Balance Update, First real iteration on AMUN!

bois · 07-25-2010, 06:56 PM

Hi everyone,

I waited to post my opinions because I really wanted to see the opinions of certain people that I consider to be experts in specific classes. I consider a lot of you experts. Now that a lot of them checked in I can post more freely by gaining knowledge from their wisdom. Everyone knows I play Knight mainly and as such, most of my experience lies there. Much of my commentary may be coloured by this.

Anyway, here we go.

GENERAL COMBAT MECHANICS

Anything that improves the fluidity of my general combat is a bonus for me. I have found that combat is generally more fluid so that is a positive. On the negative side I find that my apparent positioning (visual) would take some time to get used to. Quite often to hit a normal or a spell after a running target, I have to be visually almost past my target to hit. With spear I am basically on my target to hit. This applies to running targets (away). Stationary or hardly moving targets are just fine. Because I am maybe the only player from Trinidad and Tobago playing and my ISP plays the arse a lot , this may be the reason. We will see.
Generally, I see improvements across the board here so I give this a thumbs up.

Have not tested the Casting time > casting speed in any depth so I think I should refrain from commentary at this time.

MAP

I am glad the map editor is working (did not know it was down) . The Algaros improvement should make things interesting there. I look forward to changes in the teleporter , addition of the new one and possibly move of Trelleborg save. Should be interesting.

SPELLS
Mages:

* Silence: Okay I guess however, I was more thinking along the lines of :
level 1 4 seconds, 180 mana
level 2 6 seconds, 210 mana
level 3 8 seconds, 240 mana
level 4 10 seconds, 270 mana
level 5 12 seconds, 300 mana .
The mana consumption should be adjusted to be more in line with the time (considering it doesn't do any actual damage) to make it more attractive.
I am basing the values on what the description says (yes I know the first one is supposed to be 3 seconds.)

* Splinter wall: This spell was practically useless before but had a few application because of the very long duration (30 seconds I believe) It is now 10 seconds for the same damage and same mana. Now it is totally useless. No way a mage can save himself using it and the damage is so negligible because it is piercing attack ( most around setup up to defend this damage because of archers) that I would be damn foolish to skill it and try to cast it in an opposing army. Area yes, but this one needs work. I see what you were trying to do but this is a big nerf. Consider adding a reduction of hit chance to the mix to make this one more attractive. Something like -6%, -8%,-10%,-12%, -14% hit chance to those caught in the area and lasts the 10 second period in addition to the pierce damage. That might make this one interesting.
* Time master: I could live with those changes. a 100% freeze chance was a bit irritating.

Conjurer:
* Major healing: this one hmm. This might need a whole post. My view on this is extensive.
A few quick points on it. 30 second duration is a bit too short in my view. At least 45 seconds might be more appropriate. I don't think the caster should be affected, I will post separately why a bit later on. The health tick should return to +40 at the high end. I endorse converting it to an area. Reasons will be explained in separate post later on.

* Tremor: The top tier needs to be a 100% dizzy rate rather than 90%. Resists abound already and classes have the ability to increase their resist rate to dizzy spells already. this should at worst be 60% to 100% in 10% increments.

Warlok:

* Sultar´s terror: Well NGD out did themselves on this one. A mega nerf to this spell. This nerf should be called a nuke rather. So we have a spell that could be resisted quite often and considering the type of damage could be deflected anyway if the correct auras were in place. Not to mention the changes to CS which is a game changer on top of it all.
The only problem with the spell was that it stacked so you would be lying on the turf writing your memoirs until it was all over. Instead of doing the NGD philosophy way which is to do 1 change to fix many problems they did the opposite. I found that rather funny.
Anyway, The first and biggest change to Terror would be to not make it stackable, Second change would be to lock it to a 30m *edit* maximum range spell and not the staff range beyond 30 m. Maybe even drop it to 25m range. The splash effect could have been adjusted as they did but from 100% at epicentre to 50% at edges. Consider that knights now have 360 degree areas and auras making the proposed changes by NGD seem even more odd. Harsh words for a first iteration but I this one needs a full rethink. It may be easier to do the % chance thing but I thought more calculations= more lag . I could be wrong there. My view is that we need more things we are sure about and can count on rather than continuing to roll the dice more and more.

* Frozen Storm: they might have to tone this one down a bit to maybe 80% at the high end or else this might become the new time master with damage bonus. Would be very economical to use this one over time master both in mana consumption and where it resides on its tree.

