balance Update 2011 Stage 1 - Summary

[Phlue4]

Originally Posted by Torcida

Its so much easier to do that by just creating a Poll

yeah a poll would be a nice idea...

[maximus-decimus]

Just make a matrix of all six classes and let experienced people show what will happen while a PvP from

warlock/Conjurer/marksman/hunter/barbarian/knight against

warlock/Conjurer/marksman/hunter/barbarian/knight.

Then you will know the big strengths of some classes and the big weaknesses.
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After that you can name theses strengths and Attributs in PvP!

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Now you image a RvR Fortbattle and give any class a role in this gameplay.

Then you know the faults you made in your Class balance, in save positioning and in Fort construction.

Imagine different scenarios at a RvR-Fortbattle, the try to capture the fort, and the fast arriving defenders that will stop the battle relatively fast. Or the role of a marksman, dann can hardly attack from the way too high fortwalls, or the Melee fighters, dann dont see what happens on the other side of the Fortgate, The warlock that cant always attack from the walls and so on.

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Barbarian is a killing machine with enormous autohits, the fastest class. To give this class kick or feint is a joke and can only imbalance the game

Knight is good as it is now

Marksman has the opprtunity to kill any opponent when, no knight, no warlock has the chance to make a hit on them.

Huntrs have no role in RvR that brings them RP, maybe a little scouting, a little fort scanning and thats it, no RP gain, bad autohits makes this class only interesting for levlers.

Warlock is unplayable with this bounce of marksman running around due to the classimabalance, autohits are a joke, and castring spells with dizzyness is not good for casts.

Conjurer is good as it is now

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One of my ideas for you guys:

Every class gets a steady Buff:

Marksman: +10/+20/+30/+40/+50% damage, rechargable arrows
range of winter to 25meter
burst of wind nop damage
Hunter: +10/+20/+30/+40/+50% damage, rechargable arrows
Warlock: +10/+20/+30/+40/+50% castspeed
windwall with a higher protection + resistance against dizziness/freeze usw.
Conjurer: +10/+20/+30/+40/+50% castspeed
slioghtly higher heals, effektiv deffbuffs to cast on others
Barbarian: +10/+15/+20/+25/+30% damage
Knight: keep the defensive stance.

With this changes all classes can run around prepared for a fight threw warzone.

Additionally saves have to be fixed 1 Central save, guarded!

smaller fortwalls, so the ranged classes can attack from the fortwall, from any!!! place.

Do this and you have a great base for a further game, slightly changes in only some spells like you plan dont bring you any further....

For more ideas i first need asome kind of reply so i get the feeling somebody really cares for community wishes.

By the way i play healer fopr almost 3 years now almost every evening in Fortbattles, i know what i am talking about

[Lekarz]

Conjurer with debuffs ?
+ Better heals
- only 50% cs ?
? What about energy barrier ? At 60 lvl enemies attack a bit stronger :P 1500 points at lvl 5?

[maximus-decimus]

deffbuffs, defensive buffs to support my teammates

If the castspeed is 50% or 100% on level 5 is just a matter that youll have to find ouit after a while, but the ground idea, about steady activatable buffs for each class is the main point i wanted to show.

Nowadays the player that goes hunting meets its enemy fully or halfway buffed, while the other player is surprisaed and not buffed at all. With our over effective knock-Down system these people dont have any change of beating their attacker, this should be solved by this steady spells. After that its the knockdownsystem, the save, and the forts that needs some changes.

All of my ideas are based on PvP and RvR, because i believed at the beginning of my playtime that these are the main features the developers take care of. This is my Endgamecontent, having been destroyed over the years. Any Change effects something, and after a while there were so many negative effects that is it hard to start finding all the great bad decisions that were made.

[Topogigio_BR]

i do think ranged classes need to have good slow, stunt and freezy spells.
If you have this knock down could well be droped to 4 sec, maybe 5 sec to be in pair with max lvl spells, meaning 1 sec per lvl.
Dizzy efects like BOW and even confuse could have efects lowered.

