Critical hits, bad behavior & "end game" content

[Golliathe]

You might wonder how these are related. But first I would like to request a formal clarification :

1. Are the critical hits supposed to be like this? (where they can one shot a fully geared, perfect rolled, maxed buffed tank).

If the answer is yes then I will relegate my honest attempt at building a tank set and I will do what I see and hear people do - make a build around tactics that completely negate the intended difficulty mechanic. I don't know about anyone else but I think it's complete bullshit that a tank with ~750 health and ~1100 goes down from a rng "oopsie". What's the point of having 55% mitigation if it doesn't work vs critical hits? Making a build that tough gives up a ton of dps; in a game like this it realistically means having a special tank set (meaning you bother to make a second amazing yellow set, and roll it perfectly - ignoring the pitfalls with that).

Is there a post somewhere that I missed that says this is what I have in mind on how these should work?

I have heard people say well it keeps the game interesting. No... it really doesn't. What I see is that people react to what feels like a dirty mechanic by playing dirty and working to ignore the mechanic. Furthermore overtuned critical hits just make the game feel unappealing from an advancement perspective (in other words someone might give up early and not keep playing and not be interested in buying vanity gear from the PG shop).


A. Root

I don't know exactly why but it seems like we are missing an incredibly basic function for root effects : If the highest priority target on the taunt list is out of range, then the monster will immediately switch to the next target on the list. Project Gorgon doesn't do this and I have no idea why. Can we please have this in the game? It's a step towards fair play that needs to be a part of the game or people will just abuse root functions.

*counter argument* : Nerf root! No! Roots generally speaking are special and most classes do not have them (this is good). I have heard people say they liked the root system in WOW where damaging the mob had a chance at breaking the root. That's stupid because then what are you going to do with a root? The only thing that spell has just become suited for is running past content. Is that what you want a root to do? I think not. Root effects are rare, do not last long and generally have pretty long cool downs. I think we just need some tweaks to enemy AI behavior.

Furthermore I request that rooted mobs revert to range attacks if available. For example I would love to see infiltrators in Gk revert to range attacks while rooted unless engaged in melee. This creates a window where your powers are still very useful but you have to be careful when and where you apply them. This would mean that a poor root could cause a wipe if you made two ranged enemies start immediately using ranged attacks.

B. Overtaunt

There are apparently combos in the game where you can apply a taunt greater than the mob's life bar (or close enough to its entire life bar). In other words you can apply 8,000 taunt with a single ability to a mob with ~10,000 health. This makes the game silly because the mob has zero interest in any other party members (we can assume that no one person is going to do more damage than the tank's taunt). The tank is free to run around a circle in a large room or up and down a cleared hallway. I completely shun this type of sillyness. You can also combo this with root so the mob ends up attacking no one (even if we applied the target liste changes mentioned earlier). I want to emphasize that I don't think people would bother with cheap tricks like this if critical hits were on the order of remotely fair.

Cow might need to get nerfed a bit so this isn't an option people can abuse.

C. Mezmerize effects

I'm really not sure why but it is currently possible to apply a bunch of dots to a monster and then you can mez it so that it can't fight back. For whatever reason the game doesn't register the dots as breaking the mez so you can kill very strong single pull mobs with extremely low risk. This is not right. As far as I know mezmerize effects should break as soon as the target takes damage.

When that is not the case you are actually talking about a hold effect (see city of villains/heroes). These are quite silly because you can attack a target and it can't fight back at all. I hope we don't ever get hold effects in PG.

D. Boss resistances

While on the topic of City ov Villains let me mention an interesting game feature in that bosses needed 2x of a specific effect before they were affected (so 2 holds, 2 stuns, etc with a short window of time). I think it might be interesting here if we just said as a general rule bosses were twice as strong against these effects so generally speaking they will only last half as long. Maybe this isn't necessary for stun effects as there is already a feedback limit for those.

[Murk]

C. Mezmerize effects
When that is not the case you are actually talking about a hold effect (see city of villains/heroes). These are quite silly because you can attack a target and it can't fight back at all. I hope we don't ever get hold effects in PG.


I have not experienced the end game proper, but I would say that such a combination of venom strike + mez for example, to hold an enemy at bay is an interesting tactic. In fact more of these types of things in general would be welcome as it makes for a more interesting experience.

On the other hand, if as you say the tactic is overpowered then it may need "looking at". I'd not want to see such a thing removed personally, although I don't use it a lot, and cannot kill high level mobs in this way at present.

[poulter]

I also find 'instant death' crits from mobs intensely irritating and leaving me feeling very unsatisfied, but it does add a certain degree of risk that I find entertaining.

Two points to consider: Please forgive me if the words below are obvious to you, but for those who have not played current end-game it might be useful.

PG is not designed around the concept of the 'holy trinity' (tank, healer, damage).
Many groups use a puller (bring the mob to the group), stunner (crowd control the mob) and damage dealers.
Healing is often taken care of by AOE healing & the puller having a healing skill as secondary,

This works well unless you are part of a 'speed run' where many mobs are pulled at once. Then you need a dedicated healer, but this requires very well geared groups.

Secondly, it is my observation (to be confirmed) that most crit deaths happen from mob rage attacks.
My experience is that if you rage control the mob, a lot less crit deaths occur
Perhaps groups should ensure they focus on stuns and rage reduction rather than prioritise armor and health?

Currently, I have not identified any way of surviving a crit hit from a mob, but I think using stuns and rage control skills reduce the likelihood of them so that they become 'rare' & tolerable.

[spider91301]

You might wonder how these are related. But first I would like to request a formal clarification :

1. Are the critical hits supposed to be like this? (where they can one shot a fully geared, perfect rolled, maxed buffed tank).

If the answer is yes then I will relegate my honest attempt at building a tank set and I will do what I see and hear people do - make a build around tactics that completely negate the intended difficulty mechanic. I don't know about anyone else but I think it's complete bullshit that a tank with ~750 health and ~1100 goes down from a rng "oopsie". What's the point of having 55% mitigation if it doesn't work vs critical hits? Making a build that tough gives up a ton of dps; in a game like this it realistically means having a special tank set (meaning you bother to make a second amazing yellow set, and roll it perfectly - ignoring the pitfalls with that).

Is there a post somewhere that I missed that says this is what I have in mind on how these should work?

I have heard people say well it keeps the game interesting. No... it really doesn't. What I see is that people react to what feels like a dirty mechanic by playing dirty and working to ignore the mechanic. Furthermore overtuned critical hits just make the game feel unappealing from an advancement perspective (in other words someone might give up early and not keep playing and not be interested in buying vanity gear from the PG shop). .




I also find 'instant death' crits from mobs intensely irritating and leaving me feeling very unsatisfied, but it does add a certain degree of risk that I find entertaining.

Two points to consider: Please forgive me if the words below are obvious to you, but for those who have not played current end-game it might be useful.

PG is not designed around the concept of the 'holy trinity' (tank, healer, damage).
Many groups use a puller (bring the mob to the group), stunner (crowd control the mob) and damage dealers.
Healing is often taken care of by AOE healing & the puller having a healing skill as secondary,

This works well unless you are part of a 'speed run' where many mobs are pulled at once. Then you need a dedicated healer, but this requires very well geared groups.

Secondly, it is my observation (to be confirmed) that most crit deaths happen from mob rage attacks.
My experience is that if you rage control the mob, a lot less crit deaths occur
Perhaps groups should ensure they focus on stuns and rage reduction rather than prioritise armor and health?

Currently, I have not identified any way of surviving a crit hit from a mob, but I think using stuns and rage control skills reduce the likelihood of them so that they become 'rare' & tolerable.

Honestly the most crits I have ever survived was 4-5 only due to my quick reflexes and to my shield mods 101% avoid death great bacon and having 1k armor and 750 health to sacrifice 250 health and recovering the armor with shield armor recovery abilities aka 605+ and sword mods 500+ armor recovery that and running after aggrowing the fk out of the entire hall then running away like a bch and praying my group kills them before they kill me honestly I hate this crap but its the only option till they balance everything, another thing I would like to point out is armor mitigation does shit and 1k armor is useless for most builds except probably something similar to me where I only have 1k armor for instant heal also the most mind fking thing is a enemy swordsmen can crit but I cant that and the 2nd most mind fking thing with crits is we don't bypass enemy mitigation from their armor but they do their crits can make hour armor into tissue paper which leads me to believe that their crits our on another system from our own which is good considering if we could do the same that would be op af

Also in alot of cases you die before a healer can save your a**

[ErDrick]

Critical hits from mobs are sucking all the fun out of this game, spent all morning being 1 shot by non-elite trashmobs when I had 600 health and 935 armor.

Dice said you lose, so you lose...is in no way whatsoever fun or challenging, it's just random.

I mean, it's "funny" a few times, but not actually fun.

[Lyramis]

This works well unless you are part of a 'speed run' where many mobs are pulled at once. Then you need a dedicated healer, but this requires very well geared groups.
I am most often in this sort of GK group. When I run as the healer, I find it challenging and exciting to try to keep everyone alive and well. It's fun...until crit instadeath on a well-geared, fully modded, full armor/hp character. Healing is so much more fun than resurrecting.
When instead I run with fire/staff, I find myself often dead because of crit if I take aggro from the tank. I've started to use blocking stance almost every pull just in case of crit.

I really do dislike crit.



B. Overtaunt

There are apparently combos in the game where you can apply a taunt greater than the mob's life bar (or close enough to its entire life bar). In other words you can apply 8,000 taunt with a single ability to a mob with ~10,000 health. This makes the game silly because the mob has zero interest in any other party members (we can assume that no one person is going to do more damage than the tank's taunt). The tank is free to run around a circle in a large room or up and down a cleared hallway. I completely shun this type of sillyness. You can also combo this with root so the mob ends up attacking no one (even if we applied the target liste changes mentioned earlier). I want to emphasize that I don't think people would bother with cheap tricks like this if critical hits were on the order of remotely fair.

Cow might need to get nerfed a bit so this isn't an option people can abuse.

C. Mezmerize effects

I'm really not sure why but it is currently possible to apply a bunch of dots to a monster and then you can mez it so that it can't fight back. For whatever reason the game doesn't register the dots as breaking the mez so you can kill very strong single pull mobs with extremely low risk. This is not right. As far as I know mezmerize effects should break as soon as the target takes damage.


Overtaunt: Running in the above type of GK group with fire/staff I somehow manage to take aggro from our tanks (modded well with taunt) a little too often. And my set has very little dps on the staff side. It's almost entirely utility. Most of our dps take aggro. I wish we had more of this taunt issue that you have mentioned here.

Mezmerize: I actually enjoy this mechanic!

[Citan]

There are some good discussions going on here and I'd like to keep them going! But I'd like to ask for more specifics. I don't get to participate in a lot of group combat recently. I don't have time -- I'm working 12-ish hours a day on the game, so even having time to solo is hard. So I rely a lot on feedback for group combat, and we really don't get a lot of feedback about grouping that's in a format I can act on.

I say I don't group a lot, but I've managed to get in enough pick-up groups to know that grouping wasn't particularly difficult or engaging before we added monster crits. It was basically a cakewalk. (And it can still seem too easy, depending on the level range and group composition... but the crits at least make people pay more attention!) In fact, I do think the monster crit system has been good for the game because it changed the equation from "grouping is too easy" to "grouping is frustrating because it's too hard to control X, Y, Z things." This seems like a step forward to me. Maybe we can dig into more fundamental problems, the kind that we very rarely get feedback on.

Monster crits were added because monsters were too predictable and they dealt too little damage. This solution addresses both problems! It's a first attempt at a solution, and I could fine-tune it (lowering crit damage, reducing the chance of chain crits, etc.), but I'm not sure that's the thing to do right now -- it really was added as a quick-fix so that I could look for other underlying problems. I'm not sure if we'll keep monster crits at all: we may want other solutions to the underlying problems.

If you're unhappy about crits, the questions to answer are: Who was involved (levels, general combat skills type info), what did you fight, what did you do to counteract all that the surprise damage (I assume your team had sidebars full of healing/support abilities, for instance... so were those not good enough? Not fast enough to use?). I need to know how you tried to adapt to the problems, and why it was still unfairly difficult. Help me to understand the issues.

And yes, there are situations where I won't be sympathetic: if you're trying to solo-kill a large number of monsters at once with a CC-mitigated "AoE pit", then I want the monsters to kill you a lot -- a lot more than they probably do now, actually. That's insanely dangerous and should generally result in your death. Were you trying to solo-kill (or duo-kill!) an Elite? Again, I actually want that to result in your death most of the time -- and will probably make those types of scenarios MORE difficult, not less.

But if you're talking about a full group that gets wiped repeatedly because of crits, that's something I don't want to see. Maybe I just need to add a cooldown-timer so crits don't happen too often in a row... but I really suspect that'll hide deeper problems again. I want to dig in. Could you have countered the crits if you'd had more healing available? Are you carrying a bunch of weaker players in the group, and we need better group-composition tools? Or are you not focusing damage well, and the group needs better coordination tools? Better de-aggro? Is taunting just completely useless? Is healing too weak? Is monster detection too good?

This provides an opportunity to improve the game's full-group issues... and I'm not even sure I know what all the fundamental full-group issues ARE. But if you have some clues, I would appreciate your insights!

tldr: I can tweak the "band-aid fix" of crit damage -- but first I need to know it's not bandaging over a more serious problem.

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The OP from Golliathe is a good example, and the reason I chose this thread -- those details about roots/mezzes are good insights and I would love to hear more discussion about those and related things -- things that need focus or improvement, either because they're too good or too irritating.

RE: mezzes and DoTs: mezzes are supposed to ignore DoTs because, until recently, most DoTs lasted 15+ seconds, often lasting 30 seconds... making mezzes useless if even a single group member used DoT effects. Finding the right power curve for DoTs has been extremely challenging, and I didn't feel like DoTs needed the extra stigma of "don't use DoTs asshole, you'll break mezzes". Now that all DoTs are 12 secs or less, it starts to make more sense, but I still worry they would break too many mezzes.