Warriors:

* Typhoon: Typhoon did not need a touch in this round in my view. The length of time to cast it plus CD was enough to keep the spell balanced. they could even move the cast time to 3 seconds to balance this further.
* Mind Squasher: I don't know what this means -> "A bug has been corrected that might prevent this spell to work as intended"
* Thunder strike: No comment yet
* Martial reflexes: No idea if this is fixed or not. A critical hit can only be calculated when a normal hit lands. Then the probability of it being critical is calculated. Concentration is supposed to affect this. Without knowing the equation there is no way we can calculate if this works as intended. In my tests I saw no improvement whatsoever. But then how would I know? I have nothing to base it on.

Knights:

* Heroic presence: Fine
* Shield wall: This is fine, the 30 seconds for the mana is a bit short. Consider 40 seconds.
* Stars shield: Same as above
* Deflecting barrier: Fine

Barbarians:

* Thirst for blood: No comment yet.
* Rage of the earth: No comment yet.

At the end of it all, I applaud NGD for the fine effort they are making here. It is the first iteration so we have a long way to go. I am sure they will tweak and get stuff right. I am not overly concerned. Keep in mind this will be a HUGE update , maybe changing the game in ways we could not imagine now. Keep in mind that the archers have not been touched as well as other spells like darkness etc. Good luck NGD as always and congrats on your communications. The discussions are healthy and vigorous as I expected. Generally positive too!

Regards
Artec

BigManOnCampus · 07-25-2010, 07:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bois

Knights:

* Heroic presence: This is okay once it becomes 360 degrees again. If not then it is a fail.

AFAIK, HP is 360 on both the live servers and on amun. The only thing that changed was the range (from 10 to 6)

bois · 07-25-2010, 07:30 PM

Yes you are correct. Error noted and fixed in original post . Thanks. And by the way Greyman_tle , that is just what I was going to discuss in my next post. The relationship between classes (mainly conju and Knight) in war and why conjurers should never have to be tanks in war if the others do their job or are allowed to do their job properly.

Art

BigManOnCampus · 07-25-2010, 08:27 PM

@ Greyman & Artec

As an experienced knight I know my role and I have no problem protecting when it's required of me. Prior to this update, I would easily acknowledge to anyone that succeeding at making any difference protecting mages in the rear was exceedingly difficult. The knight auras do very little to tank mages against pets, and their range-arc on top of that made them horrendously silly to use when combat is so fluid. There is ethereal mantle to protect any specific mage, but it generally doesn't help against archers since it protects against magical damage only.

The primary threat to mages in war are archers, marksmen or hunters it doesn't really matter. Hunters will wait until there's noone around protecting me (When I'm on my lock) and ambush/confuse/pet kill me. Marksmen will simply buff up and nail me from fort walls after a mage or another archer has managed to knock me down, or when they know I can't get out of their range in time.

The result of this is, mages protect themselves. They haven't a choice in the matter. The only knight aura used previously was HP5 and it was best used around Barbs since their armor points were closer to knights and thus the +100% makes a bigger difference around warriors. So knights instead of protecting mages will usually just cluster with barbs and use their CC and HP5 along with whatever damage they could muster.

If knights are to really protect mages from their primary threat (Archers), there has to be some kind of speed balancing, imho. I would suggest leaving the crown of speed kings with the hunters but improve the speed bonus given to knights, perhaps shorten the effective time for spring (and perhaps increase it's CD a bit) and give knights specifically a passive speed boost so that with the addition of spring 5 knights can make a very fast short sprint and quickly pounce upon an archer attacking the mages. This sort of speed balancing needs to be done in a very specific way such that knights still can't chase down a hunter who's running away at full speed(because the spring countdown is too long), but fast enough to get 10-20m faster than any hunter can move off. If this sort of speed balancing isn't done, knights will in no way want to stay in the rear to protect the mages, because they'll never get a kill (archers will go into a god mode of some kind, sanc, sotw, etc, or just run away), they'll watch all their mages get killed and then they'll be the last ones alive and get pummeled.

Imho:
- Knight aura improvements are good, they let knights actually help lead charges.
- Warlock CC nerfs, if done very selectively, are a good idea, they make locks have to cast smarter instead of simply area-ing the enemy to death.
- Support Conju nerfs are in general not a good idea simply because, as has been described, conjus lengthen combat time, they keep the fight going which increases the fun.
- Knights need more short-sprint speed if they are ever going to be able to protect the mages. If this isn't their role, then the only people left able to protect the rear of a group are hunters, and that's a far more lonely/thankless job than conjurer.

