Balance Update: official thread (stage 1)

[Raideniza]

Originally Posted by chilko

The biggest problem with mages back in the day was that people where able to "dance" to break their casts. We knew back then that Mages may become too powerful we didn't know to how much.

I agree, "dance" removal was possibly the worst update that hit mage gameplay, like you said:

Originally Posted by chilko

we consider that mages are now a machinegun of very different spells and damage types.

Mage gameplay is too static, it's stand+spam spells (at least for warlocks) at no risk at all because if you get interrupted the spell doesn't go on cd, but you're lucky even if you manage to interrupt a spell nowadays (just by moving) since movement speed is simply too slow to counter casting speed and get out of range (unless you're somewhere on a limit of range). I think you should also reintroduce spell canceling+cooldown (just not a 100% one) and remove range 0 from sultar's terror, warlocks are not meant to be used as marksmen last time i checked.

[Gourmandine]

Originally Posted by chilko

Global cooldown on mages will be augmented from 1 second to 1.5 seconds.
[...][*]Arcane Devotion nerf

As many said before, nerfing Arcane Devotion won't solve the problem and will hurt conjurers a lot.
We still have problem to select allies, our number decreased a lot, it's sometimes really hard to find another support conj to play with (the guy/girl you need to be immune to confuse).
Limiting cs is the best you could and should do.

Sultar’s Terror Splash Damage Nerf

Why to nerf sultar? This would already solve the problem:

# Crowd controls of the same type will no longer be able to be stacked to minimize frustration of being rooted for long periods of time.
# A short immunity to crowd control of the same type will be added after the effect to provide some chance of counter action.

Stuff that we will look into in the near future:

• Pets
• Summons

Pets and summons need adjustment only against players, don't make grinding harder. Just make them useless against players (it's supposed to be a game, asking a mob to do the job for you is different from what I call playing).

• Confuse
• Camouflage
• And many more

Although I hate confuse, I think it's needed in RvR. Better give support conj a self defence against it (for example GH lvl5 gives +5% passive resistance, MP lvl5 too, etcetera)

[NotScias]

Originally Posted by chilko

The biggest problem with mages back in the day was that people where able to "dance" to break their casts. We knew back then that Mages may become too powerful we didn't know to how much.

We are still looking into, this but we consider that ages are now a machinegun of very different spells and damage types.

But did you ever thought about how support conjurers life would be so much harder if devotion AND GCD was nerfed ?
Support conjus are already forced to put 2-3 points in devotion to get a decent cast speed due to the retardedly long cast time of most of the supportive spells, if devotion gets nerfed they will be forced to max it, and seek for cast speed stuff, instead of being more supportive.
Support Conjurers are already frustrating enough to play -- too slow, too fragile, long cast times, making GCD longer and devotion less effective will just make them even more slow and more frustrating to play.

Stop always thinking only about Warlocks and Warjus... You're about to nerf Conjurers again because trying to solve the problem the wrong way, and you know what happenned every time you nerfed Conjurers ? Less support Conjurers, more Warjurers...

If you maintain these changes about Devo and GCD, at least, cut all the Conjurers supportive spells cast time by 2, because I really wonder who will play support Conjurer if these changes were applied and the current cast times not changed...

[UmarilsStillHere]

Originally Posted by Gourmandine

Why to nerf sultar? This would already solve the problem:

I think the idea is to make terror generaly less powerfull, though the new CC rules will prevent it being chained so heavily I think a spash damage increase is to encourage it to be used as a holding spell for warriors or other players to deal damage, basically how its used now when you only have 1 terror as opposed to 5 or even more where just the Terrors alone are enough to nuke all but the hardiest player to oblivion without any other spells needed.

On GCD: Increase the warlock GCD but I urge you to leave Conjus as they are, or if possible do as was suggested eariler with longer GCD's after a offence spell compared to a defence spell, or just cut the cast times of support spells, personally I think the latter is the better solution.

Would be great if GCD was based on sub-class rather than over all class, whereas the long GCD isnt to bad for barbs, it hurt knights CC abilitys, I miss being able to use a fast axe and CC several people at speed, hence putting several players out of action and defending my allys, a'la the point of the class.

[theotherhiveking]

That problem is exclusive to conjurers, lower the casting time for the support spells by A LOT and fixed, without tinkering with warjus and warlocks more that needed.

[Froste]

Originally Posted by chilko

which is to have a deeper more tactical combat experience meaning (which implies longer combats).

Double the amount of hitpoints given per each point of constitution. Solved.

[theotherhiveking]

Originally Posted by Froste

Double the amount of hitpoints given per each point of constitution. Solved.

Yeah, fight with normals, run in circles and fuck the duracion/cost/effectiveness relation of everything.

[KryHavoK]

Originally Posted by _Enio_

Is it intended that my range 43,7 normal hit range gets cut down by 7 to 36,4? Its scaling reduction. range 23,3 -> 19,9 range 28,9->24,4 range 34,5 -> 28,6.

Its only for normal hits, i can shoot range 0 spells but normals wont come out.

OK, this just makes me sad.
When I was on Amun I almost had myself convinced I was imagining the loss of range.
I'm still hoping this is either a bug in the Amun code or NGD will see this and say "oops, that's not what we meant to do". Because I really don't want to believe that the Developers read those threads about Marksmen and thought, "Hey we know how to help, we'll nerf Marksmen's range"

Enio-
By the way, how were you measuring the ranges?

[Yttrium]

Originally Posted by Froste

Double the amount of hitpoints given per each point of constitution. Solved.

I really like this idea, but it looks like they're trying to achieve the same thing with increased armor effectiveness.

Originally Posted by chilko

• Tunics will offer more protection
• A bug will be corrected in the armor/tunic protection system that is hindering the performance of certain armors against some damage types
• Armor performance increase in general for all classes.

[UmarilsStillHere]

Originally Posted by KryHavoK

Because I really don't want to believe that the Developers read those threads about Marksmen and thought, "Hey we know how to help, we'll nerf Marksmen's range"

Originally Posted by chilko

range has actually been reduced a little

Apparantly they did. :|