant for your role) will also be worth investing in.
Also, more gear that seems like it might be good for your character will have a chance to actually be good. It should happen less often that an otherwise appealing piece of gear is "ruined" because it has a "bad" stat on it. Now, that piece of gear will have enough extra points of that formerly "bad" stat attached to it that it won't be bad after all. Ultimately, the ability to have more good pieces of gear is the reason we're making these changes.
The Future
Hopefully the immediate result of these changes are more interesting pieces of gear and more player flexibility in gear choice.
Be aware it will take some time for all this to shake out properly. Aside from any tuning issues, there’s also just a bit of oddity as we transition from the old system to the new one. For example, some older pieces of gear that focus on the old “too good” stats (e.g., Power, Defense) might stay good for another module or two, whereas new M30 gear that gives formerly “bad” stats (Accuracy, Deflect Severity) might be quite a bit better in M30 than similar gear from previous modules. That should just be a temporary issue, though.
With this release, we’re making some adjustments as to how we give out rated stats on gear. Existing gear is not affected. This only affects new gear starting with M30 and going forward.
Here are the basics:
1) New gear will give out stat ratings in different amounts depending on the stat.
** For example, a piece of gear that before might have given 1000 stat points (regardless of stat) might now give out 700 points of Power, or 1300 points of Accuracy.
** The idea is that gear will give out equal amounts of value in different stats. You’ll get more of a weaker stat, or less of a stronger stat.
** Under the new system, at a given item level, gear that gives out Power or gear that gives out Accuracy now have a more equal chance to be valuable.
** In some cases, direct percent grants (“+5% to Deflect Severity”) will be scaled in the same way.
2) Player stat caps for many stats are increased.
** The following 8 stats now have a cap of 60% from ratings to a max of 120% (up from 50% and 90%):
Power, Defense, Critical Severity, Combat Advantage, Deflect Severity, Forte, Incoming Healing, and Outgoing Healing
Why Are We Doing This?
Many players faced limited gear choices under the existing system. Some stats were just better than others, so gear stat choices often reduced to chasing the best stat for your role, getting it to cap, then chasing the next best stat, and so on. Many pieces of gear that could have been good were unappealing because they didn’t fit into this narrow pattern. And the caps were low enough that players with the best gear were often capped on most of the stats they cared about, which made it even harder to find good pieces of gear for their characters.
Our hope is that by scaling the stats in proportion to their value, and raising some of the stat caps, we’ll be able to make more pieces of gear that appeal to more players.
Why Lift the Caps on Just these 8 Stats?
Some stats didn’t make sense past 100%, because they represent an actual chance for something to happen (Critical Strike, Deflect Chance).
Some stats are “opposed stats” or “counterstats”: they work in opposition to another stat. We could have increased those, but it wouldn’t have helped unless we increased the corresponding stats on enemy creatures, and that’s something we didn’t want to dive into just yet (it would alter the game’s balance in ways that could be unpleasant if not handled well). But we might consider increasing the caps on the so-called “counterstats” in the future (Critical Avoidance, Awareness, Accuracy) along with a tuning pass to enemy creatures (perhaps we’d only apply that tuning to new creatures, or only to creatures in dungeons – there are multiple possibilities here!).
Lastly, Control Bonus and Control Resist were left alone simply because number tweaking alone won’t bring these two stats in line with the other stats. (It would take a larger rework of the control system as a whole.)
Technical Wonkery
Some people will want to know how exactly we’ve tuned the stats. Since I know people like arguing about “how much of stat X is worth how much of stat Y”, here are the CURRENT values we are using (they might change!).
7 Power = 13 Accuracy = 8 Combat Advantage = 12 Critical Strike = 12 Critical Severity = 7 Defense = 8 Awareness = 11 Critical Avoidance = 15 Deflect = 15 Deflect Severity = 9 Forte = 12 Incoming Healing = 8 Outgoing Healing
(Control Bonus and Control Resist would be at 10 on the above scale, but that just represents “no change”, as discussed above.)
Keep in mind an individual piece of gear can have (for example) 40% of its rated stats devoted to, say, Accuracy, and 60% devoted to Awareness, or any other combination, so it can be a bit tricky to just look at various pieces of gear and deduce the above numbers.
Is This a Nerf?
It's not intended to be.
Note that no existing pieces of gear have changed. This just changes how we will give stats out on gear in the future. The average amount of stats you get will be the same; it's just that things will be parceled out in a way that should, if everything works well, lead to the various stats all being viable. (Note that what the stats do in the game isn't changing either; it's just the proportions in which they are given out relative to each other.)
The fact that the stat caps are increasing should mean that player power level will in fact go up some amount. Also, in addition to the caps going up, it should be easier to avoid hitting the caps in the future, because there will be more stats "deserving of investment": you won't have to keep investing in the one best stat (and thus capping it), because the other stats (or, more exactly, the other stats that are still relevant for your role) will also be worth investing in.