Ulti19 · 07-25-2010, 09:01 PM

Knights auras will greatly protect conj's if they skill for it now. I don't think they need some speed increase or anything. If knight stays back and casts deflecting barrier 5 which is 40% reduction of ranged damage and shield wall 5 which is 40 % protection against pierce, slash and blunt the uncamoed hunter will take forever to kill the conj while the knight can knock and kill pet until hunter runs away. And with star shield and shield wall now being an area buff, the knight can cast on the conjs and move to stop barbs, or help stop barbs charging. Protecting players will be so much easier (from my experience) if these auras stay this way. It is possible to help your conj's stay alive, you just have to skill for it after the update. However, this all depends how people play etc, so of course an unprotected conj will get destroyed by a camoed hunter which hits with confuse and troll attacks, just like an unbuffed barb who is ambushed by a troll hunter who casts confuse has almost no chance to do anything in open field.

BigManOnCampus · 07-25-2010, 09:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ulti19

Knights auras will greatly protect conj's if they skill for it now. I don't think they need some speed increase or anything. If knight stays back and casts deflecting barrier 5 which is 40% reduction of ranged damage and shield wall 5 which is 40 % protection against pierce, slash and blunt the uncamoed hunter will take forever to kill the conj while the knight can knock and kill pet until hunter runs away. And with star shield and shield wall now being an area buff, the knight can cast on the conjs and move to stop barbs, or help stop barbs charging. ...

I respect you Ulti, I'll respect you more if you're that awesome in all your knight stats and have enough mana to cast all those

Ulti19 · 07-25-2010, 10:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigManOnCampus

I respect you Ulti, I'll respect you more if you're that awesome in all your knight stats and have enough mana to cast all those

Surely there will be another knight capable of throwing star shield up ^^
Deflecting barrier5 and Shield wall5 will only cost around 850-900 mana, i'm not 100% sure I forget totals. That would leave me with 350-400 mana to use for fun

Mainly knocking people to the ground so that barbs can kill them or using my ever favorite balestra^^ Also my reasoning is that this will be a group with a variety of classes dividing the responsibilites. But for sure I will be able to cast 2 of those, i'm already skilled for it just awaiting the changes to go live

. (which might take awhile because they said they are preliminary)

I respect you too.

Syrtisa · 07-25-2010, 11:35 PM

Knight is first line fighter... conju second or third... so in order to babysitting - knight need to stay with conju far from enemy...

I really don't believe that there will be 24h/day knight following me like a pet.

You will not hear this often but once of conjus tasks is to stay alive.... no one will do this job better then conju.... and once again conju defended by others is a myth (ofc i am grateful for ppl assistance) .

In fact other conjurer is best conju defender

but since often we need do job solo... so ... if conjuer want to survive he needs take care by him self.... PLZ remember we are only rear guest to front line.

Syrtisa.

Ulti19 · 07-26-2010, 12:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by londo79

Knight is first line fighter... conju second or third... so in order to babysitting - knight need to stay with conju far from enemy...

Syrtisa.

Shield wall and star shield can now be cast and the knight can leave and you will still have his/her protection

This is a very nice change. I'm not saying knights will babysit conj's and that only other people can keep a conj alive, of course that is your work and skill. But we can certainly keep your resistances more buffed than before while doing other things