RE: monsters not picking a new target if they're rooted -- that's just crappy AI that I haven't tried to improve. I didn't really think too long about that case, because it opens a can of worms. If a monster changes targets because they're rooted, isn't that a general case of "I should change targets if my most-hated foe is unreachable"? They're the same thing, right? So where do I draw the line? If the monster is moving too slow to keep up (because the player has super-cranked movement speed), should the monster just attack somebody else nearby? Or are we talking about a specific hack for "monster is rooted = find a new target"? In that case wouldn't a 75% movement-slowdown be more effective than a full root? It gets weird. I don't know where to draw the line.

RE: "overtaunt" -- I'd need lots more specifics here to be able to tell what's up.


------

Thanks for your feedback. Also, I've mentioned this before, but since this is a contentious topic, I wanted to remind here: I really appreciate people who are able to separate their emotions from their feedback -- it makes it a LOT easier for me to process it if you aren't outraged at the same time. I'm only human, the game is made by humans, there are lots of mistakes and some of them are stupid mistakes we should have fixed a long time ago. But it's not too late -- we can fix them.

The more you can give me info in a format like "my group did this thing, and we expected this result, but got this other thing", and the less "only a crazy idiot would think X is working", the more practical help you're giving!

[poulter]

Personally, even though I find an instant death /1-shot kill frustrating, I do think the mechanic adds spice and variety to the game and that it should remain.

To be clear in relation to the comments below, I am referring to group runs of usually 5 or 6 people.

The issue that I have is not the crit itself, but that you go from full-health to dead in the blink of an eye, without any chance of healing /mitigating

I have tried maximising both armor and health and whether I run with 500, or c. a 1000 of each, I still instantly die.

To minimise crit deaths I have tried:
Physical damage reduction /shielding builds & evasion e.g. cow /unarmed (i.e. a tank build) - still instantly die (sometimes with what looks like 80%+ mitigation active)

Damage reduction /Shielding build with healing secondary & evasion e.g. Unarmed /Psychology - still instantly die (don't get the opportunity to cast a heal)

Might only be my perception, but it appears that mitigation doesn't impact a crit hit e.g. does a crit hit for 10k damage so that mitigation is irrelevant? i.e. Are crits intended to be unstoppable (excluding avoid death & immunity mechanics)

Rage reduction /stun /fear with evasion builds e.g. Deer /Unarmed, Spider /Druid - success as the mobs rarely get a chance to do damage, never mind crit

Using the last build I can go through a GK run with 0 crit deaths. With other builds I often die 3 to 5 times /run from crits.

[Aionlasting]

Citan, you can't counter 1 shot mechanic with more healing . 1 shot mechanics excluding undergearing, should be limited to player avoidable mechanics. They should not be random unavoidable events. I'm surprised yo u find that appropriate.

[Celerity]

Here's my 2 cents on crits:

The reason why people dislike crits is because of the randomness involved and the inability to properly react to them.

Firstly, the randomness. This means doing the same fight twice can have very drastic results, one time it's easy and another you get a crit on a rage attack and die from near full health. This just leads to frustration since you essentially only lose the fight because of a bad dice roll.
This would not be such a problem if it wasn't for the fact that crits have such a large impact on the fight, which leads to the second point.

There is no way to properly react to crits since if you're not above 90% hp or so, you will simply die instantly.

An example which I used before was the unbreaking worg. While fighting it with a full group of geared lvl 70s I took a rage attack crit which dealt just over 1k damage, since I was only at 80% hp and armour, roughly 500/600 for both, I died. This just simply felt bad even if it didn't lead to a group wipe, since it felt outside of my control from both the rng as well as having essentially no way to react to it. I could have healed up to full health and been able to just about survive, but due to rng I had no way of knowing I was going to be crit and thus needed to be on full hp rather than 80% hp and certainly didn't have enough heals to keep on full health all the time.

Even if you don't die instantly, you will usually die to a followup attack, which may be too quick to get off a heal if there is more than 1 mob attacking you. The damage is far too spikey and there's just too much of a jump from the damage of a regular attack to that of a crit. This problem is amplified even more when it comes to rage attacks, most rage attacks do a large amount of damage already and if they crit it's basically a game over. I already talked about how this can be slightly mitigated with rage control in a different thread, but the real problem is the randomness means you either have to rage control every single rage attack, which is impossible or you simply accept you will still die, just less often.

Now, if you have a properly composed and geared group you will never wipe simply to a crit or even a chain of crits, since even if 1 person does goes down, they can be rezzed easily enough or the fight won without them most of the time. This might suggest that crits are doing a good job then, they aren't preventing groups from being able to do anything at all while making the content more challenging from the "cakewalk" it certainly used to be. But the problem is for the individual player who can get taken out of the fight at almost any moment, it just feels bad.

The solution in my opinion is to limit the fluctuations in combat that crits create. This can be done in several ways:

One way would be to simply lower the damage that crits do to maybe 1.5x or so and increase the base damage that mobs, especially elites do in order to make up for it. I feel this would be an ok solution if balanced properly, but I can easily see this leading to elites simply dealing too much damage for an unprepared group to handle/forces groups to have a geared tank in order to survive.

Another way would be to stop rage attacks from being able to crit. Poulter mentioned this, but also from my own observations I have seen that most of the deaths are from rage attacks critting while a normal attack critting mostly goes unnoticed, unless there is a chain or 2 at once or some other such bad rng. There's also potential to make rage control better but I feel doing this would simply lead to it being op/required.

There is also the idea that Citan suggested of limiting the frequency of crits. I personally don't feel like this is a good solution as although it would alleviate some of the problems of crit chains, I feel the damage would still be too spikey and lead to upset, simply less often.

Finally, there could be a mechanic put in to be able to reduce crit damage. I imagine this as being an attribute that tank builds would be able to make use of in order to mitigate the damage. It would still make content harder overall since you would have to dedicate some of your mods/abilities to raising crit defence rather than some other mitigation or taunt. The problem with this is it could lead to a situation where a tank is absolutely required.

Overall, I think the crits as they are now are not a fun game mechanic and although I agree that something was needed to make group content harder, I don't think crits, as they are now, are that solution. The bigger problem imo is that elite hp is simply too low which means you can usually cc them for the entire fight with just 1-3 different abilities, which needless to say, across a group of 6 is very easy to pull off. I'll leave discussion of that for another time however.


A few followup thoughts on what Golliathe mentioned.

I think roots work fine as is, from my experience the mobs DO switch to ranged if they have it available and them changing targets willy nilly just doesn't make much sense to me.

Mezs again, similar to what Citan said, if they broke on DoTs, I don't think anyone would ever use a mez in group content aside from perhaps on the healing suit tester/gargoyle before initiating the fight in order to kill the adds. As it is it's already difficult to coordinate people in order to not break mezs and I think having DoTs break them would make it close to impossible.

Overtaunt I have never seen. Perhaps on a single target such as a boss but aoe taunt is one of the hardest things to achieve in the game and even the best tanks in the game cannot always hold aggro from the high damage aoe dps.

[Ranperre]

If you're unhappy about crits, the questions to answer are: Who was involved (levels, general combat skills type info), what did you fight, what did you do to counteract all that the surprise damage (I assume your team had sidebars full of healing/support abilities, for instance... so were those not good enough? Not fast enough to use?). I need to know how you tried to adapt to the problems, and why it was still unfairly difficult. Help me to understand the issues.

The issue is with troopers in GK. I have a relatively fully modded cow tank with 800 HP and 1000 armor. I go into GK with fire resist meditation (-20% damage), and stoneskin/fire shield pots. These things can almost one shot me with a crit rage attack. People may complain about the ranged interrogators, but most people with 600+ armor shouldn't get one shot by those.


RE: mezzes and DoTs: mezzes are supposed to ignore DoTs because, until recently, most DoTs lasted 15+ seconds, often lasting 30 seconds... making mezzes useless if even a single group member used DoT effects. Finding the right power curve for DoTs has been extremely challenging, and I didn't feel like DoTs needed the extra stigma of "don't use DoTs asshole, you'll break mezzes". Now that all DoTs are 12 secs or less, it starts to make more sense, but I still worry they would break too many mezzes.


One of my solo builds is fire/ice. I can go super fireball (dot) > fire breath (dot) > freeze solid. That isn't my entire volley, but then I can just wait around for my cooldowns to refresh and heal myself. It feels like cheating. Note: soloing at a range works best because then you don't have to deal with trooper rage crits.

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Re taunt: My cow/unarmed deadly emission does something akin to (900 damage + 1100 taunt) * 325% taunt mods (1 on cow & 2 unarmed), so a little over 6k in equivalent damage, with my infuriating fist doing about 6k too. I remember Yaffy saying his unarmed/shield does about the same in aoe and a 12k single target. I'm surprised to see people complain about this, one of my complaints is how hard it is for your average person to make a tank build. It requires a bunch of taunt and mitigation mods, such that tanking is a luxury rather than a core position. I honestly believe there are fewer than 10 real tank builds on the server, maybe even 5.

[Niph]

My strategy for handling crits:


Keep current armor and health as high as possible. My own max health is low (I see people mention number as high as 800, but I usually have less than 500) but my max armor is high. Keeping the current value high is the key, and for that my builds have high armor regen. When a crit hits me, half of it goes to armor, and I will survive. I suspect that people that die had they current armor too low to absorb it.
Debuff the mob damage, for example with But I love You (-25% damage).


As an example, my Priest/Psychology build is full of delayed heals that bring the health of everyone as close to the max as possible every 10s, my gear has all the armor regen I can get (which I spam on the tank), and my finger is on Triage.

In the future, things could be changed as follow:


Make rage control more accessible / powerful, so that one dedicated rage controller has a chance to do their job. Currently, in a group one healer will be enough, but it feels like you need two people to control the rage created by other members.
Add crit management tools to tank skills. For example, an ability or mod to nullify the next crit.
Add crit debuff tools, for example an ability or mod to lower the chance to crit by N%.
Make only some categories of monsters to crit for +100%, while others could crit for less.


I like the concept of crits and I think something like that is needed in the game. For example, I much prefer mobs having crits than mobs having evasion.

This said, crits for +100% are a problem because you kind of need to gear up and prepare for that, and it makes the rest of the game too trivial. If mobs had a lower base damage, but crit for +400%, the whole fight would be reduced to managing crits, with all other forms of damage meaningless. Therefore, perhaps the right solution is in balancing this +100% value.

[Lyramis]

I had a longer post in my head but Celerity already said most of it.

Let me just add a couple details about my previous comments. These GK runs usually have one person being carried or one person with a half set. That person is almost never the cause of death though. The rest are usually fully modded and geared level 70s. There is a ton of dps. There is a dedicated tank and a dedicated healer. We often, but not always, have fully-modded extra skin. On a typical run we try to pull as many mobs as we are able at once for the challenge of it. I totally expect and want people to need lots of healing and for people to die. We use various cc skills depending on who brought what...usually an aoe freeze, an aoe fear, sometimes a single fear or mezz, and a stun or two. All of it makes the fighting more fun. For myself, what I enjoy most as a healer ofc (pig/priest), is trying to keep people alive during these pulls, whether they are normal pulls of 2 or 3 elites, or crazy ones of 5 to 7 elites. It's the struggle to stay alive that makes it enjoyable. Crit spoils the struggle. As Celerity explained, you are just dead. No one gets a chance to heal you, you don't get a chance to run away or throw on some defense. We have this issue with both the infiltrators and the troopers.

As far as taunt goes I think it's in a really good place considering dps amounts. Accidentally stealing taunt would be less of an issue without crit because it's fun to try to survive after sometimes taking aggro.



Ranperre I have yet to run a GK with the updated cow version. Sounds fun!

[Golliathe]

I've managed to get in enough pick-up groups to know that grouping wasn't particularly difficult or engaging before we added monster crits. It was basically a cakewalk. (And it can still seem too easy, depending on the level range and group composition... but the crits at least make people pay more attention!) In fact, I do think the monster crit system has been good for the game because it changed the equation from "grouping is too easy" to "grouping is frustrating because it's too hard to control X, Y, Z things." This seems like a step forward to me. Maybe we can dig into more fundamental problems, the kind that we very rarely get feedback on.

I have 2 basically perfectly rolled gearsets on max equipped/leveled characters. I made a tank set that was not crap damage (because screw that) and I have a pretty good full dps set also. I usually run into GK with 4/5 or 6 people who are using the same quality gear. I have looked into mods and I could make a "way tankier" option but I don't see the point because crits scale to such a degree that all the mitigation stacking options from skills like shield team would do nothing.

Let's consider two scenarios:

In both scenarios we have a "raid tank", full spec healer and the rest are dps with mix of support.

1. We pull a few mobs at a time carefully
2. We pull groups of mobs recklessly with cheap tactics.

Due to how monster crits are tuned right now it's just dumb in my opinion to go with option #1 (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=1) . Generally speaking most good pulls will be 1 or 2 mobs with a possible add (often a late add - so it's pretty safe).

I find it to be unacceptable when a trooper and an infiltrator can hit a tank who has : 55% mitigation, ~1100 armor and ~700 hp and the tank goes from 100% health and armor to just dead. This is how overtuned your critical hits are right now. A gazluk keep trooper can pretty much kill you outright and so can a lieutenant.

Therefore, standing like a chump in front of the monster is stupid. So it is better to use cheap tactics (that Im asking you to remove so that we have to do the dungeon "straight" - under the condition that you make critical hits massively more fair).



And yes, there are situations where I won't be sympathetic: if you're trying to solo-kill a large number of monsters at once with a CC-mitigated "AoE pit", then I want the monsters to kill you a lot -- a lot more than they probably do now, actually. That's insanely dangerous and should generally result in your death. Were you trying to solo-kill (or duo-kill!) an Elite? Again, I actually want that to result in your death most of the time -- and will probably make those types of scenarios MORE difficult, not less.

It's all fun and games to exploit the dungeon and get loot - but I'd rather everyone was having a fun experience overall. I'm glad you agree that aoe pulls should be more dangerous than single/double pulls. The reality is that cheap tricks+ aoe pulls are safer and faster than pull a couple mobs at a time with a group of highly trained professionals.