Also, more gear that seems like it might be good for your character will have a chance to actually be good. It should happen less often that an otherwise appealing piece of gear is "ruined" because it has a "bad" stat on it. Now, that piece of gear will have enough extra points of that formerly "bad" stat attached to it that it won't be bad after all. Ultimately, the ability to have more good pieces of gear is the reason we're making these changes.
The Future
Hopefully the immediate result of these changes are more interesting pieces of gear and more player flexibility in gear choice.
Be aware it will take some time for all this to shake out properly. Aside from any tuning issues, there’s also just a bit of oddity as we transition from the old system to the new one. For example, some older pieces of gear that focus on the old “too good” stats (e.g., Power, Defense) might stay good for another module or two, whereas new M30 gear that gives formerly “bad” stats (Accuracy, Deflect Severity) might be quite a bit better in M30 than similar gear from previous modules. That should just be a temporary issue, though.
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Many players faced limited gear choices under the existing system. Some stats were just better than others, so gear stat choices often reduced to chasing the best stat for your role, getting it to cap, then chasing the next best stat, and so on. Many pieces of gear that could have been good were unappealing because they didn’t fit into this narrow pattern.
I'm sorry but in my opinion the real reason there's a lack of gear variety on players originates from the fact that the last few modules have presented many weird, unusable or simply bad equip bonuses. I can assure you players will use an arm piece with Control Bonus ratings if it has a let's say 5% Critical Chance bonus. They won't like it but they'll accept it. But if the bonus is like "when you use your daily your next encounter power deals x% more damage" - everyone will pass.
An additional reason is the lack of gear options to even choose from. In the more distant past, a new module used to present 2-3 sets of gear for a role. We don't need 3 sets but 2 well designed sets could provide the missing variety. Mod 30 brings 4 new armor pieces (head, chest, arms, boots) per role and that's it. There's a no variety to even begin with.
I was an alpha tester for module 29 and my team and I gave extensive feedback about the gear the Lair of the Mad Dragon dungeon was about to award. However, it was disregarded except for only one piece (the Accuracy+Combat Advantage mythic chestpiece which was originally designed as a Critical Strike + Critical Severity piece, similarly with the advanced dungeon piece).
I must confess I don't like the aggressive Item Level push mod 30 seems to try to do. Knowledgeable players will not fall for a higher IL piece if it's underwhelming in terms of equip bonus vs what they're already using. This is why you'll see endgame players wearing a mixture of the items from MLoMD, MDWP and some healers even MTOS.
In my opinion the last time with had overall well-designed equip bonuses is MDWP. Gzemnid items were good too but some were kinda niche. Before these, the dragon hunts had solid gear options. Why don't we see the bonuses brought back? The wildspace modules contain too many weird equip bonuses and the LoMD store just perpetuates the issue through copy-paste reused bonuses. So how can we speak of gear variety in these conditions?
Viperion - DragonTribe guild.
Playing Ranger/Paladin/Bard/Fighter.
Deflect is a terrible stat for tanks, because it does not help in the tasks the game expects you to do. A max deflect tank will die to the tankbuster 10% of the time, rendering it and any severity on it useless, decimating tank progression as those 2 stats are essentially not worth putting points to.
Also it's bad on the other side, where you get to deflect tankbusters sometimes and survive mistakes you shouldn't, so now some bosses do undeflectable tankbusters (like mDOM), making any the stat just worse.
Increasing Defense to 120% is a temporary help at best, tank gear progression is dead for a while and this barely patches it.
Getting Deflect to 100% would actually do more for tank progression than getting severity to 120%. In fact, it would make more sense to get Deflect to 120% instead of the severity. Yes, that extra 20% "does not do anything", except if you are debuffed by something very specific, getting from 90 to 100 would actually give more of a help than increasing the severity of a stat that you cannot reliably proc. So it would make a ton of sense to get it above 90%.
And Deflect does not have a counterstat to be worried about, but severity does and that got a raise.
But will this apply to all new sources of stats?
Things like insignia, companion and mount bonuses, boons?
BTW, you listed 13 current scaling factors and said the value 10 would represent no change. The scale factors add up to 137... so overall... we're a little better off!
Adding a bit to the currrent enchants.
celestial cobalt that currently is 2700 deflect severity simply add +0.5% deflect severity
Celestial garnet that currrently is 2700 power unchangeed
So enchants that give boosts stat you feels is undervalued and 0.N % to the enchant
while them that boost stats thats popular you leave unchanged
option 2: new enchants but cheaper
Celestial Garnet => add 3 enchants maybe with different cuts that each only give one of the stats
Celestial garnet is now
offense 2700 power
defence 2700 defencee
utility 2700 forte
make 3 enchants one for each of the roles and the stats depending on the new weights
a offensive garnet + 1890 power
a defensive garnet +1890 defencee
a utility garnet +2160 forte
a offensive citrine +3510 accuracy
a defensive citrine +4050 deflection
a utility citrine +2700
And then make the cost to refine them one step cheaper than the currentt
a new at celestial should cost as a old at mythic
a new at blue should cost the same as a old at greene
I understand the sentiment here and as an internal guideline, this makes sense, but actually printing seemingly "random" amount of stats on stuff is just makes the system more confusing and does not actually solve the issue.