07-25-2010, 06:56 PM	#1
bois Count Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Trinidad and Tobago Posts: 1,194	Hi everyone, I waited to post my opinions because I really wanted to see the opinions of certain people that I consider to be experts in specific classes. I consider a lot of you experts. Now that a lot of them checked in I can post more freely by gaining knowledge from their wisdom. Everyone knows I play Knight mainly and as such, most of my experience lies there. Much of my commentary may be coloured by this. Anyway, here we go. GENERAL COMBAT MECHANICS Anything that improves the fluidity of my general combat is a bonus for me. I have found that combat is generally more fluid so that is a positive. On the negative side I find that my apparent positioning (visual) would take some time to get used to. Quite often to hit a normal or a spell after a running target, I have to be visually almost past my target to hit. With spear I am basically on my target to hit. This applies to running targets (away). Stationary or hardly moving targets are just fine. Because I am maybe the only player from Trinidad and Tobago playing and my ISP plays the arse a lot , this may be the reason. We will see. Generally, I see improvements across the board here so I give this a thumbs up. Have not tested the Casting time > casting speed in any depth so I think I should refrain from commentary at this time. MAP I am glad the map editor is working (did not know it was down) . The Algaros improvement should make things interesting there. I look forward to changes in the teleporter , addition of the new one and possibly move of Trelleborg save. Should be interesting. SPELLS Mages: * Silence: Okay I guess however, I was more thinking along the lines of : level 1 4 seconds, 180 mana level 2 6 seconds, 210 mana level 3 8 seconds, 240 mana level 4 10 seconds, 270 mana level 5 12 seconds, 300 mana . The mana consumption should be adjusted to be more in line with the time (considering it doesn't do any actual damage) to make it more attractive. I am basing the values on what the description says (yes I know the first one is supposed to be 3 seconds.) * Splinter wall: This spell was practically useless before but had a few application because of the very long duration (30 seconds I believe) It is now 10 seconds for the same damage and same mana. Now it is totally useless. No way a mage can save himself using it and the damage is so negligible because it is piercing attack ( most around setup up to defend this damage because of archers) that I would be damn foolish to skill it and try to cast it in an opposing army. Area yes, but this one needs work. I see what you were trying to do but this is a big nerf. Consider adding a reduction of hit chance to the mix to make this one more attractive. Something like -6%, -8%,-10%,-12%, -14% hit chance to those caught in the area and lasts the 10 second period in addition to the pierce damage. That might make this one interesting. * Time master: I could live with those changes. a 100% freeze chance was a bit irritating. Conjurer: * Major healing: this one hmm. This might need a whole post. My view on this is extensive. A few quick points on it. 30 second duration is a bit too short in my view. At least 45 seconds might be more appropriate. I don't think the caster should be affected, I will post separately why a bit later on. The health tick should return to +40 at the high end. I endorse converting it to an area. Reasons will be explained in separate post later on. * Tremor: The top tier needs to be a 100% dizzy rate rather than 90%. Resists abound already and classes have the ability to increase their resist rate to dizzy spells already. this should at worst be 60% to 100% in 10% increments. Warlok: * Sultar´s terror: Well NGD out did themselves on this one. A mega nerf to this spell. This nerf should be called a nuke rather. So we have a spell that could be resisted quite often and considering the type of damage could be deflected anyway if the correct auras were in place. Not to mention the changes to CS which is a game changer on top of it all. The only problem with the spell was that it stacked so you would be lying on the turf writing your memoirs until it was all over. Instead of doing the NGD philosophy way which is to do 1 change to fix many problems they did the opposite. I found that rather funny. Anyway, The first and biggest change to Terror would be to not make it stackable, Second change would be to lock it to a 30m edit maximum range spell and not the staff range beyond 30 m. Maybe even drop it to 25m range. The splash effect could have been adjusted as they did but from 100% at epicentre to 50% at edges. Consider that knights now have 360 degree areas and auras making the proposed changes by NGD seem even more odd. Harsh words for a first iteration but I this one needs a full rethink. It may be easier to do the % chance thing but I thought more calculations= more lag . I could be wrong there. My view is that we need more things we are sure about and can count on rather than continuing to roll the dice more and more. * Frozen Storm: they might have to tone this one down a bit to maybe 80% at the high end or else this might become the new time master with damage bonus. Would be very economical to use this one over time master both in mana consumption and where it resides on its tree. Warriors: * Typhoon: Typhoon did not need a touch in this round in my view. The length of time to cast it plus CD was enough to keep the spell balanced. they could even move the cast time to 3 seconds to balance this further. * Mind Squasher: I don't know what this means -> "A bug has been corrected that might prevent this spell to work as intended" * Thunder strike: No comment yet * Martial reflexes: No idea if this is fixed or not. A critical hit can only be calculated when a normal hit lands. Then the probability of it being critical is calculated. Concentration is supposed to affect this. Without knowing the equation there is no way we can calculate if this works as intended. In my tests I saw no improvement whatsoever. But then how would I know? I have nothing to base it on. Knights: * Heroic presence: Fine * Shield wall: This is fine, the 30 seconds for the mana is a bit short. Consider 40 seconds. * Stars shield: Same as above * Deflecting barrier: Fine Barbarians: * Thirst for blood: No comment yet. * Rage of the earth: No comment yet. At the end of it all, I applaud NGD for the fine effort they are making here. It is the first iteration so we have a long way to go. I am sure they will tweak and get stuff right. I am not overly concerned. Keep in mind this will be a HUGE update , maybe changing the game in ways we could not imagine now. Keep in mind that the archers have not been touched as well as other spells like darkness etc. Good luck NGD as always and congrats on your communications. The discussions are healthy and vigorous as I expected. Generally positive too! Regards Artec Last edited by bois; 07-26-2010 at 05:22 PM. Reason: error in heroic presence

