[DEV] Rebalancing changes - Proposition

[trenker]

Healing is now far overpowered. This means that melee and elementalist roles can just use their maximum credits and rely on healer to keep them up in every situation. This results in melee and elemental to waste hp/sap/stam at incredible rate and healer must cast heals fast to keep them topped. This means that only healer has to do work in combat, but it is not problem as there is enough healing power to keep party up.

Now, nerf healing somewhat and it is not possible for a healer to do all the work in combat. What will happen? Melee and elementalist has to start doing something, like conserving credits. They have all means to conserve credits with feints, openings, time credits, single missiles and even using something less than maximum power attack as default combat move.

All this result in far more involving and rich combat where every role has to work for victory, not only a healer. This may result in less stressing role for healer as others has to help. In any case healing won't be hardest role by big margin as it is now.

Lots of testing and various tweaks here and there are needed to make this work as these nerfs can easily end up in disaster if not implemented carefully.

The perfect summary, thanks.

[holina]

Proposed changes look good, I'd say even the 20% increase in double missile cost is justified - mages are insanely powerful atm, both nukers and healers.

Just to illustrate: I do more damage with a lvl160 single nuke (which you already get at lvl145 ele btw.) then a lvl210 melee with increase damage. A long overdue nerf. This comes from someone who is a primary healer and nuker btw.

The boosting of sap and stam gift is ace, finally I will be able to keep up with the nukers more easily and bring a tank to full power faster. A tank without stamina is a dead tank even if he has 4k hp.

What I'm really interested in, is what the new armor absorptions will be, the current values are too low to make the tanks real tanks, so very welcome change.

The only thing missing from this is ranged combat. Please work on that aswell.

btw, if anyone is interested in current damage/hit and damage/sec stats, here you can download a graph I made a few weeks back.

Edit: If someone spots any errors in the hpm values for some gear, please send me a PM so I can correct it. Thanks!

[sidusar]

btw, if anyone is interested in current damage/hit and damage/sec stats, here you can download a graph I made a few weeks back.

Edit: If someone spots any errors in the hpm values for some gear, please send me a PM so I can correct it. Thanks!

That's some really neat data, Holina, but it's not exactly clear how you got those numbers. For example, minimum HPM with a pistol is 30? Most pistols I see on the merchant have about 20 HPM. Do your numbers for range weapons assume the maximum hit rate is used? And do your numbers for melee weapons assume maximum increase damage is used? Do all your numbers assume supreme equipment with 100% on all stats? (It would seem they do.)

[askia2]

I am not so sure about the heal nerf. My reasoning is that with the way the bomb effects works, it divides the heal among the targets affected. I always thought that was the reason why the heal was so powerful.
If they reduce the heal power, they also need to REVISE the bomb effects...

[mmatto]

If they reduce the heal power, they also need to REVISE the bomb effects...

They said to double bomb effects

[asaseth]

The changing resistances sounds like you will be able to wear lower q jewelry, and have the same resistance, which with the adding of a min. stat equip, will be helpfull.

The adding new resistances to the jewels in point 2 is miss named. it is not RESISTANCES, it is REDUCTIONS, meaning that where befor you had a spell that hit for 3k or not hit at all, now you would have a spell that had the same chance to hit, but depending on what jewelry he was wearing, he would not take all 3k, maybie 2.4k or something like that.

the third point, about now being able to absorb the special hits, you know the ones that drop tanks and solo-ers like flies? less ressing by the healer, which will be nice (not PURE healer, but it is double my next highest skill, which is not fighting OR off. magic)

I can take credit for the forth point! Yah! Remember how when they were talking about nerfing healing, and kept saying 'devide it by 3'? I AM THE ONLY ONE THAT MENTIONED REDUCEING THE NERF TO DEVIDE BY 2 INSTEAD OF THREE! And yah, not being able to heal HP as quickly will suck, at least now I won't be flushing all my sap and HP down the drain trying to keep up with the stam and sap useage of the mages and tanks.

The being able to get exp for afflictions finaly will be nice. Mean you can actualy solo those skills, instead of now where you get 200 exp ONLY IF YOU HIT. A steady dribble is better than a drop at a time.