Monster crits were added because monsters were too predictable and they dealt too little damage. This solution addresses both problems! It's a first attempt at a solution, and I could fine-tune it (lowering crit damage, reducing the chance of chain crits, etc.), but I'm not sure that's the thing to do right now -- it really was added as a quick-fix so that I could look for other underlying problems. I'm not sure if we'll keep monster crits at all: we may want other solutions to the underlying problems.

If you're unhappy about crits, the questions to answer are: Who was involved (levels, general combat skills type info), what did you fight, what did you do to counteract all that the surprise damage (I assume your team had sidebars full of healing/support abilities, for instance... so were those not good enough? Not fast enough to use?). I need to know how you tried to adapt to the problems, and why it was still unfairly difficult. Help me to understand the issues.

What more can I do? I can drink booze, do high level meditation, have shaman infusion on a +hp neck/ring that already both give health and stack mitigation to about 50 for slashing,piercieng, etc. It does literally zero vs critical hits. I get 2 chances to cheat death and the potions to shorten that timer drop like candy. In a more fair world the yard trash would never trigger both before the other one was up again. It would be super cool if the cheat death mechanic was available for a bad boss pull or something. All it really does is help save on diamonds a bit.

I am 100% maximum geared for this content (other than say missing the complete tree for small amounts of health from death, lore, hollistic wellness, etc.).

What I see right now are basically 4 categories of people.

1. Gazluk keep is impossible and I'm too weak about thinking about going there (me last year).
2. I put my foot into GK with a few friends and got one shotted by a few things (people who are in 60 gear and should be going here for loot but dont)
3. We do a chest run to Melandria or MAYBE sometimes a few bosses with the right friends.
4. We kill everything shit on their graves and write our names on the walls.

It is my experience that all 4 groups suffer from the same problem : "oops lul got hit ko'd".

That tells me critical hits are WAY overtuned.



But if you're talking about a full group that gets wiped repeatedly because of crits, that's something I don't want to see. Maybe I just need to add a cooldown-timer so crits don't happen too often in a row... but I really suspect that'll hide deeper problems again. I want to dig in.

That is exactly what is happening right now. I dont think a cooldown timer is the right way to go - again because one mega super crit and one other hard hitting mob (infiltrator) will still kill the tank outright. As a reminder the Lt. can still kill you in one hit.

In order for the dungeon to be fair we need crits to be more counterable as an idea. For example if you are doing a dungeon and you have a room full of wizards in the next room as a shield tank you go hold up.... and you pull out elemental ward to take less damage from spells.

Critical hits currently allow for no room to smartly engage them other than stacking health, armor, mitigation or evasion. I made this thread because I want to help you build a better game.

What if you made critical hits be something that happened based on % armor remaining?

As the player you now have a chance to reduce the amount of crits you will take by actively keeping your armor up. This would make your armor bar just as important as your health bar. This is a possible solution based on the tools already available in the game as many class combinations have mods available to restore armor to self or others.

This would make certain classes far more desirable in terms of helping to prevent crits. For example I would love to see groups say.... damn we don't have a mentalist who can use armor wave - maybe we shouldn't go down to the second floor tonight.

This would also give EVERYONE in the party a chance to help keep the tank alive while still doing damage. Why? Because at the very least everyone can save their armor patching for the tank.

I would like to suggest a couple of rules:

1. Only bosses can critically hit players while their armor is 90% or higher. As your armor % goes down the chance for you to be critically hit goes up.
2. Mitigation either needs a complete revamp or should soften critical hits BEFORE their massive damage modifier (currently other options are like 5x better)***
3. Keep critical hit damage high but preventable with smart play; you might start a fight with 1000 armor and be like iron but if your armor drops to zero then you become soft like butter. This gives players room to build armor setups that restore armor mid fight (or team composition to do that) and keep armor out of dangerous one hit kill zones though active play. In order for that to happen rage attacks should probably not be able to critical hit (except maybe with bosses- I would be 100% ok with them being special and mean). The idea of only a boss being able to critical hit with a rage attack further gives value to the idea of active play as your job as a member of the team is to reduce the boss's rage bar while dealing damage.

*** n.b. : I am sure are aware that mitigation is currently kinda crap; you gain invulnerability to low level mobs and only take a minor amount of reduced damage from equal level content.


Could you have countered the crits if you'd had more healing available?

Let me repeat. In a category 4 group the tank often goes from full health to dead on a 2 mob pull. In my opinion that should happen when something goes wrong like : the tank got snared (and the priest went afk 2 seconds and can't cast unfetter). How would you do more healing? Full health - both mobs hit you (one hit is a critical hit) - you are dead.

This is beyond garbage and should not be a thing that people who play in GK just accept on any given day. There is no "fun" way to counteract that.



Are you carrying a bunch of weaker players in the group, and we need better group-composition tools? Or are you not focusing damage well, and the group needs better coordination tools? Better de-aggro? Is taunting just completely useless? Is healing too weak? Is monster detection too good?

This provides an opportunity to improve the game's full-group issues... and I'm not even sure I know what all the fundamental full-group issues ARE. But if you have some clues, I would appreciate your insights!

None of those things are an issue. You are alive - you take a critical hit + one more hard hit - you are dead. Please delete this from the game forever as it currently stands.



tldr: I can tweak the "band-aid fix" of crit damage -- but first I need to know it's not bandaging over a more serious problem.

RE: mezzes and DoTs: mezzes are supposed to ignore DoTs because, until recently, most DoTs lasted 15+ seconds, often lasting 30 seconds... making mezzes useless if even a single group member used DoT effects. Finding the right power curve for DoTs has been extremely challenging, and I didn't feel like DoTs needed the extra stigma of "don't use DoTs asshole, you'll break mezzes". Now that all DoTs are 12 secs or less, it starts to make more sense, but I still worry they would break too many mezzes.

Maybe this one isn't so bad. I always hated looking back at some games when the Mez was broken by a DoT. You wouldn't want to load up a boss with dots and then mezz him for example - it would just fill his rage bar with sub par damage.

I just wanted to mention it for full coverage.




RE: monsters not picking a new target if they're rooted -- that's just crappy AI that I haven't tried to improve. I didn't really think too long about that case, because it opens a can of worms. If a monster changes targets because they're rooted, isn't that a general case of "I should change targets if my most-hated foe is unreachable"? They're the same thing, right? So where do I draw the line? If the monster is moving too slow to keep up (because the player has super-cranked movement speed), should the monster just attack somebody else nearby? Or are we talking about a specific hack for "monster is rooted = find a new target"? In that case wouldn't a 75% movement-slowdown be more effective than a full root? It gets weird. I don't know where to draw the line.


Some things should probably be kept secret. I can tell you 100% that most people wont be able to make use of scary snare tricks (how many aoe snares are there in the game anyway besides ice). The problem with kiting is that it requires a safe empty run space. Does GK have that? No.

Looking back at older mmo games, I think they went with : If I am rooted then I seek the highest threat that I can reach.

What if you added a fallback % that you keep secret? For example say you said ok if you deal 20% of my life I'm gonna switch to you if the tank is way out of range - in the case of a snare or maybe a root too.



RE: "overtaunt" -- I'd need lots more specifics here to be able to tell what's up.


I don't know how this works either. I've seen people as a cow go - "watch this". And then suddenly no matter what you do after an initial touch taunt you cannot get the mob to attack you. I put this in the category of fun but abusive (and generally opens the door for cheap tricks).

The short version is basically you can do some combos with gear/consumables and you taunt for almost all of the monster's health. Essentially you can taunt for around 80% of the monster's total life. What are the odds one person in the group will ever do more damage than that with 6 (possibly 5) people attacking the monster? And then say that is the case - one person has done 81% of the monster's total life and they now have aggro. It doesn't matter because the monster is 81% dead and will be all the way dead in just a moment. Up to the point of 80% health damage done the monster was trying to find the person that did 80% taunt but he couldn't so no one in the group even got attacked.




I think you asked earlier is it too hard to taunt. It may be too easy to taunt with cow relative to human counterparts. Can anyone who has this build or close to it for example fill in how the math works?

http://www.gorgonexplorer.com/build-planner

jtei455r


*Nerf cow?* - I don't think so. If you could wave a magic wand and changed crits to what I suggested cow would still be a good tank. It would be easier to taunt relative to a human while still being very tanky; it would however be more vulnerable to critical hits after losing armor. This I think would make more end game armor sets be appealing in end game content rather than the nearly pervasive thought - cow or gtfo.

The only issue I see with tanking right now is that you pretty much have to stack in a stupid way to make a tank work. It shouldn't NEED to be that way. An obvious example of what I'm talking about is shield/unarmed. If Yaffy would be willing, I would love to see his setup (or anyone else running a variation). Unarmed is "meant" to be played without anything in your hands and using a shield obviously breaks the intent. I hate to see needing to play classes "incorrectly" to create a work around to be able to tolerate critical hits.

What are the other viable combos? Staff/shield, Sword/shield. Are there any others? Ah yes of course... I forgot the fabulous bunny/unarmed combo.

What if we did change the rules with armor as a primary defense to critical hits? Would that not open the door to more classes being viable as a tank? I think that would be good for the game as a whole. One of the selling points of this game is that you hear people say : any two classes put together makes for a good combination. Currently that's a lie.

Let us consider something that nobody has probably ever considered: Ice/shield.

build code is :jtekbn0x

I threw this together in a short amount of time with a great deal of care. Unless I made a mistake every armor/jewelry piece has been left with expansion for +armor and + health (considering a crafted armor build).

You would get laughed out of a group for showing up with this currently. It's a noble idea for a tank build that just doesn't work. But it would probably be decent as a tank (enough to do the first floor Gk bosses maybe besides golem) if keeping your armor nearly fully protected you against critical hits.


I realize this post is rather long so I'll make some closing thoughts.

1. I have not heard of any other ideas for critical hits that gives the player an active way to counter them (other than passively stack defenses). I feel like this is the most important part because as the player it's not so bad facing a difficult game element that you can overcome with planning, careful attention to detail/game skill and hard work (grinding out mats for armor and experiencing the joy of that yellow crafted piece). The only counter right now is : stack health/armor/evasion and bring lots of diamonds.

2. If crits are based on % armor remaining it doesn't nerf any current working tank builds (except maybe by proxy as a new hotness has emerged); you will expect to take less damage on the front end and more damage on the back end as the enemies chew through your armor. I think this would help keep many players happy as nobody wants to wake up to find that the gear they worked for is now worthless. This change would also not require any new gear mods to be added to the game!

3. This opens the door for people to try new things rather than go to one of the 5 builds that works. I feel this is also a necessary component in a game like this because nobody really enjoys when you can play 90% of the content as any two classes. But then when you get to the end game you find that your build is not suitable for max tier content. Nobody wants you and you can just go right back to sub end game content or change to one of the builds that works. I personally hate elitism of that sort and I really don't like it when a game forces you to pick ABC even though there are all these other combat class options.

This is exactly the type of thing that bugs me - you see people in chat say : don't play necro, don't play knife, dont play ice. I'd love to reinvent certain aspects of the game so that people would say things like "man I wish we had a necro/ or a knife guy for this boss - otherwise he is so hard".

[poulter]

Regarding Taunt:

Using a Fire build, I often draw aggro off the puller /tank, but it is self-inflicted and is usually caused by the Super Fire Ball mod that enrages target by 300%
e.g. A SFB hitting for a base damage of 1593 + 2 to 202 for times 3 aggro is my issue not the games, as I have the option to use /mod it or not.

Pro-tip: If you use a max modded fire build, learn to kite, stun, heal or carry self-ressurection potions - or use secondary skills with damage immunities.

Fire builds are the only ones that I typically break aggro lock on a geared puller /tank.
I would consider taunt to be in a good place at the moment.

[Golliathe]

The issue is with troopers in GK. I have a relatively fully modded cow tank with 800 HP and 1000 armor. I go into GK with fire resist meditation (-20% damage), and stoneskin/fire shield pots. These things can almost one shot me with a crit rage attack. People may complain about the ranged interrogators, but most people with 600+ armor shouldn't get one shot by those.

-----

Re taunt: My cow/unarmed deadly emission does something akin to (900 damage + 1100 taunt) * 325% taunt mods (1 on cow & 2 unarmed), so a little over 6k in equivalent damage, with my infuriating fist doing about 6k too. I remember Yaffy saying his unarmed/shield does about the same in aoe and a 12k single target. I'm surprised to see people complain about this, one of my complaints is how hard it is for your average person to make a tank build. It requires a bunch of taunt and mitigation mods, such that tanking is a luxury rather than a core position. I honestly believe there are fewer than 10 real tank builds on the server, maybe even 5.

This is probably an excessive amount of taunt when you think about other mmo style games (but do we want this game to be like all the others?). You shouldn't need to go to this extent to try and hold mob aggro. But by the same token I don't think you should press one button and then the group is "safe" from damage until they deal more than 6k damage. Correct me if I am wrong here but that is exactly what I'm talking about with overtaunt? That leads to silly and almost effortless play as a dps character. You can just unload with your biggest damage hits without thought or regard to the consequences.

Most games have a flowchart of ideas and one of the principle concepts is that the tank is supposed to be getting hit not the dps. The damage character wants to lead with their most damaging spells in descending order. And doing that usually gets you killed because you pulled aggro off the tank. So they almost have a little mini game to play - learning when they can use their big hits (hint: it's at the end of the fight not the beginning).


I'm asking the question: Is this the intended design you have for the game? Is it ok for a tank to have a 1 tap press so that nobody in the group gets attacked? Maybe thats why the taunt %'s are so high for cow and this is in fact an intended design feature for cow.

As a dps character I love it. But like you mention about your fire/ice build... it kinda feels like cheating. In most rpg games like this I would be dead on the floor if I started fights with 5,000 damage with 4 spells.


I suppose I am suggesting the following based on how other games work:

1. Give all tanky sets an innate taunt % so that they don't have to "waste" mod slots on extra taunt.
2. In exchange reduce some of the massive aoe taunts.
3. Maybe nothing is wrong here. Maybe I'm an idiot and this is part of what makes PG special. Tanks have an "I win" taunt button that keeps anyone from being attacked for the rest of the fight. (to be clear this isn't sarcasm).