This would make sense if you have kept with having ~1000 of something, but changed how much high or low stat can you get based on how good they are.
But in this form, this is a bandaid at best and absolutely unnecessarily confusing.
First, people already decided their weights, when deciding what to upgrade. And because it's not a linear improvement, what to improve changed based on how far you were in certain stats.
Also, items do not need to get equal "value" in stats, because when you have capped the more valuable stuff, you will go to the less valuable. A critical strike point item will see use after power and CA is increased high enough, even with equal points.
The problem is, in the case of Accuracy/Deflect/severity, they don't need rebalancing in values given, they need rethinking as stats. 7 Defense will be better than even 21 Deflect, because Deflect needs fixing as a stat. If Deflect could predictably decrease incoming damage 100% of the time, tanks will be improving their deflect AND severity and will be interested in farming for items to do so.
Assuming you are not changing current enchants, those with "better" stats worth more than others. I understand that you dont update old gear, but enchants are "long term goals" for players, and release new enchants with adjusted stats is just a bad idea.
Also, as Vasile said, no matter what stats you use on gear, if you keep releasing bad bonuses, only new people will use those gear until they realize that the bonus is more important.
Caturday Survivor
Elemental Evil Survivor
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Mod20 Combat rework Survivor
Mod22 Refinement rework Survivor
So even though it's "mathematically wrong", we'll stick with the old system for enchants, and declare they are "grandfathered in". Not a perfect solution, I realize, but the best of the available options overall.
As to the new gear powers being the important thing: I agree 100%. The gear powers matter the most, but updating the stats so they are more logical still helps a bit (and keep in mind some gear powers give stats, whether in ratings or in direct % grants, and so those gear powers can be brought in better balance as well). Every module will have new gear powers. Some modules will have especially good ones, some modules maybe won't have quite as many really cool ones. That will be an ongoing struggle, and all I can ask for is that you keep giving feedback on those gear powers, so that over time the people making that gear can do a better and better job (we have some new people working on it now, so now is a good time to let them know what you like and what you don't!).
But it's definitely true that the gear is ultimately carried by the cool new unique powers. Having the core stat numbers closer to correct gives a bit more support and a better foundation for that effort, but it is not in any way a substitute for it!
However, in the case of a paladin tank, we are not getting replacements in some slots since Omu/Avernus, only getting an IL update in Dragonhunter (Mod23) of those same bonuses. In the case of the boots, all tanks are just using that bonus for over 10 mods, since they came first in Avernus.
Long story short, I understand that this mod not meant to upgrade the pieces over the last one, but we direly need a reprint of these ancient effects as Dragonhunter gear should not be considered the final items you ever use.
The images are edited
In the enchants topic, I think a fair solution is to create enchants equivalent to old ones with the new system, and allow players to trade them (BTC to BTC). I saw that the new campaign has just an upgrade for an old one... that you have to refine with 3 coal motes just to "adapt".
In the gear topic, Did you see the new gear bonuses for M30? they are AWFULL. Even the weapon set is worse than the last ones. I dont see a solid criteria, new weapons with +200 damage when we have old ones with +275? more item level but worse bonuses?
Also the armor set, is just worse than old ones... creating gear consumes developer resources... why make them THAT BAD? Overall there are 1 good item in 20 and not for each class.
My general feedback, and I dont want to write a wall of text, is that please stop making bonuses that only work in 1 dungeon / trial, and make bonuses that are either usable, or that enables new playstiles.
In old times, a 4 piece armor set, had impactfull bonuses that could change playstyle or create new builds. That was good design in my opinion, and we were encouraged to get the entire set. Also you could farm and sell the pieces but that is another history...
Overall, each module is BORING in terms of gear, we used to be super excited just watching gear bonuses, new combinations, etc. Now is discouraging.
And players cant understand WHY we get this kind of gear and why each module is the same, since dragon hunts (the last I remember with overall reasonable good gear)
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Mod20 Combat rework Survivor
Mod22 Refinement rework Survivor
This system was designed with ~50k being the max item level at the time. So you'd always get some contribution from your ratings. However as our item level increases, the need for stats increase. Hence why DPS players had 45-50% defensive stats when 50k item level was the max, but now you see people at 25-30% defensive stats. This is because the gap between item level and combined rating keeps increasing.