The suppression of the dam reduction during pvp will be interesting. Tanks will get almost the same amount of damage as they are now, but now the healers will be takeing double that. Of course, now ranged will be kinda viable for dealing damage to healers and stuff like that.

As previously pointed out, that whole 'increase time AND increase cost to double spell' will have to be very carefuly worked out, seeing as how it affects BOTH healing AND off magic. While off magic will be able to split out to off magic+off afflictions, healing cant exactly do that. So instead of one nerf and one beni for healing, it is realy 3 nerfs and one beni for healing. Unless you are planning on lettin us healers be affected by our own heal bombs, like we used to, this will be putting the hurt on the healers. Seeing how hard it is now...

Increaseing the AoE is nice, but will it be enough to off-set the problem mentioned in the paragraph above?


Noh
Zorai
Infinity

[ariwen]

Proposed changes look good, I'd say even the 20% increase in double missile cost is justified - mages are insanely powerful atm, both nukers and healers.

LOL, a good healer has a hard time keeping up with you melee experts, who just knows all about everything in the game.

So dont come crying to the healers or blaming them when you cant fight mobs anymore because a healer cant keep everyone up. DP is so much fun to work off with ppl crying at healers, "you didnt heal me fast enough, waaaaa"

[thebax]

That doesn't give a good picture at all. That's how the situation would be if they're only implementing the nerfs. But they're not, they're adding in bonuses as well, to armor, to magic resistance, to sap and stam heal etc. Don't only look at 4, 9 and 10 and conclude that those will make things too hard. Ofcourse those will make things too hard, that's why they're also implementing 2, 3, 5, 11 and 12 to compensate.

I agree that it doesn't give a good picture, but I believe it is an accurate one.Only 12 applies, as stam and sap are manageble, if difficult, to maintain during a battle, I am refering specifically to the current set up for mobs, so I expect those who take the "Ampless Test" to fight mobs without special attacks, and the doubleing of the bomb affect does not matter, because if your heal is your highest, you cannot afford to cast a heal-bomb on a regular basis.
As 12 is the only mitigating boost in my scenario, it would indeed compensate, if they were to double the resistances for armor. I do, however, think this unlikely.
The proposed changes may well be the boon necessary for PvP, I neither know, nor care. I switched to Ryzom because of the lack of PvP, which brings out the worst in people, as demonstrated by the various threads on the subject in these forums, at least one notable example of which had to be closed, due to excessive personal attacks.
I am speaking against the nerfing of healing specifically as it relates to PvE. We are fighting mobs with 2-3 times the health of a melee at the same level, who do 2-3 times the damage, with resistances often far superior to the best captured armor, and which make crafted armor look truly pathetic by comparison, who also have limitless suplies of stamina and sap, and whose special attacks can hit you when the mob is too far away to even see. The only thing we have to compensate for this gross inequity, is our ability to heal well. If that is removed, without reducing the mobs health and damage, at least, to levels comparable to thse a melee of the same level, wearing the maximum armor/jewels/weapons for their level, this game is over.

[mmatto]

"you didnt heal me fast enough, waaaaa"

Yep, poor melee fighters / mages will say that. It is same in other games with balanced skills/classes

[holina]

That's some really neat data, Holina, but it's not exactly clear how you got those numbers. For example, minimum HPM with a pistol is 30? Most pistols I see on the merchant have about 20 HPM. Do your numbers for range weapons assume the maximum hit rate is used? And do your numbers for melee weapons assume maximum increase damage is used? Do all your numbers assume supreme equipment with 100% on all stats? (It would seem they do.)

Yupp assumed max stats on gear and increase damage/hitrate being used.

The actual values can differ depending on the gear and if you use best stanza for the given weapon ofc, but the ratio of the various damages stays the same. The tables show max damage output possible at the levels.

For worst case scenario you would need to halve the stats for melee and ranged, and divide by 4 for elemental - since without amps nor speed nor power increase.

Hope this clears things up

Edit: I was myself thinking about if it's a good idea to calculate with best possible gear instead of easy to access choice gear stats, but it seems that the relation of the damages to eachother stays approximately the same, if we assume same grade equiment.