[ProfessorCat]

A couple of thoughts about the unbalance regarding unexpected or "cheap" tactics the enemies use.

Chain stuns:
I love the stun mechanic, and it really is needed for most builds, and certainly any group dungeon attempt. However getting chain stunned - resulting in death - brings my joy level to zero, and my blood pressure to rage attack. A really noticeable place this can happen is Yeti cave with the yeti war screamers, where even a small group of 3 yetis (often most battles in yeti are 3+ mobs)can kill a level 70 player.

Another place I see chain stuns happen are in longer combat with multiple mobs, whether soloing wolf cave, or fighting a handful of orcs in GK. Let's say you're tanking, and the group is fighting 4 of the same mob. If the whole group is focused on the first mob, then the other 3 are building their rage bars in sync. Let's say all 4 mobs are still alive when the monster rage bars get full. Now the initial puller has a stack of 3 or 4 stuns on them, and once again you find that frustration where you are stunned for too long of a length of time to have a response. Yes, this is where healers should come into play, but being stunned for 5+ seconds is never fun. Ever. Battle is fun and stressful - in a good way, but with high emotions during combat, its easy to turn a positive rush of emotions into an equally powerful negative emotion.

Skill Lockout
A couple examples I see skill lockout as a positive are the Llamia mobs, and the Golems rage attack. These are FUN mechanics that are also expected. I love the thrill from back when Lab was top dog. If you had new players, you always had to stop and explain "expect this lockout on burst, manage rage, have your heals, and stack your DOTs" The one time a group actually survives a "whoopsie" 2 golem combat was legendary, and made us feel powerful! Such a fun way to handle a frustrating mechanic. Same to be said for the llamias. Let the tank get locked, and archers/mages better go for the llamia first!

An example where it makes me want to throw my monitor out the window is combat with the tacticians in GK. It's too common. As the above situation with the stuns, if you have 2 or 3 tacticians, their rage attacks are going to be around the same time if you cant kill them before they rage - which isn't probable, and also probably not intended to be able to kill gk elites before they rage.

I've always thought that if the lockout on rage was intended to make the combat longer, then why don't they just have more hitpoints. I understand the differences between lockout and stun. One you can move while under the effects, the other you cant. I would dare say that stuns are less frustrating, due to their shorter length, and typical single target mechanic. The Tacticians use it as a burst, reducing fun for the entire party at once. If there was a mod for panic charge that gave monsters lock-out, I'd wager 3/4 the server would use mentalism.

Critical hits
Honestly, reading Citan's reply makes me think the crits are working exactly as intended. I've also never gotten as upset about crits as I have stuns/lockouts. I play defensively most times, and anticipate entering combat and plan my shields, heals and buffs guessing I'm going to be crit a couple of times. I've not noticed any more death in my solo adventures than I did before crits were released.

I understand this will be an unpopular opinion, but I think crits are working as advertised, and don't net me a noticeable loss of fun. We should all have gotten used to dying in Anagoge, or the original cave. And if you're in GK without a res, you're a bad teammate. Similar to above where I mentioned it's a memorable experience to take on a difficult situation. It's a memorable experience if a party wipes, and you can choreograph everyone being revived without having to re-spawn. These are those moments that make PG special. I certainly don't want an easier time. Just less frustration.

One hit kills - Regardless of HP/Armor
I'm not talking about crits, I'm talking about the kraken burst attack. When I had over 1k armor, and 900hp, with a 40% damage mitigation buff on, the kraken did 1700 damage to me. I understand it's an event monster, but there is virtually no way to block that attack if you're melee (you're also usually stunned before it goes off if you have agro, so you cannot run) I can't think of other mobs that this is capable of, but if there is any boss that can crit a burst rage attack for over 900 damage, it's not ever going to be perceived as fun (scale for the intended levels of course, at level 100 I hope I have more than 1k hp)

Possible Solutions
Pulling mobs without calling for help. With the GK patch, came a "correction" to hook shot(archery) and grappling web(spider). Both of these skills now make mobs call for help, where they did not int he past. This made the impossible task of pulling that beetle before Llamia locks us all out of combat actually doable. We've never had a GK experience with this option either.

I understand it was unintentional, and was corrected. I put in the suggestion a couple of times in game, but I'll beat the drum again, and suggest a rare mod to bring this back. Those two skills IMO are the best ones to use it, as they are the only two "pulls". Thematically, I really can see grappling web shot over a mobs face, keeping them from calling for help. Hook shot.... well maybe change it to Net shot, or harpoon. Even if these two skills don't get this option, I believe pulling a single mob without calling for help on a longer cooldown skill would add value to the game, without breaking it.

Crit immunity? Perhaps you cannot be crit again for 5 seconds after suffering a crit. I'm not a coder, and I'm sure that's a lot of extra work. I've noticed that it's usually getting crit back to back that results in my death, rather than just one.
-------------
I hope it doesn't come as a self plug (but hell, self plug too!) I've qued up start times of GK groups from a few dungeon crawls in case you wanted to view a sample of what it looks like.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/397008732?t=00h39m14s
Semi-coordinated full group doing all bosses in GK in a little over 3 hours - fairly reckless pulling, and a handful of deaths, I dont think we wiped until the end.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/391967574?t=01h36m51s
Group of 5 going until we got "stuck" on the map, and had to recall beginings to get out.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/395568646?t=02h06m08s
Group of 6 making their way to the bottom, and wiping to a group of a million beholders

I had a very enjoyable time on each of these runs.

---------------------

Lastly, I can't thank the devs and admins enough. I love this game. It makes people feel excitement in a way they haven't since childhood. I get so heated when I lurk the forums or discord, and unfortunately sometimes ingame chat, because the negativity is always the loudest. I know the internet has been heading that way as a whole, but it saddens me to see it seep into this community.

I spent some time as a volunteer firefighter, and when I found myself frustrated, I would remember that we only see the people who are struggling and in need of help. The regular, upstanding, and healthy people don't call 911. I think that sentiment applies here, and the majority of people who play this game aren't going onto the forums to tell you how much they appreciate all this hard work, so please please please don't take the emotional criticism to interpret that people aren't enjoying Project Gorgon.

[Lyramis]

Regarding Taunt:

Using a Fire build, I often draw aggro off the puller /tank, but it is self-inflicted and is usually caused by the Super Fire Ball mod that enrages target by 300%
e.g. A SFB hitting for a base damage of 1593 + 2 to 202 for times 3 aggro is my issue not the games, as I have the option to use /mod it or not.

Pro-tip: If you use a max modded fire build, learn to kite, stun, heal or carry self-ressurection potions - or use secondary skills with damage immunities.

Fire builds are the only ones that I typically break aggro lock on a geared puller /tank.
I would consider taunt to be in a good place at the moment.

Very true! It usually is a fire build. But also lycan/psy build (still) and even sometimes AH/necro build. I am sure there are others. But like I said above, this isn't really a problem once you take crit out of the equation. It's fun to scramble after someone steals aggro. If no one ever took aggro from the tank, it might be a little boring.

[Yaffy]

My biggest problem with critical hits now is that it heavily limits what kind of builds you can make for tanking. Currently I believe the only "proper" tanking skill in the game is unarmed, and critical hits only make it more blatant how much better it is than other tanking skills.

The first and biggest reason for this is the huge difference between percentage based mitigation and flat mitigation. Percentage based mitigation is great because it can reliably tone down the damage you take. Whether you're taking 10 damage or 1000 damage, 50% mitigation is going to cut the damage by half. Percentage based mitigation was already great before critical hits were a factor, but now that they are, it's basically the only way to reliably mitigate them. The problem is that percentage based mitigation is uncommon and only found in a few rare places, so most people don't have the ability to survive against crits.

Even considering all the skills with percentage based mitigation, unarmed is still the most consistent, because it gains its mitigation passively and through attacking. Skills like Staff/Shield/Ice Magic have the ability to reduce damage by a percentage, including by 100%, but the issue is that they rely on cooldowns to do so and don't have 100% upkeep on these buffs. This means if you rely on tanking with these skills, your game plan is to run in, taunt enemies, and then hope your party kills the enemies before your buffs run out or use another method of negating damage (Ex. Rooting the enemies and then running away). That's not to say this kind of strategy can't work, especially if your party's DPS is very high, but you're not so much tanking as much as you're just delaying the enemy by a fixed amount of time.

And then even on top of that, unarmed still has weaknesses. That's a good thing obviously balance wise, but it does reflect on issues with critical hits and show how limiting critical hits are. For example, unarmed doesn't have the ability to mitigate elemental damage. That means even if you can reduce the damage of everything else to manageable levels, you can still eat a huge nuke from elemental mobs like Gazluk troopers. Fire damage is a very common damage type throughout the whole game, but fire mitigation is extremely rare, especially % based mitigation. Aside from elemental ward on shield, deflective stance on staff and cryogenic freeze on ice magic, tanks have no way to cut down elemental damage by a percentage. This means every tank needs to be running one of these skills to mitigate elemental damage. If you're an animal tank, then mitigating elemental damage is extremely difficult outside of using very specific, low level armor pieces which naturally have fire resistance. Even on top of elemental ward/deflective stance, EVERY tank should be running meditation 39 for that extremely valuable fire resistance no matter what. This isn't too bad since it's available to everyone, but as an unarmed tank every other meditation and all the other effects are worthless compared to 20% fire resistance, and I don't think this meditation should be so ridiculously important.

Aside from building within these very specific guidelines, there are some ways players build around crits, but these methods are generally unreliable and not suited for tanking multiple enemies at once. For example one of the more common methods is just stacking lots of health and armor so your health pool is large enough to take a big nuke. This isn't sustainable though because unlike mitigation, it's extremely difficult to heal someone who is only surviving on health back up to full, and your effective HP is still significantly lower than someone using percentage based mitigation. There's some other forms of mitigation as well, like evasion which animal forms tend to be good at, but these are also random and unreliable unless if you're already very tanky.

If you don't have a reliable way to tank/cheese enemies or burst them very quickly so they can't properly attack you, then gameplay boils down to making your revives come off cooldown faster than party members die, which isn't very fun. You don't have much control over this aside from standing around and killing time between pulls to give your revives some extra time to come back. This is the kind of gameplay everyone really hates that might be mistaken for "Difficulty" or "Interesting" game play since it slows people down. I don't mind the game being more difficult, but just because the game throws out random deaths and people have to slow down to let revives come off cooldown isn't making the game more skillful. At the very best you could argue that people have to come more prepared, otherwise the difficulty is just artificial.

Also I should ask just to make sure, but it is correct to assume a dedicated tank player should be able to pull more than one mob right? Currently a group with no tanks can still clear Gazluk quite reliably, meaning tanks aren't necessary. That's 100% fine, but that means in order to be useful, a tank needs to be able to allow a faster, more reliable clear compared to a full damage team. This usually means having the ability to pull more enemies at once or consecutively so damage builds can take advantage of AoE abilities and to lessen downtime between pulls to make up for the loss in damage.
So basically how many enemies should a group be pulling in group dungeons? Should a full DPS group be pulling only 1 elite at a time? Should a group with 5 DPS and a tank/healer be pulling 2? A group with a tank and healer be pulling 3 or 4? Should a group with no dedicated tanks/healer even be able to beat the dungeon? I would really like to know because it'd really help us give feedback to what you want group play to be like.

For an alternative to critical hits, I think a better alternative to critical hits would be enemies having a larger move pool (At least two non-rage attacks), and then having enemies randomly select between them. This would keep combat much less predictable, while being more interesting. If an enemy feels too easy, then one of their moves could be purposefully stronger than their normal attack as a sort of "Mini-crit".

There's a lot of potential to make some enemies more fun and interactive with this. For example, Gazluk Tacticians have a lightning sigil move that might as well not exist. Usually because they just place it in a stupid location where it'll hit no one in combat, it's not very powerful, it dies to AoE pretty easily, and they usually die before the cool down lets them place another. But now imagine if tacticians had a 25-50% chance to summon the sigil instead of their normal attack. This would mean sometimes you'll fight them and they'll never use it, or sometimes you'll fight one and they'll decide to summon 10 in a row. This means that the group needs to play differently depending on what the tactician decides to do, and be ready with AoE and/or knockback skills to destroy the sigils if the enemy tries to overwhelm the group with them. It would make the enemies feel more alive and players will have to react based on what the enemy does.



Unarmed is "meant" to be played without anything in your hands and using a shield obviously breaks the intent. I hate to see needing to play classes "incorrectly" to create a work around to be able to tolerate critical hits.

I don't think that's true. Unarmed has lots of abilities that you can use with one hand empty or no empty hands. If it was intended to only be used with two empty hands then why would those abilities exist? Plus, the very first skill set given to you is Unarmed/Sword which leaves you with only one hand.


Let us consider something that nobody has probably ever considered: Ice/shield.

People have used this build before, but it basically works the same way Staff/Shield does. You're not really tanky, you're just relying on cooldowns to avoid damage entirely. In this case you can taunt enemies, root them and run away, then cast cryogenic freeze and then hope they die before it runs out.


I find it to be unacceptable when a trooper and an infiltrator can hit a tank who has : 55% mitigation, ~1100 armor and ~700 hp and the tank goes from 100% health and armor to just dead.

Are you sure they had mitigation for the correct damage type? If they were indeed cutting damage by 55% they should be able to survive two crits at that health. One big reason Troopers are dangerous is because getting fire resistance is hard, so most people will eat 100%-80% damage from them.

Also just as another thing about overtaunting, yes unarmed/shield can taunt for 10-12k with Take the lead into Infuriating Fist. This is an extremely high amount of taunt, but one issue with taunt abilities is that you usually only have one or two taunts per skill line so they really have to count. With unarmed/shield you have three which is great, but depending on your set up you might only have one or two real taunt skills on lengthy cooldowns. I wouldn't mind gameplay where the DPS actually have to manage their aggro and give the tank some time to build taunt before using nukes, but there's two big problems with that.