[HidraA]

In my opinion rushing direct to knocks it's not best choise.

Someone suggested ..i think Balint to take a look in first place at all first hight impact spells and i think is right:

Step 1.)Rewanp all first responder spells
First spells that complete disable a player before any fight start.

-Meteor
-Birst of wind
-Wild domain
-Confuse
-Silence
-Kick
-Ambush
(sorry if forgot some)

I think he was right:Longer cast time gave a better advantage to any kind of class to have time to respond at a attack.Also lowering duratioon of effects will give chance to any player to fight back.Longer cold down will breack chains that keep forever dizzy/knoked/unable to buff/cast.

So a sample schematics:

2 seconds(just a random nr...can be longer/lower at suggestion)cast time ->4 up to 10 seconds time of effects (depends of CC and how hight is the impact) -> 30 seconds up to 60 seconds cold down will breack any kind of chain of CC that keep knoked/dizzy till a enemy die and give him the posibilty to fight back.

Second step 2.)
Rewamp all number of first hight impact spell /class/subclass.

Some classes have too many CC that can keep you dizzy/knocked/unable to buff till you die and unable to have possibility to fight back.
By lowering number of them will avoid anykind of chains.
Exampletook just a random class,all class have some kind of chains)
-first responder for warlock Meteor just a random number effects :7 seconds cd 40 seconds
-second responder frozen storm effects 10 seconds and cd 60 seconds.

This chain is breacked because if he cast meteor 7 seconds effects and after frozen storm he will not be able to cast again meteor as usual after effect of frozen storm gone.

I know ..removing/swaping some kind of spells is a RADICAL but is a need to make road to a more dinamical game and fair.

From here i let ppl to think to next steps.Just think bit more logical than biased.

Sorry for posting this but i think it's better idea to rewamp in this way that Balint suggested that rushing direct to some spell a or class.

I think some users will not consider this again a complaint,i just think it's a different vision about way the game need to be balanced,and in my opinion it's better one.

Also there are a few factors that need to be taken in cosideration:
-Ranged/non ranged subclass;
-Damage that deals during CC;
-Speed/non-speed subclass;
-Resist at dmg/posibilty to buff(as energy barrier at mages)/resist at spells.
maybe more....

A real balance is damn complex think...not only give me that spell/remove that spell/nerf to x spell dmg/nerf x class...the true is nerfing a random attribut/spell will breack a chain but will create other exploit.....

Taking closer look to first hight impact spells(PvP situation,RvR situation need to be adapted after):

Dizzy spells:
-Hight impact vs mages(complete disable mages)
-Medium impact vs warriors and archers(here need to think some classe/subclasses need bufs to to deal dmg)

Knocks spells:
-Hight impact vs all subclasses(disable for chartain amount of time any kind of class)

Cannot attack/cast speels:
-Hight impact of all sublcasses

So balancing this spells by importance:
1.)Hight impact spelss:

a.)Dizzy spells by subclasses
-long time cast for warriors and archers,shorter effects by dmg made Example :beast atack 4 seconds dizzy effects and BoW 6 seconds effects,very long CD(60 seconds)
-medium time cast for mages(this is reduced by arcana),medium dizzy effects 7-8 seconds,medium CD 40 seconds.

b.) Knocks spells by subclass:
-Long time cast for all sublcasses and max 4-5 seconds effect
-CD by dmg dealed 30-35 seconds for archer/mage and 50 seconds for warrior(knight has 2 of them now)

c.)Cannot attack /cast spells by subclass:
Cannot attack:
-Medium cast time for archers/mages/knight and longer for barbarian(by dmg dealed)
Cannot cast:
Longer time cast time for warriors/archers and medium cast time for mages.Also longer cd for warriors/archers and medium CD for mages.

etc...