There is a major flaw with this whole system. As I mentioned before, it is because it was designed with 50k being the maximum item level. Your combined rating has to be between a set value of your item level, rather than a percentage. Imagine in the far future, we make it to 500k item level, and items give 80% of their ilvl as combined rating in average. You'll have 500k item level and only 400k on all ratings, and however many stats you'd get from enchants/insignias/kits etc. Lets say you manage to get 450k on all ratings, you get absolutely no rating contribution from your ratings. Because your ratings are barely within 50k of your item level. I am going to propose some solutions to this, the 1st solution would require all the rating bonuses to be re-built, which is not ideal. The 2nd solution would be much easier to implement, and it is the ideal fix.
1) Changing Rating Contribution Formula
One of the fixes to this would be to change the Rating Contribution formula to Rating Contribution = (Rating/Item Level) * 0.5
This way if you are at 500k item level and 450k ratings. You get a total of 45% from rating contribution as opposed to the 0% you'd get now. If you are at 500k ratings, you get 50%. The max rating contribution you can get is still 50% because of the ratings capping at your item level and the 0.5x multiplier. The only problem with this is that, for almost every item level value 1k rating will not end up being 1% stat. At 100k item level and 99k rating, you'd have 49.5% rating contribution, and getting that 1k would only increase your stat by 0.5%. This would make the stat system a little more complicated, and it is already hard to understand as a new player.
2) Make all combined ratings bonuses match their item's ILVL (The Ideal)
This would fix the stat system's issue and introduce a new issue (which is fixable), too much stats. First of all, the 50% rating cap from rating contribution would have to be removed, because you'd get a minimum of 50% rating contribution regardless of what you have equipped. And then the stat caps would have to be raised to 100% (and the CA cap would have to be removed), and enemy HP/damage values would need adjustments. An optimized endgame group would deal 30% more damage (including the removal of CA cap + some enemy awareness debuffs). The enemy HP in master content can be increased by 30%, and less for advanced, less for normal etc. Similarly critter damage values can also be increased to compensate for all the extra defensive stats we would get (no numbers here because I did not want to go into damage taken calculations).
Newly created characters would have to start with ratings equal to their item level. Or keep it as is, and min. rating contr. is 45% rather than 50%
It should be noticeable to players who played during the time stat rework happened. We went from having 45-50% defensive stats to 30-35%. And it will only spiral downwards from here. The devs can introduce bonuses with more ratings/percent stats to cover this issue without fixing the stat system, however these are all bandaid fixes to cover the flaws of the stat system. The stat system should receive some tweaks to fix this problem.
I'm not sure we will get the new stats distribution on enchantments now, but if we do, I think it could be interesting to see what can be done with mixtures of old and new enchants, including the extra stats from double and triple stat enchants.
I wonder if the new stat distribution will apply to new food and potions? (along with the other things I asked about in an earlier message)
> Currently, the way 'rating contribution' works is, if your any stat rating is within 1-50k of your item level, you get some rating contribution from it. If you have 100k item level and 50k accuracy (currently impossible, however it is just to give an example), you'll get 0% rating contribution. If you have 100k accuracy, you'll get 50% rating contribution
>
> This system was designed with ~50k being the max item level at the time. So you'd always get some contribution from your ratings. However as our item level increases, the need for stats increase. Hence why DPS players had 45-50% defensive stats when 50k item level was the max, but now you see people at 25-30% defensive stats. This is because the gap between item level and combined rating keeps increasing.
>
> There is a major flaw with this whole system. As I mentioned before, it is because it was designed with 50k being the maximum item level. Your combined rating has to be between a set value of your item level, rather than a percentage. Imagine in the far future, we make it to 500k item level, and items give 80% of their ilvl as combined rating in average. You'll have 500k item level and only 400k on all ratings, and however many stats you'd get from enchants/insignias/kits etc. Lets say you manage to get 450k on all ratings, you get absolutely no rating contribution from your ratings. Because your ratings are barely within 50k of your item level. I am going to propose some solutions to this, the 1st solution would require all the rating bonuses to be re-built, which is not ideal. The 2nd solution would be much easier to implement, and it is the ideal fix.
I really hope this will get addressed by the devs
if your rating is 20% of total item level => 10% from gear
40% 20%
60% 30%
outgoing healing 6750 -> 5400
forte 8% -> 7.2%
deflect 15% -> 22.5%
deflect severity 15% -> 22.5%
edited, Screenshot urls no longer work so putting in as full text
Currently if I have 50k item level, it means that with 50k power I would have the maximum capacity of the status. With this update will I be able to have 50k item level and 60k power without my numbers turning red?
2019 blog: https://www.playneverwinter.com/en/news-details/11093193, in the Additional Notes section.
2020 blog: https://www.playneverwinter.com/en/news-details/11481603, in the Ratings section.