The first is that battles are just too fast. An elite enemy can die quite quickly, so having to wait around to build taunt is pointless. Plus if enemies aren't dying, the tank can die very quickly too, especially on nastier pulls.
The second is that tanks aren't necessary to go through dungeons currently. In order to make tanks useful, they need to build up taunt quickly, otherwise the party might as well just nuke the enemy to death. Giving the tank 5-15 seconds to build up aggro is only necessary if the enemy being pulled is strong enough to rip normal players to shreds, otherwise you might as well just start fighting it.

[Celerity]

In order for that to happen rage attacks should probably not be able to critical hit (except maybe with bosses- I would be 100% ok with them being special and mean). The idea of only a boss being able to critical hit with a rage attack further gives value to the idea of active play as your job as a member of the team is to reduce the boss's rage bar while dealing damage.

I actually really like this idea, removes the high damage spikes like I mentioned in my post but keeps rage control viable since against a single target, such as a boss it is actually possible to control rage.

[Mbaums]

Using GK mobs at the entrance at as example, I find the difficulty the damage types dealt. Infiltrators deal poison and their crits are rough. Troopers deal 100% fire, and their crits are rough. The meditation buffs are nearly mandatory for troopers. Very few builds can really shake off these types of crits and the builds I see people talking about are masters at physical damage. I don’t want to get into the weeds of one build vs another, but I am overall in favor of physical damage crits. Without crits there would be solo players inside GK.

I believe Citan is looking at the player’s death part of the group’s experience. The rez timer, cost, and drop rate of greens makes this not fun. Since crits were added, the overall size what I pull into group has decreased—and this is good. Even though I sound pro-crit, I assume a level 70 with perfect lvl 60-gear’ed can be 1 shot via crits, and I’d agree that’s not fun. Crits less than 85% of the players health/armor or physical only crits I am in favor of. I think those conditions are good enough.

But how do you shut down people soloing, or duoing content meant for 6 people? The other night I had a party I had with 4 people and it was an absolute struggle but when we added 2 more people it became smooth sailing ride. Overwhelming DPS fixes a lot of things because a mob can die in the length of one stun. Instead of crits, what if some mobs rage-support? Examples could be a mez on the tank (please from 3 meters meters only!) until a cure disease, or even a rez on other elites , a self-30% base dmg boost or a temporary damage immunity.

Re Root: I think the root as CC is good. The way root works currently, it really allows for ice-magic tank builds to be very handy and it makes the CC added from ice magic to be a welcomed addition to most groups. Root as a CC makes the few rooting classes very strong. And with how much groups break mez, and how root still allows the mob to call for help, I’m cool with it staying as is.

[Yaffy]

Using GK mobs at the entrance at as example, I find the difficulty the damage types dealt. Infiltrators deal poison and their crits are rough. Troopers deal 100% fire, and their crits are rough. The meditation buffs are nearly mandatory for troopers. Very few builds can really shake off these types of crits and the builds I see people talking about are masters at physical damage. I don’t want to get into the weeds of one build vs another, but I am overall in favor of physical damage crits. Without crits there would be solo players inside GK.

I believe Citan is looking at the player’s death part of the group’s experience. The rez timer, cost, and drop rate of greens makes this not fun. Since crits were added, the overall size what I pull into group has decreased—and this is good. Even though I sound pro-crit, I assume a level 70 with perfect lvl 60-gear’ed can be 1 shot via crits, and I’d agree that’s not fun. Crits less than 85% of the players health/armor or physical only crits I am in favor of. I think those conditions are good enough.

But how do you shut down people soloing, or duoing content meant for 6 people? The other night I had a party I had with 4 people and it was an absolute struggle but when we added 2 more people it became smooth sailing ride. Overwhelming DPS fixes a lot of things because a mob can die in the length of one stun. Instead of crits, what if some mobs rage-support? Examples could be a mez on the tank (please from 3 meters meters only!) until a cure disease, or even a rez on other elites , a self-30% base dmg boost or a temporary damage immunity.

Re Root: I think the root as CC is good. The way root works currently, it really allows for ice-magic tank builds to be very handy and it makes the CC added from ice magic to be a welcomed addition to most groups. Root as a CC makes the few rooting classes very strong. And with how much groups break mez, and how root still allows the mob to call for help, I’m cool with it staying as is.

Call me crazy if you want, but I would be all up for boosting elite HP by 50% to 100% over having crits. It would make soloing significantly more difficult, because usually people who can solo kill elites mobs rely heavily on burst damage and negating damage/stalling via CC effects. Increasing the enemy's health would make it harder for players to kill the enemy before they run out of nukes/CC effects. Even if a player could manage to build enough sustain to last their way through the whole fight, it would at least make it much slower and therefore difficult to advance through the dungeon and more worthwhile to get a group to speed things up. Plus, it'd encourage more people to build tank/healer and more sustainable damage rather than just burst.

That's not to say I would just want enemies to have more health and not the other stuff I suggested, but I think it'd be a better path for the game to go down. Tanking would need a bit better balance with this change, but it'd be significantly easier than the rebalancing tanks need with crits.

[Ranperre]

My forte, bunny/unarmed, was mentioned so I must comment on it. This is my "I'm going to drag you through GK whether you are ready for it or not" build. It's not necessarily a tank like cow/unarmed, staff/shield, or unarmed/shield, but I can drag pretty much ANY level 70 to Melandria. It lacks a proper aoe taunt so your pulls are limited to 1-2 at a time, maybe more if you have a root and/or high dps. That said, you have a movement speed buff (hare dash), an excellent self heal (eat carrot), and enough damage to hold hate face tanking one mob.



Also I should ask just to make sure, but it is correct to assume a dedicated tank player should be able to pull more than one mob right? Currently a group with no tanks can still clear Gazluk quite reliably, meaning tanks aren't necessary. That's 100% fine, but that means in order to be useful, a tank needs to be able to allow a faster, more reliable clear compared to a full damage team. This usually means having the ability to pull more enemies at once or consecutively so damage builds can take advantage of AoE abilities and to lessen downtime between pulls to make up for the loss in damage.
So basically how many enemies should a group be pulling in group dungeons? Should a full DPS group be pulling only 1 elite at a time? Should a group with 5 DPS and a tank/healer be pulling 2? A group with a tank and healer be pulling 3 or 4? Should a group with no dedicated tanks/healer even be able to beat the dungeon? I would really like to know because it'd really help us give feedback to what you want group play to be like.

The best overall option in pick up groups right now is as a tanky dps. Yes, if everyone has good gear, it might be better to go as a tank or cloth dps and clear it in two hours, but nothing in this game is less fun than tanking for a group that can't take advantage of your ability to pull a ton of mobs. And these groups happen often if you aren't very careful about getting a high quality core group of 4-5. Similarly, if you go as a dedicated healer/support and don't have enough damage, you're in for a bad time.

[Mbaums]

Call me crazy if you want, but I would be all up for boosting elite HP by 50% to 100% over having crits....

I'm absolutely in favor of increasing their HP by ~120%, nerfing mob crits, and doubling the amount of items they drop. This would change the demand for indirect damage builds and power supporting builds.

[INXS]

I don't mind at all the way GK is i think the crits are at an adequate level, people maxing 2 skills and going to GK for gear that's just a liability on the party. Unless people have done some Lab runs you got also lv 70s showing up to GK without intense fight group mechanic knowledge. Maybe things kind of were done right when guild mates willing to go were taken at around lv 50 to Lab for many runs to a point where we can finish the guild quest (lv50) in 3-4 days, we make 3-4 runs a week to it and i think this is the missing link that many guilds are overlooking for their lv 50ish it's the step before GK load them up on lv 60/65 yellows helps out in many ways to fill that lv 50-70 void ,learn group play, nice phlog, transmutation/augmentation xp, experimenting with different builds and when most got around to lv 65/70 were all eager to try out GK we did just fine. Cleared the bottom floor with a group with not that many GK visits under the belt including the rhino area.

[ErDrick]

So many good posts in this thread, it makes me really glad to see people actually giving feedback on this stuff.

Citan your point about not giving feedback while infuriated is a good one, I definitely do that sometimes and for that I apologize. In fact, lately I have been a dick in general and I would like to formally apologize for that as well. I want you to know I still recommend this game to people ( and also gave a positive review on steam). Even though there are currently some aspects I am unhappy with, this game has given me well more then $40 worth of entertainment, and the devs are awesome and I will always support you.

As for specific examples of how critical hits are over-tuned, there have been a lot of examples already given for Gazluk keep. So I'm also going to mention the monsters on rahu plateau, they are non-elites and can one-shot 935 armor / 600 health with a rage critical. Monsters 30 levels below me can sometimes 1 shot me with an unlucky rage critical with those same stats .. you know damn well my gear is usually optimized 90/100% or thereabouts, typical player that's not even 70 doesn't have that luxury...those poor fire mages. I'm especially having doubts about any group-level content actually being doable by a group that will benefit from the drops acquired, when you see people advertising for dark chapel and saying "level 60 combat skills minimum" you know there is a problem there. I don't think a group of people geared in 40-45 gear( unless it's full optimized purples / yellows) could actually complete nexus for that matter, it's hard to really see though because 9/10 times there is someone carrying...which is great, this is a social game after all, But doing stuff at-level seems like it's highly unlikely.

You know, the problem might not even really be criticals, it could just be "RAGE criticals". Perhaps try disabling rage abilities from being able to critically hit if that's even possible and/or not a ridiculous amount of work? There are also a lot of rage attacks that currently ignore armor, and this compounds the problem I think since it's impossible to stack health high enough to avoid direct health critical hits for 1k or more.

If any of you read any of my older posts you already know I'm in favor of increasing mob health by a ton and slowing down re-spawns to compensate, I think that would leave the game in a much more enjoyable place similar to the old style of game you seem to be shooting for. Right now combat is feeling like a twitch-reflexes game, like anything new(ish) does.. with big red circles that one hit KO you unless you avoid them and stuff, except here they are unavoidable ( yes I know, there are roots and stuff..but those aren't reliable due to cooldowns etc unless you are soloing 1 mob at a time).

Yaffy has also made some excellent points about flat mitigation / percent mitigation and how they relate to critical hits or damage in general at different points in the game, I feel like it might be good to make all mitigation abilities under a certain level..say 40-50 flat numbers, and change them to be percent based at higher gear tiers after that point( specifically battle chemistry..but I'm sure there are others).

Root : In everquest a rooted mob would ignore aggro and prioritize whoever was the closest to it until root wore off, then resume it's normal behavior/aggro. I feel like this would be a good system to use but not 100% necessary. Snares didn't effect aggro at all ( except for generating some for the person snaring).

Mez and dots: Yea if you change that without doing something else, like making mesmerizes unbreakable/ the mesmerized mob immune to damage for at least part of the duration ( 5 seconds at least) I would rage! They are already almost completely useless in groups UNLESS you are the puller and using mesmerize to split the pulls, which is a viable way to use it currently. Being able to mesmerize something after loading it up with dots and watch it die is sort of enjoyable and I wouldn't change it if it was my call, it only works on non-elite trash anyways..otherwise like has been stated, you're just filling up the rage bar with minimal damage and screwing yourself.

Overtaunting: Have not really seen this happen, I played healer yesterday in GK and was frequently healing random dps people ( we had a dedicated tank who did really well though). I'm not trying to say you're wrong though, just that I have not noticed it to a point where I'd consider it easy mode or an issue.

You wanting us to die when pulling large groups of mobs: Nerfing ae damage is fine, nerfing damage in general is fine, but please for the love of god stop throwing 10+ monsters at us at once, there is a difference between intentionally rounding up a few monsters and 8 more just adding from 2 rooms/ or 100 feet away. The radius in which they 'hear" each other calling for help seems a bit big or mobs are just too packed together... personal opinion is they are packed too densely and increasing the health and difficulty of each single mob would allow it to be spaced out a little more and still remain challenging. It also just "looks weird" and not like a living breathing dungeon to see 20 mobs walking around one short hallway and 15 more in the adjacent room.

I kind of want to bring up another point that other people may or may not agree with ( which is fine, go nuts). Currently you have us in a situation where we get hit for 300 damage and a typical healing ability max modded only heals back 150-200 of that, which works okay when you are healing someone else but not so great when you are healing yourself ( you basically just waste 1.33 seconds for a net loss of health). I feel as if a long-cooldown heal should negate at least 2 hits worth of damage, so double what they currently do. ESPECIALLY with channeled heals or abilities that require you to stand motionless to perform( Bard/ Priest) Although In bard's case id rather you just change the health / armor mods for song of resurgence that all say "heals YOU" for x health or xx armor to be "heals the PARTY" ( because lets be honest here, a 33 point ae heal that requires you to stand motionless and only "ticks" every 4 seconds to begin with, is utterly pathetic).

I didn't expect this to turn into a wall of text, whoops.

Edit: forgot to hit spacebar between a paragraph!

[spider91301]

Honestly in my view the value of healers like priest have lost value ever since crits came out cant heal whats already killed with a 1 shot

[Speczero]

I just want to say that almost no other MMO's use one shot mechanics because they are just not fun.

1. As already mentioned while you can run a tank it will be inefficient and hurt the group; I mean a full DPS character will die in one hit and so will a full tank specced character so it is better to bring the DPS and kill mob as fast as possible.

2. Same thing with a healer since he will not be able to heal you thru a one-hit death anyway.

So essentially you are saying you want this game to go the way of Guild Wars 2 where everyone just plays DPS and no one else is welcomed into groups.

My idea is to get rid of the 1 hit mechanics(not necessarily crits) raise the health of both mobs and players and let us make the fights more interesting.

How about this; give group level dungeon mobs random high resistances such as one mob may be 75% resistant to fire but also 50% weak against ice; the next mob may be 75% resistant to piercing or melee but 50% weak to fire. This would make having a full and diverse group much more attractive while adding some added stratagy to encounters. You could have some almost immune to taunt and some easily taunted. I mean in these instances you would want a tank, cc, healing and diverse dps; this sounds like much more fun than just boom your dead.

[Silvonis]

I see a lot of people saying that they were "one hit" killed, but not much more in terms of details. If possible, please give specific examples and the full details involved. Character specs, health, armor, etc. What mob killed you? What were the specifics of the encounter? The more information, the better. Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming.

[Golliathe]

A couple of thoughts about the unbalance regarding unexpected or "cheap" tactics the enemies use.