And as a general balance idea of CC:

Split all CC by importance -> Split all CC by Subclass effects(hight/medium/lower) ->Avoid circle of CC-s(CC 1(4seconds effects 40 seconds CD) CC2 (10 seconds effects 60 seconds CD) like this need to wait a certain amount of time to relauch chain of CC-s

[bois]

No doubt, all CC effect durations need to be shortened. That is a must.
No doubt, a lot of the CC effects need to have CD reviewed. This is also needed.
Knock gets attention because of the all around disabling effect it has.
No other CC has the all around impact knocks have. I believe that it deserves tuning first because it is the worst of the lot.

Will increasing cast time help things? I am not sure.
The direction NGD is moving is towards a faster game with more twitch skills. If a player is not at optimal range for skills to be effective (too close or too far) will it do more harm than good? I am thinking RvR here. RvR should be the main consideration in tuning ,in my opinion. Tuning for PvP in a game like this is near impossible as each class has a profession to which their skill set is biased.

Increasing cast time especially in RvR could hurt fluidity? I am not sure.
Will it just drive the game to a prebuff and deal damage thing? Unknown. Which spells should get increased cast time? The 'openers'?
A lot of those spells are openers for PvP but not always RvR. Will tuning them for PvP type situations help RvR? Again, I am not sure.

These are the questions that have to be asked though.

[HidraA]

Originally Posted by bois

No doubt, all CC effect durations need to be shortened. That is a must.
No doubt, a lot of the CC effects need to have CD reviewed. This is also needed.
Knock gets attention because of the all around disabling effect it has.
...

Reedited my post and gave more detail for example...any better idea it's welcome.
I am not pretty sure that it's best option that i wrote there,looks good on paper ,not sure on server.
But main idea is :all CC need rewamp not not rushing direct only on 6 spells.
Just because there is a chain of balance that is breacked again in other point if you rewamp only a spell from midlle of chain.
Also working with larger varietys of spells can be more easy beeside only if you take in consideration a few spells.
Also cast time can be removed from revamp..it's not a must,but cd and effects time for sure is a must.
It's a easy way too ...are just numbers...they game programer can chage them easy...and has hight impact on gameplay too.

And from PvP to RvR:
Main concept of RvR is to fight to a largers amont of players.
Here can be a 3-th step :
Split spells by RvR and PvP.
-Areas by design are for RvR situation.
-Single attack spells are more designed for PvP.
Any kind of PvP spells can be used in RvR too ,by attacking strategic(CC on conj,warlock on main large areas dmg dealers.
RvR means team work and more startegy than casting random CC on all ppl around.
If a CC has longer CD a person will think twice on what class/enemy will cast that CC not only spamming non-stop CC on all around.

[bois]

I must admit I am a little on edge about the increase in cast times. Some how I feel that it might have a negative effect. I agree with you on the raising of cool downs on certain spells.
I am also researching the concept of modulating the GCD as a mechanism to moderate certain spells. This forum is an education in game theory for me.

Seher made a thread and some suggestions with which I agree.

Using beast attack as an example:
Increasing Cast time will just make delivery later. It still delivers the effect which could still be OP or not. It could be interrupted but would that make it too much of an hindrance to melee classes? It possibly breaks the fluid play of the barb for example.
A longer CD means it can be delivered less frequently by 1 combatant. An increase of cool down is fine as it makes the player think a bit more.

But what if the Cast time remained the same (instant I think), the Dizzy was 100% and only 2 (or some other value) seconds on every level? The only thing that scaled was attack damage (or some other facet). Would we need the somewhat clunky cast time now? Just asking. This is just a raw suggestion but you could try to apply it to other CC effects to see if it works elsewhere. I think could work on some spells. It is just an alternate concept.

[Gabburtjuh]

On the: "all cc needs to be shortened"

I think this is a very touchy subject, since this could easily unbalance support vs offensive classes, even worse as it already is.