07-25-2010, 08:27 PM	#4
BigManOnCampus Initiate Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 233	@ Greyman & Artec As an experienced knight I know my role and I have no problem protecting when it's required of me. Prior to this update, I would easily acknowledge to anyone that succeeding at making any difference protecting mages in the rear was exceedingly difficult. The knight auras do very little to tank mages against pets, and their range-arc on top of that made them horrendously silly to use when combat is so fluid. There is ethereal mantle to protect any specific mage, but it generally doesn't help against archers since it protects against magical damage only. The primary threat to mages in war are archers, marksmen or hunters it doesn't really matter. Hunters will wait until there's noone around protecting me (When I'm on my lock) and ambush/confuse/pet kill me. Marksmen will simply buff up and nail me from fort walls after a mage or another archer has managed to knock me down, or when they know I can't get out of their range in time. The result of this is, mages protect themselves. They haven't a choice in the matter. The only knight aura used previously was HP5 and it was best used around Barbs since their armor points were closer to knights and thus the +100% makes a bigger difference around warriors. So knights instead of protecting mages will usually just cluster with barbs and use their CC and HP5 along with whatever damage they could muster. If knights are to really protect mages from their primary threat (Archers), there has to be some kind of speed balancing, imho. I would suggest leaving the crown of speed kings with the hunters but improve the speed bonus given to knights, perhaps shorten the effective time for spring (and perhaps increase it's CD a bit) and give knights specifically a passive speed boost so that with the addition of spring 5 knights can make a very fast short sprint and quickly pounce upon an archer attacking the mages. This sort of speed balancing needs to be done in a very specific way such that knights still can't chase down a hunter who's running away at full speed(because the spring countdown is too long), but fast enough to get 10-20m faster than any hunter can move off. If this sort of speed balancing isn't done, knights will in no way want to stay in the rear to protect the mages, because they'll never get a kill (archers will go into a god mode of some kind, sanc, sotw, etc, or just run away), they'll watch all their mages get killed and then they'll be the last ones alive and get pummeled. Imho: - Knight aura improvements are good, they let knights actually help lead charges. - Warlock CC nerfs, if done very selectively, are a good idea, they make locks have to cast smarter instead of simply area-ing the enemy to death. - Support Conju nerfs are in general not a good idea simply because, as has been described, conjus lengthen combat time, they keep the fight going which increases the fun. - Knights need more short-sprint speed if they are ever going to be able to protect the mages. If this isn't their role, then the only people left able to protect the rear of a group are hunters, and that's a far more lonely/thankless job than conjurer. Last edited by BigManOnCampus; 07-25-2010 at 08:43 PM.

07-25-2010, 09:01 PM	#5
Ulti19 Master Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 450	Knights auras will greatly protect conj's if they skill for it now. I don't think they need some speed increase or anything. If knight stays back and casts deflecting barrier 5 which is 40% reduction of ranged damage and shield wall 5 which is 40 % protection against pierce, slash and blunt the uncamoed hunter will take forever to kill the conj while the knight can knock and kill pet until hunter runs away. And with star shield and shield wall now being an area buff, the knight can cast on the conjs and move to stop barbs, or help stop barbs charging. Protecting players will be so much easier (from my experience) if these auras stay this way. It is possible to help your conj's stay alive, you just have to skill for it after the update. However, this all depends how people play etc, so of course an unprotected conj will get destroyed by a camoed hunter which hits with confuse and troll attacks, just like an unbuffed barb who is ambushed by a troll hunter who casts confuse has almost no chance to do anything in open field. __________________

07-25-2010, 07:30 PM	#3
bois Count Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Trinidad and Tobago Posts: 1,194	Yes you are correct. Error noted and fixed in original post . Thanks. And by the way Greyman_tle , that is just what I was going to discuss in my next post. The relationship between classes (mainly conju and Knight) in war and why conjurers should never have to be tanks in war if the others do their job or are allowed to do their job properly. Art

07-25-2010, 11:35 PM	#8
Syrtisa Pledge Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 29	Knight is first line fighter... conju second or third... so in order to babysitting - knight need to stay with conju far from enemy... I really don't believe that there will be 24h/day knight following me like a pet. You will not hear this often but once of conjus tasks is to stay alive.... no one will do this job better then conju.... and once again conju defended by others is a myth (ofc i am grateful for ppl assistance) . In fact other conjurer is best conju defender but since often we need do job solo... so ... if conjuer want to survive he needs take care by him self.... PLZ remember we are only rear guest to front line. Syrtisa.