Chain stuns:
I love the stun mechanic, and it really is needed for most builds, and certainly any group dungeon attempt. However getting chain stunned - resulting in death - brings my joy level to zero.


Skill Lockout
A couple examples I see skill lockout as a positive are the Llamia mobs, and the Golems rage attack. These are FUN mechanics that are also expected.

An example where it makes me want to throw my monitor out the window is combat with the tacticians in GK. It's too common. As the above situation with the stuns, if you have 2 or 3 tacticians, their rage attacks are going to be around the same time if you cant kill them before they rage - which isn't probable, and also probably not intended to be able to kill gk elites before they rage.


Critical hits
Honestly, reading Citan's reply makes me think the crits are working exactly as intended. I've also never gotten as upset about crits as I have stuns/lockouts. I play defensively most times, and anticipate entering combat and plan my shields, heals and buffs guessing I'm going to be crit a couple of times. I've not noticed any more death in my solo adventures than I did before crits were released.


One hit kills - Regardless of HP/Armor
I'm not talking about crits, I'm talking about the kraken burst attack. When I had over 1k armor, and 900hp, with a 40% damage mitigation buff on, the kraken did 1700 damage to me. I understand it's an event monster, but there is virtually no way to block that attack if you're melee (you're also usually stunned before it goes off if you have agro, so you cannot run) I can't think of other mobs that this is capable of, but if there is any boss that can crit a burst rage attack for over 900 damage, it's not ever going to be perceived as fun (scale for the intended levels of course, at level 100 I hope I have more than 1k hp)

Possible Solutions
Pulling mobs without calling for help. With the GK patch, came a "correction" to hook shot(archery) and grappling web(spider). Both of these skills now make mobs call for help, where they did not int he past. This made the impossible task of pulling that beetle before Llamia locks us all out of combat actually doable. We've never had a GK experience with this option either.

I understand it was unintentional, and was corrected. I put in the suggestion a couple of times in game, but I'll beat the drum again, and suggest a rare mod to bring this back. Those two skills IMO are the best ones to use it, as they are the only two "pulls". Thematically, I really can see grappling web shot over a mobs face, keeping them from calling for help. Hook shot.... well maybe change it to Net shot, or harpoon. Even if these two skills don't get this option, I believe pulling a single mob without calling for help on a longer cooldown skill would add value to the game, without breaking it.


One issue that really bothers me about this whole situation is that what is good for the gander needs to be good for the goose.

Why do monsters get critical hits and players don't (aside from 3 skils). I've been told that monsters get more resistant to stuns when they are used multiple times. If so - why do players not get the same benefit? It wouldn't bother me int he slightest if you could use 10 stuns on a boss and keep him from attacking IF the monsters have the same opportunity to do the same to a player (as you mentioned what happens in the yeti cave).

George... the new Kraken is stupid. He does zero damage to a level 70 well geared character but will kill you unless you have a few instances of death avoidance or you have the nimble boots. Man are those boots overpowered.... they pretty much open the door for you to ignore almost all of the most annoying things in the game : ogre stuns, tactician skill lockout, and aoe deathtouch.

I remember people using the hookshot back in the day. I imagine it got changed because single pulling probably makes for too easy content when you consider mez/stun (see ranperre's post earlier).


I'm absolutely in favor of increasing their HP by ~120%, nerfing mob crits, and doubling the amount of items they drop. This would change the demand for indirect damage builds and power supporting builds.

This would be far more interesting imho. You would not have people soloing and groups would want to start being a smart composition of things like tank/healer/support/ 3x dps.


I just want to say that almost no other MMO's use one shot mechanics because they are just not fun.


QFT.

[ErDrick]

I see a lot of people saying that they were "one hit" killed, but not much more in terms of details. If possible, please give specific examples and the full details involved. Character specs, health, armor, etc. What mob killed you? What were the specifics of the encounter? The more information, the better. Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming.

Any elite mob in Gazluk Keep can potentially one hit kill you ( while you are wearing lvl 70 legendary armor from this dungeon, that has been transmuted / augmented/ and possibly infused) besides tacticians( and possibly mages / mutterers..don't quote me on that part), if you are not specifically using one of the 4 or 5 tank builds that are extremely focused. Even an instant kill from 80% health and armor is kind of unacceptable, 50%? maybe. I would imagine that almost any elite mob in any dungeon will do the same thing to a person who is actually geared 'at level" for the content. If you have the tools to give yourself something like 500hp regen per tick, you could easily test this by wearing level appropriate gear and stand there waiting for a rage attack to critical on you, and see if you survive, this assumes you also have level appropriate armor and health of course. And by level appropriate I mean 1 tier of gear below what drops in the dungeon you test it in..as in, you are a regular person running it for your gear...of course in gazluk keep itself you can wear whatever you want as long as it's normal shit available to players and you will still die, but keep in mind that a lot of people are there to GET level 70 gear.

The non-elite mobs on rahu plateau... not the debilitators and not the ones wearing heavy plate mail..I want to say Onkara super soldiers? can one hit kill a person with 935 armor / 600 health, their rage attack may be bypassing armor however, also there is something strange going on with the debilitators in the same area. I notice them hitting me for like, 30 health and armor, and doing a small DOT ( 9 damage or so) and a few seconds later I'm suddenly dying so fast i can't really tell what's killing me.

I'm also pretty sure General Prask hit me for 1600 damage today with those same stats with a rage critical. However much it was I was literally at 100% health( 600) and armor ( 935) when it happened, I know this because during the fight with him I became bugged with the bard bug and had insane regeneration( not intentionally, incidentally I have reported this bug and sent the output_txt thing to PG's email a few days ago).

This is about the best I can do now since we don't have a combat log to go over what is happening and give you real specifics, you have to understand.

[poulter]

Some thoughts:

This question might ignite a few explosions, but does Citan even want to design a game based on the holy trinity of tank, healer and damage?

Regarding GK 'speed runs': I view these as aberrations caused by the absence of new high-level content. Geared players have run GK so often now that groups are deliberately doing multi-mob pulls to keep themselves entertained.


Soloing in GK: For consideration with respect to balancing

I frequently do this for entertainment & just to prove I can. I am not the only one doing this.

With one specific build, I can even reliably solo 2 patrols at once. Still get hit by crits, but if I can prevent them them the patrols die. (I use gear with 58 to 60 mods fitted, so the gear is not representative of the main player base).

I also have 4 other skill combinations & builds (none of them using immunities) that can reliably solo single GK patrols (using only food & snack buffs).

By soloing in GK, I can test out various skill combinations & builds, but the end result trivialises grouping. Grouping reduces deaths, speeds up the run & allows boss fights, but is (sadly) optional.

[Mbaums]

I think ErDrick’s comment talking about Winter Nexus and DC helps bring some of the conversation back into focus, this is not just a GK issue. The current appropriate preparation for GK and DC is the 20% fire vulnerability buff. Citan at one point has said he does not expect players to unlock every skill, so what non-combat skills should players have? If an unarmed player wanted a combo-attack-buff in GK, I think his group would do everything they could to talk him out of it. Some of the damage outputs to an un-mitigated player are absolutely brutal. I don’t shut people out from group if they don’t have something but I absolutely push people to get meditation up to 39, and 2 rez abilities on their sidebar (1 and switching when on cool down is fine). From EQ-days an MMO staple of balance-theory became “if one item becomes absolutely required for a class/players to be present, it’s not balanced” per their manastone fiasco in 1999. Having said this, the 20% Mediation buff is the right way to play (this line was intended to be a trigger for Citan).

The devs wanted details: When I tank I use the thick armor potions and meditation buff and about 660 HP. My unarmed/psych build is low armor by most standards (572) needs time to get started, and absolutely needs me to get off ‘but I love you’ and ‘tell me about your mother’ for -25% and -32 dmg to the big hitters. I’ll restore my own armor whenever I fall below half. I aim for 3-mobs of any type when I pull. Troopers are more dangerous than infiltrators here. This build avoids mages because I can’t get agro and run around a corner fast enough for them. My staff/shield is looking at 875 armor. With troopers/mages I don’t blink at 5, but infiltrators are dangerous. Their rage venomstrike is brutal and I never want to pull more than two infiltrators at once. The issue is not necessarily me dying, but other players picking up agro from an add when my taunt is down and being melted before anyone realizes they have agro (I’ve blown some taunts on non-elites and it’s painful).

I hate suggesting things that require extra programming. However I like danger and here are my recommendations, the goal is to make more engaging game play:
Greatly increase mobs HP for elites.
Dis-allow the Rage+Crits interaction.
Create a rule that causes elites to deal more damage the longer they stay alive in combat(maybe capped at 250% after a minute). This makes kill order important, and should kick mez-refresh waiting solorers to the curb. I see this as a trade-off from the crit nerf above.
Allow elites to rez their friends and mez their foes. This should further nullify the dreams of any solo player vs elites.
Allow cure disease to put out burning damage/trauma/root/snare (and make it in the tool tip). This will make cure disease a requirement, but it’s better than requiring players to rez. It’s to throw a bone at the players melting in DC.
Allow players to break his/her own current stun with unfetter like abilities. Because… c’mon!
I think this could correct the “Citan falls asleep in groups” issue.

[spider91301]

There are some good discussions going on here and I'd like to keep them going! But I'd like to ask for more specifics. I don't get to participate in a lot of group combat recently. I don't have time -- I'm working 12-ish hours a day on the game, so even having time to solo is hard. So I rely a lot on feedback for group combat, and we really don't get a lot of feedback about grouping that's in a format I can act on.

I say I don't group a lot, but I've managed to get in enough pick-up groups to know that grouping wasn't particularly difficult or engaging before we added monster crits. It was basically a cakewalk. (And it can still seem too easy, depending on the level range and group composition... but the crits at least make people pay more attention!) In fact, I do think the monster crit system has been good for the game because it changed the equation from "grouping is too easy" to "grouping is frustrating because it's too hard to control X, Y, Z things." This seems like a step forward to me. Maybe we can dig into more fundamental problems, the kind that we very rarely get feedback on.

Monster crits were added because monsters were too predictable and they dealt too little damage. This solution addresses both problems! It's a first attempt at a solution, and I could fine-tune it (lowering crit damage, reducing the chance of chain crits, etc.), but I'm not sure that's the thing to do right now -- it really was added as a quick-fix so that I could look for other underlying problems. I'm not sure if we'll keep monster crits at all: we may want other solutions to the underlying problems.

If you're unhappy about crits, the questions to answer are: Who was involved (levels, general combat skills type info), what did you fight, what did you do to counteract all that the surprise damage (I assume your team had sidebars full of healing/support abilities, for instance... so were those not good enough? Not fast enough to use?). I need to know how you tried to adapt to the problems, and why it was still unfairly difficult. Help me to understand the issues.

And yes, there are situations where I won't be sympathetic: if you're trying to solo-kill a large number of monsters at once with a CC-mitigated "AoE pit", then I want the monsters to kill you a lot -- a lot more than they probably do now, actually. That's insanely dangerous and should generally result in your death. Were you trying to solo-kill (or duo-kill!) an Elite? Again, I actually want that to result in your death most of the time -- and will probably make those types of scenarios MORE difficult, not less.

But if you're talking about a full group that gets wiped repeatedly because of crits, that's something I don't want to see. Maybe I just need to add a cooldown-timer so crits don't happen too often in a row... but I really suspect that'll hide deeper problems again. I want to dig in. Could you have countered the crits if you'd had more healing available? Are you carrying a bunch of weaker players in the group, and we need better group-composition tools? Or are you not focusing damage well, and the group needs better coordination tools? Better de-aggro? Is taunting just completely useless? Is healing too weak? Is monster detection too good?

This provides an opportunity to improve the game's full-group issues... and I'm not even sure I know what all the fundamental full-group issues ARE. But if you have some clues, I would appreciate your insights!

tldr: I can tweak the "band-aid fix" of crit damage -- but first I need to know it's not bandaging over a more serious problem.

------

Thanks for your feedback. Also, I've mentioned this before, but since this is a contentious topic, I wanted to remind here: I really appreciate people who are able to separate their emotions from their feedback -- it makes it a LOT easier for me to process it if you aren't outraged at the same time. I'm only human, the game is made by humans, there are lots of mistakes and some of them are stupid mistakes we should have fixed a long time ago. But it's not too late -- we can fix them.

The more you can give me info in a format like "my group did this thing, and we expected this result, but got this other thing", and the less "only a crazy idiot would think X is working", the more practical help you're giving!

With how armor mitigation and crit spam is now I foresee my future level 120 with level 120 pocket gear 24/7 in gk
when you have 750 health and 1k armor and die from health lose and still have 500 armor that says alot

But on a serous note the only thing I can see fixing the instant kill is having a set amount of damage crits give you like if crits only took 25% of your total of armor and health then maybe that would fix it better then instant dying then healers would have more leeway to fix it and heal you also maybe make it so no matter how many times you get hit with crits you can only take 3 crits before it just goes back to the enemies default damage which in turn would be 75% of your armor and health which is alot better

[Silvonis]

Thanks ErDrick and Mbaums. These type of details help, a lot.

[Sasho]

My combat loadout is Sword/Arch. I don't use any resistance potions, damage mitigation potions/spells or evasion armor.
My stats are around 790 health and 800 armor. Endurance is max with all synergy bonuses (level 86 or something) if this even makes a difference.
The only trouble I've gotten from crits is from bears. I was in Eltibule and I afk'd for a second to turn my head away from the screen. There were only 2 bears on me (neither were The Mauler), just 2 regular level 30 Eltibule bears. One did a rage attack crit and hit me for 500 damage, the other did his regular rage attack and killed me.
Granted, dying in Eltibule isn't a set back by any means. But holy s***! 500 damage from a level 30 bear is just plain stupid. Even the critical attacks of a raging GK officer don't hit me for 500.
So yeah, the bears are broken. Outside of that I haven't had any trouble with the crits. Lucky for me, bears aren't a common mob I deal with.

----

What OP didn't specify is what mob is doing a one shot? I'd like to know because I've never encountered a one-shot death.

Edit: my mistake, OP talked about the troops in GK. In my experience I've still never been one shot by them, but I have taken a big burst of damage and had to eat a lot of bacon to heal up before their next regular attack. That alone can be pretty costly.
To be fair, I also have a near perfect rolled, level 70 gear and GK still tramples my butt any day of the week, so I do agree with OP that GK can be pretty frustrating.
BUT! And this is a big BUT!... GK really is all we have right now as our current end game, and I do in fact like that it's a challenging place. So I'm still happy leaving it as it is for now until we get a higher dungeon to deal with.

[Yaffy]

So just to give people an idea of how strong crits are, I went and threw myself at some enemies to see exactly how much damage they do. Instead of talking about specific situations, I think it'll just be easier to look at the raw numbers and see what players have to do to survive them.

Here's General Pask:
https://i.imgur.com/tkPJu1h.gif

Here's a Gazluk Trooper:
https://i.imgur.com/WenoaqH.gif

Pask's normal attack crits hit for 740, his rage crits for 1400.
Trooper's normal attack crits for 448, their rage crits for 1028
Infiltrator's normal attacks crit for 496, their rage crits for 920 (Plus 222 in poison).

So outside of percentage based mitigation, a player needs to have a combined total of health and armor equal to the crit+1 with at least half of that being health. That means to survive Pasks' rage crit you need to have at least 701 HP and 700 armor, for troopers you need to have at least 515 HP and 514 armor, and for Infiltrators you need to have 461 health and 460 armor (And then be ready for the poison).

Don't even bother considering flat damage mitigation, as you can see vs the trooper I had almost full armor, and all it did was reduce the damage by 16. That's a 1.56% damage reduction. Compare that to the 20% damage reduction you get from Meditation 39 and it's easy to see why every tank needs to be running it.

So now I'd like to ask the devs, are those numbers around where they should be? Those life/armor values are the absolute bare minimum to survive one single attack. If you consider a second attack, then depending on the mob you need to add another 125-300 HP and armor to survive two, depending on whether it crits or not. Otherwise you need to be healed for 125-300 HP and armor right after getting hit by a rage crit or you risk death.

Also, just in case if some smarty decides to point out that I was naked vs Pask and of course I should die, I would like to point out that unless if I had over 1725 armor AND full HP I would have died anyways because 700 of that damage is going towards my health even with armor.

[ErDrick]

Yaffy just won the forum, I think.

[INXS]

Yaffy is the king of PG mechanic break down, thanks again for your dedication in this tests.

[spider91301]

My combat loadout is Sword/Arch. I don't use any resistance potions, damage mitigation potions/spells or evasion armor.
My stats are around 790 health and 800 armor. Endurance is max with all synergy bonuses (level 86 or something) if this even makes a difference.
The only trouble I've gotten from crits is from bears. I was in Eltibule and I afk'd for a second to turn my head away from the screen. There were only 2 bears on me (neither were The Mauler), just 2 regular level 30 Eltibule bears. One did a rage attack crit and hit me for 500 damage, the other did his regular rage attack and killed me.
Granted, dying in Eltibule isn't a set back by any means. But holy s***! 500 damage from a level 30 bear is just plain stupid. Even the critical attacks of a raging GK officer don't hit me for 500.
So yeah, the bears are broken. Outside of that I haven't had any trouble with the crits. Lucky for me, bears aren't a common mob I deal with.

----

What OP didn't specify is what mob is doing a one shot? I'd like to know because I've never encountered a one-shot death.

Edit: my mistake, OP talked about the troops in GK. In my experience I've still never been one shot by them, but I have taken a big burst of damage and had to eat a lot of bacon to heal up before their next regular attack. That alone can be pretty costly.
To be fair, I also have a near perfect rolled, level 70 gear and GK still tramples my butt any day of the week, so I do agree with OP that GK can be pretty frustrating.
BUT! And this is a big BUT!... GK really is all we have right now as our current end game, and I do in fact like that it's a challenging place. So I'm still happy leaving it as it is for now until we get a higher dungeon to deal with.

Christ dis is some ol bullshz

[spider91301]

So just to give people an idea of how strong crits are, I went and threw myself at some enemies to see exactly how much damage they do. Instead of talking about specific situations, I think it'll just be easier to look at the raw numbers and see what players have to do to survive them.

Here's General Pask:
https://i.imgur.com/tkPJu1h.gif

Here's a Gazluk Trooper:
https://i.imgur.com/WenoaqH.gif

Pask's normal attack crits hit for 740, his rage crits for 1400.
Trooper's normal attack crits for 448, their rage crits for 1028
Infiltrator's normal attacks crit for 496, their rage crits for 920 (Plus 222 in poison).

So outside of percentage based mitigation, a player needs to have a combined total of health and armor equal to the crit+1 with at least half of that being health. That means to survive Pasks' rage crit you need to have at least 701 HP and 700 armor, for troopers you need to have at least 515 HP and 514 armor, and for Infiltrators you need to have 461 health and 460 armor (And then be ready for the poison).

Don't even bother considering flat damage mitigation, as you can see vs the trooper I had almost full armor, and all it did was reduce the damage by 16. That's a 1.56% damage reduction. Compare that to the 20% damage reduction you get from Meditation 39 and it's easy to see why every tank needs to be running it.

So now I'd like to ask the devs, are those numbers around where they should be? Those life/armor values are the absolute bare minimum to survive one single attack. If you consider a second attack, then depending on the mob you need to add another 125-300 HP and armor to survive two, depending on whether it crits or not. Otherwise you need to be healed for 125-300 HP and armor right after getting hit by a rage crit or you risk death.

Also, just in case if some smarty decides to point out that I was naked vs Pask and of course I should die, I would like to point out that unless if I had over 1725 armor AND full HP I would have died anyways because 700 of that damage is going towards my health even with armor.

Yaffy might as well be the king of actually caring to take the time out of his day to break this down into simplified data to actually take time out his day and ingame time I will admit to dam lazy to learn how to make gifs and videos mad respect for you dude

PS: tempted to learn how to make videos and make a 1 shot montage with troll music lol then again probably wont cuz im lazy

[Golliathe]

Also, just in case if some smarty decides to point out that I was naked vs Pask and of course I should die, I would like to point out that unless if I had over 1725 armor AND full HP I would have died anyways because 700 of that damage is going towards my health even with armor.

I'd like to ask a simple question at this point. Why are crits ever ignoring armor? I've never seen a balanced game do this.


The tanky character who invests a great deal of his gear resources to have armor should never have that benefit just thrown out the window. But currently that is what crits seem to be doing. There are already mechanics in the game as a 'wakeup' as we already have poison and pierce attacks that go straight to health.

Oh you have more than 1000 armor? Well that's too bad; maybe you should have picked a different class whose abilities I can't 100% bypass.


I put this on the level of bad design with diablo 2. From day 1 they made a promise that there would be no fire/ice/lit/etc immune enemies that were part of the first game. This was true until they added a dlc and they said well we changed our mind. Sorry, the character you invtested 200-800 hours playing is now worthless (because if you only dealt ice damage you have no chance at killing an enemy that is 100% resistant to ice - oh and by the way you might have to clear a few hundred trash mobs to get to the elite boss that actually can drop loot only to find you have a 0% chance of killing it).


As it stands right now it seems clear armor is pretty worthless compared to other defenses when it comes to surviving critical hits. What seems to be valuable (and what allows people to solo) are buffs that allow them to take % reduced damage.



The devs wanted details: When I tank I use the thick armor potions and meditation buff and about 660 HP. My unarmed/psych build is low armor by most standards (572) needs time to get started, and absolutely needs me to get off ‘but I love you’ and ‘tell me about your mother’ for -25% and -32 dmg to the big hitters.

So if this discussion is about high level balancing of 'tanking' in general I want to call foul on the thick armor potion.

Where is the 'kung fu' potion : 18% of all Slashing, Piercing, and Crushing damage you take is mitigated and added to the damage done by your next Punch or Jab. (normally you would find this text prefaced with: While using Unarmed skill). Essentially this would just be a 18% slashing, piercing, and crushing damage reduction buff. This is the special thing unarmed gets; it would be ridiculous to allow other players to get this from a potion. But you allow everyone to get thick armor. Why?


If you want to play with shield mods you use a shield. But here drink this potion and you have have shield's literal best treasure mod (let us consider a less critty world where you don't need avoid death to survive random rage crits). That doesn't seem right.

Moreover you can't drink this potion and have any benefit when playing shield. Um what?

So looking at the math the shield mod does this:

If you have 1000 armor you have 40% damage mitigation.

If you have 1000 armor with the shield mod you have 50% mitigation

If you could have double thick armor you would have 66% mitigation.


That might sound supremely overpowered but remember that once your armor goes down significantly (like the first two hits) you start losing mitigation extremely quickly.


I also want to point out that just recently you removed the ability to have fire mods (without needing fire magic active). Why? Because it was abusive and let people get an insane dps boost without having fire magic active.

This potion lets you get an insane defensive boost and it is literally opening the door for people to solo.

What's the point of playing shield if I can get the best treasure effect of shield from a potion ?

Clearly the more optimal path would be to play a tank, not use a shield AND get the benefit of thick armor.


Let us remember too that 'kung fu' % mitigation doesn't ever run out. It is always there as a damage reduction modifier. But sure as hell armor does run out and offers nothing when it is depleted.


In order to achieve fair play (pick one):

1) allow thick potion to stack with thick armor granted via shield mod
2) start making kung fu potions drop (please dont do this - it would be so damn broken)
3) Make thick armor potion have no effect if you have any % mitigation active (like from unarmed)
4) Make thick armor potion last 2 minutes (aka use this before a boss fight)
5) this might be the most dangerous one but best for balance overall - limit % damage reduction

[Niph]

Crits don't ignore armor. Armor just doesn't mitigate the extra damage because it's already mitigated the "base" part of the crit damage.

If you get hit for normal damage for 100 and your armor mitigates 50 of it, you receive 50 damage after mitigation (split as 25 to health and 25 to armor).

If you get hit by a crit for 200, your armor still mitigates 50 of it, you receive 150 damage after mitigation, split as 75 to health and 75 to armor.

[Golliathe]

Crits don't ignore armor. Armor just doesn't mitigate the extra damage because it's already mitigated the "base" part of the crit damage.

There's already quite a lengthy discussion about how essentially armor isn't doing the job of protecting vs crits.



If you get hit for normal damage for 100 and your armor mitigates 50 of it, you receive 50 damage after mitigation (split as 25 to health and 25 to armor).

If you get hit by a crit for 200, your armor still mitigates 50 of it, you receive 150 damage after mitigation, split as 75 to health and 75 to armor.

If I take a crit for 200 why would my armor mitigate 50 of it instead of 100? Should the damage split not be 50 to health and armor?
Why is armor not doing a full reduction on the front end? If I get hit for 200 should my armor not be mitigating 100 of it?

Most games do armor as a *poof* this % of the damage just goes away and is never applied.

[Yaffy]

If you want to play with shield mods you use a shield. But here drink this potion and you have have shield's literal best treasure mod (let us consider a less critty world where you don't need avoid death to survive random rage crits). That doesn't seem right.

Moreover you can't drink this potion and have any benefit when playing shield. Um what?

So looking at the math the shield mod does this:

If you have 1000 armor you have 40% damage mitigation.

If you have 1000 armor with the shield mod you have 50% mitigation

If you could have double thick armor you would have 66% mitigation.

I think you're confusing the mitigation you gain from armor with % based mitigation. Having 25 armor points gives you 1 flat direct mitigation, not 1% mitigation. That's why it isn't helpful at negating crits. It still works, it's just an incredibly small number compared to the damage you're taking.
That also means the thick armor modifier from shield or the thick armor potion is not very useful. At 1000 armor it gives you only an additional 10 flat damage reduction.

So just to give you an idea, if Pask crits a player for 1400 damage...
A shield user with 1000 armor and thick armor would reduce the damage by 50.
An unarmed user with 0 armor but the 18% physical damage reduction passive would reduce the damage by 252.

This is why I keep talking about % based reduction and why it's so important, and why crits limits tank builds heavily. It simply scales way better than flat damage reduction when dealing with huge numbers. That's not to say armor is worthless. It is effectively doubling your life which is important for having a buffer against spike damage, but the damage reduction it offers might as well not exist at end game.

[spider91301]

I think you're confusing the mitigation you gain from armor with % based mitigation. Having 25 armor points gives you 1 flat direct mitigation, not 1% mitigation. That's why it isn't helpful at negating crits. It still works, it's just an incredibly small number compared to the damage you're taking.
That also means the thick armor modifier from shield or the thick armor potion is not very useful. At 1000 armor it gives you only an additional 10 flat damage reduction.

So just to give you an idea, if Pask crits a player for 1400 damage...
A shield user with 1000 armor and thick armor would reduce the damage by 50.
An unarmed user with 0 armor but the 18% physical damage reduction passive would reduce the damage by 252.

This is why I keep talking about % based reduction and why it's so important, and why crits limits tank builds heavily. It simply scales way better than flat damage reduction when dealing with huge numbers. That's not to say armor is worthless. It is effectively doubling your life which is important for having a buffer against spike damage, but the damage reduction it offers might as well not exist at end game.


Which is the only reason I use 1k armor because my build uses it to heal if mitigation does shit might as well make my tissue paper barrer armor useful and heal my ass faster then I can use a first aid kit honestly if your not using armor for a quick heal because mitagation does shit then your better off having 500-600 armor and investing in burst evasion not like 1k armor is going to save your ass from a 1 shot the only reason I will live is cuz of shield mods avoid death 101% any other tanks are kinda boned when it comes to rage crits





PS. Imagen when level 100 uncaps come out I forsee my future being in gk 24/7 with level 120 pocket gear lol will laugh

[Golliathe]

Wouldn't the game make more sense though with 25 armor giving 1% mitigation?

I suspect crits might actually make the game interesting if that were the case. As a tank you would need to keep your armor up to make sure you don't take too much damage.

In the case of Pask with a 1400 critical vs 1000 armor you would take 700 damage. That would only be 350 damage to armor and health (assuming that was the first hit in the fight). But most likely it won't be the first hit.

In other words this actively gives you and your party a means to make encounters easy if you are prepared.

1. Control the boss's rage to try and prevent rage attacks (and the possibility of rage criticals)
2. The tank must keep his armor high so that he doesn't take too much damage.


I think you're confusing the mitigation you gain from armor with % based mitigation. Having 25 armor points gives you 1 flat direct mitigation, not 1% mitigation. That's why it isn't helpful at negating crits. It still works, it's just an incredibly small number compared to the damage you're taking.
That also means the thick armor modifier from shield or the thick armor potion is not very useful. At 1000 armor it gives you only an additional 10 flat damage reduction.

So just to give you an idea, if Pask crits a player for 1400 damage...
A shield user with 1000 armor and thick armor would reduce the damage by 50.
An unarmed user with 0 armor but the 18% physical damage reduction passive would reduce the damage by 252.


Well I've never seen a system with armor being so nearly worthless. It's completely ridiculous to have armor be so incredibly weak especially given that it is ablative and gets worse as the fight progresses.

In other words unarmed is the only tanking ability worth a damn in the game at present. That's pretty stupid if you ask me. What were we saying before about when there was only one option? Unarmed needs to be in line with every other tanking option (so nerf it to oblivion or buff everything else).

[Mbaums]

So if this discussion is about high level balancing of 'tanking' in general I want to call foul on the thick armor potion...

The mod itself is strong, and the potion is worth having but if you do not kill in GK regularly, you won't get enough of them to keep it active at all time. I only use it because my group in discord usually throws me the potions. And I in turn throw the potion at whoever is currently tanking.

The mod is great for people starting in GK, but I pick the expensive route vs giving up a mod in my shield build. When we are at level 100, if there are no orcs at the end game, I simply won't be able to gather enough of those potions to use them (without directly farming them). To some degree I think the game should reward players who prepare for an environment, but I disagree when that preparation becomes mandatory.


You argue some things that I disagree with enough to spell out. The first is that there are no advantages to shield players using the thick armor potion when this flies in the face of my use. In the next breathe (with what I read as a condescending tone, with one of the 3 “why?” sentences) you ask for a potion to mimic an unarmed mod. This being suggested here and in your 5-suggestions makes your whole argument weak because it appears you don’t care about the mod being in a potion, but instead just take a hyper critical stance against the potion or the ability.


Clearly the more optimal path would be to play a tank, not use a shield AND get the benefit of thick armor.

I believe you have no understanding of the shield ability while tanking. The AoE taunt, speed, fire resist, numerous passives and best-single target stun makes it a uniquely strong class and you overlook this completely simply because orcs drop a potion.

/*late edit addition*/
Even though we have disagreements, I still want to thank you for this thread because it brought up many views that I think are important for the Devs. Beta is the time for big balance tweaks, and I generally have a roll with the punches attitude on most gameplay aspects, so I'm just eager to roll with whatever comes.

[Golliathe]

The mod itself is strong, and the potion is worth having but if you do not kill in GK regularly, you won't get enough of them to keep it active at all time. I only use it because my group in discord usually throws me the potions. And I in turn throw the potion at whoever is currently tanking.

The error in this logic then is that kung fu potions would be fair and balanced as nobody would easily be able to have enough to have them active at all time without being constantly fed.

Part of the point I was trying to make with the discussion of the kung fu potion is that it is a dangerous idea to give a class defining ability on a consumable item.




You argue some things that I disagree with enough to spell out. The first is that there are no advantages to shield players using the thick armor potion when this flies in the face of my use. In the next breathe (with what I read as a condescending tone, with one of the 3 “why?” sentences) you ask for a potion to mimic an unarmed mod. This being suggested here and in your 5-suggestions makes your whole argument weak because it appears you don’t care about the mod being in a potion, but instead just take a hyper critical stance against the potion or the ability.


I believe you have no understanding of the shield ability while tanking. The AoE taunt, speed, fire resist, numerous passives and best-single target stun makes it a uniquely strong class and you overlook this completely simply because orcs drop a potion.

/*late edit addition*/
Even though we have disagreements, I still want to thank you for this thread because it brought up many views that I think are important for the Devs. Beta is the time for big balance tweaks, and I generally have a roll with the punches attitude on most gameplay aspects, so I'm just eager to roll with whatever comes.

Sometimes you ask a question when you already know the answer. Somtimes in a discussion you ask for something you don't want. But that second point as well as a few others seems to be something you've never heard. I'll leave this point with one more: the quickest way to get a piece of information from a message board for example is to give the wrong answer (rather than asking what is _____).

I'm fully aware shield is a class that has multiple taunt abilities. That's not my issue with shield. The issue with shield is that it is a tank class that gets a flat mitigation to armor.

There is a huge glaring problem with this game in that Side A has a % ability and side b,d,f have a flat mitigation ability. This is on the level of a time in the game when a few classes had massive aoe abilities and could get full damage from those abilities vs multiple mobs. You were a chump for playing the game with single target damage abilities.


The short version is that flat mitigation probably needs to be deleted as an idea (because making it scale to % mitigation would be a good deal of work).


We could go back and look at multiple game examples where you see power set A is just better than power set B. I'll give you one from city of heroes (playing as a mastermind). There were many choices to pick from to make your minions; zombies were slow, tanky and melee based while robots were somewhat squishy but had high ranged dps and aoe. At that point in time robots were a slightly better choice as a pet controller class. Likewise when looking at the mastermind power sets there were a number of different options. Poison was cool and had a few control abilities like hold, debuffs to apply on a boss and a damage ability or two with a single target heal. Meanwhile darkness gave you a tarpit, aoe heal, and a few other cool tricks (think one of them might have been a damage mitigation debuff - think dark chapel miss chance you put on mobs in an aoe fashion).

The point is that I could have been poison/zombie but I went with darkness/robot. Relatively speaking rating those power sets at that point in time I could have been something like 4/8 with poison/zombie but instead I went with 10/9 darkness/robots.

There should never be such a huge disparity between choice A and choice B. The choice between robots/zombies for example was not all that big. But the difference between poison and darkness was insane.

Shield is poison in this example when it comes to having damage mitigation relatively speaking compared to unarmed which is darkness.


If citan is going to fix endgame combat he needs to sit down and look at every aspect of it. When you consider the idea of taking critical hits and damage you have to consider damage mitigation. Tank classes A,B,C & D all need to be relatively fit with the ability to take hits. They don't all need to be identical.

But it needs to be like a drink fountain where you can chose flavor, A,B,C or D and know that in the end every choice will be delicious. If class B & C suck nobody will play them. Everyone will just cookie cutter A & D. That makes for stupid gameplay. What's the point of having poorly balanced classes in the game other than wasting time and money (development time, dollars and of course councils).

[Golliathe]

How do you fix the problem as there are multiple problematic elements weaved together?

1. Fix flat mitigation and % mitigation so they are either a flavor choice or one doesn't exist.
2. Make an active combat system where you can prevent crits by doing things like control rage and keeping your armor up rather than being able to survive only by stacking passive buffs (death avoidance, raw armor, % mitigation, flat mitigation, etc). Maybe we could have new spells that are a hitpoint buffer? (example shield of faith - new made up spell grants a target 200 point damage shield for 10 seconds. Or maybe mentalism would have a forcefield buff they could throw on someone )
3. Rework the AI for things like root/overtaunt so there is never a situation where you can make mobs want to attack the players but are just standing there idle trying to attack something that will never be in range (in effect becoming harmless loot pinatas)

I have been told Citan's central doctrine for this game has been that you don't need a tank/healer/dps type group format. Looking at Ranperre's comment isn't it a bit sad if there are only 10 tanks on the server? I could see a solution where you only ever pick one of a tanking class at a time and it solves both problems.

What if playing a tanky class gave you something like universal damage mitigation (just for having that class active). This of course would not stack so playing shield would give you 5% and playing unarmed would give you 5% but you only have 5% if you play both. Just like the damage revamp that would help people with bad gear playing the tanky class (I mean you really can't even play the role at all at lower levels because your mods are just not there).

As a design choice should people need to play with 2 tank classes? If everyone were tankier in general (perhaps using armor as a built in % mitigation tool) I could see there being no need to use 2 tank classes. I think it would be interesting if there were more options that worked.



I assume of course one of the underlying goals is that no one should be able to solo Gazluk keep content? In order for that to happen certain abilities might need to get reworked or limited (for example no more stacking of massive dmg reduction abilties like from psychology. I could maybe see one of these might need a rework so that one is for when you are playing a support psych guy you use this ability and it debuffs the mob, but reduces your damage to the target by the same amount).

As a minor issue can we adress the respawn aspect of Gazluk keep? It's really cheap to have a room always respawn the mobs at the same time. If you want to keep people from solo farming the area why not have the first pull be linked (aka if you get one you get all of them). A group should be able to handle that relatively well - stuns, roots, mez and barring all that they should in theory be able to slowly kill one - reset- repeat.

So instead of making all the spawns linked you could just have a few checkpoints around the zone where the pull is 4 mobs. This could include the entrance, the room right before the first chest on the west side, and maybe a couple of other areas (like before a boss to be a big red flag saying hey dont go this way if you can't handle the heat).

[spider91301]

There are some good discussions going on here and I'd like to keep them going! But I'd like to ask for more specifics. I don't get to participate in a lot of group combat recently. I don't have time -- I'm working 12-ish hours a day on the game, so even having time to solo is hard. So I rely a lot on feedback for group combat, and we really don't get a lot of feedback about grouping that's in a format I can act on.

I say I don't group a lot, but I've managed to get in enough pick-up groups to know that grouping wasn't particularly difficult or engaging before we added monster crits. It was basically a cakewalk. (And it can still seem too easy, depending on the level range and group composition... but the crits at least make people pay more attention!) In fact, I do think the monster crit system has been good for the game because it changed the equation from "grouping is too easy" to "grouping is frustrating because it's too hard to control X, Y, Z things." This seems like a step forward to me. Maybe we can dig into more fundamental problems, the kind that we very rarely get feedback on.

Monster crits were added because monsters were too predictable and they dealt too little damage. This solution addresses both problems! It's a first attempt at a solution, and I could fine-tune it (lowering crit damage, reducing the chance of chain crits, etc.), but I'm not sure that's the thing to do right now -- it really was added as a quick-fix so that I could look for other underlying problems. I'm not sure if we'll keep monster crits at all: we may want other solutions to the underlying problems.

If you're unhappy about crits, the questions to answer are: Who was involved (levels, general combat skills type info), what did you fight, what did you do to counteract all that the surprise damage (I assume your team had sidebars full of healing/support abilities, for instance... so were those not good enough? Not fast enough to use?). I need to know how you tried to adapt to the problems, and why it was still unfairly difficult. Help me to understand the issues.

And yes, there are situations where I won't be sympathetic: if you're trying to solo-kill a large number of monsters at once with a CC-mitigated "AoE pit", then I want the monsters to kill you a lot -- a lot more than they probably do now, actually. That's insanely dangerous and should generally result in your death. Were you trying to solo-kill (or duo-kill!) an Elite? Again, I actually want that to result in your death most of the time -- and will probably make those types of scenarios MORE difficult, not less.

But if you're talking about a full group that gets wiped repeatedly because of crits, that's something I don't want to see. Maybe I just need to add a cooldown-timer so crits don't happen too often in a row... but I really suspect that'll hide deeper problems again. I want to dig in. Could you have countered the crits if you'd had more healing available? Are you carrying a bunch of weaker players in the group, and we need better group-composition tools? Or are you not focusing damage well, and the group needs better coordination tools? Better de-aggro? Is taunting just completely useless? Is healing too weak? Is monster detection too good?

This provides an opportunity to improve the game's full-group issues... and I'm not even sure I know what all the fundamental full-group issues ARE. But if you have some clues, I would appreciate your insights!

tldr: I can tweak the "band-aid fix" of crit damage -- but first I need to know it's not bandaging over a more serious problem.

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The OP from Golliathe is a good example, and the reason I chose this thread -- those details about roots/mezzes are good insights and I would love to hear more discussion about those and related things -- things that need focus or improvement, either because they're too good or too irritating.

RE: mezzes and DoTs: mezzes are supposed to ignore DoTs because, until recently, most DoTs lasted 15+ seconds, often lasting 30 seconds... making mezzes useless if even a single group member used DoT effects. Finding the right power curve for DoTs has been extremely challenging, and I didn't feel like DoTs needed the extra stigma of "don't use DoTs asshole, you'll break mezzes". Now that all DoTs are 12 secs or less, it starts to make more sense, but I still worry they would break too many mezzes.

RE: monsters not picking a new target if they're rooted -- that's just crappy AI that I haven't tried to improve. I didn't really think too long about that case, because it opens a can of worms. If a monster changes targets because they're rooted, isn't that a general case of "I should change targets if my most-hated foe is unreachable"? They're the same thing, right? So where do I draw the line? If the monster is moving too slow to keep up (because the player has super-cranked movement speed), should the monster just attack somebody else nearby? Or are we talking about a specific hack for "monster is rooted = find a new target"? In that case wouldn't a 75% movement-slowdown be more effective than a full root? It gets weird. I don't know where to draw the line.

RE: "overtaunt" -- I'd need lots more specifics here to be able to tell what's up.


------

Thanks for your feedback. Also, I've mentioned this before, but since this is a contentious topic, I wanted to remind here: I really appreciate people who are able to separate their emotions from their feedback -- it makes it a LOT easier for me to process it if you aren't outraged at the same time. I'm only human, the game is made by humans, there are lots of mistakes and some of them are stupid mistakes we should have fixed a long time ago. But it's not too late -- we can fix them.

The more you can give me info in a format like "my group did this thing, and we expected this result, but got this other thing", and the less "only a crazy idiot would think X is working", the more practical help you're giving!


I think you're confusing the mitigation you gain from armor with % based mitigation. Having 25 armor points gives you 1 flat direct mitigation, not 1% mitigation. That's why it isn't helpful at negating crits. It still works, it's just an incredibly small number compared to the damage you're taking.
That also means the thick armor modifier from shield or the thick armor potion is not very useful. At 1000 armor it gives you only an additional 10 flat damage reduction.

So just to give you an idea, if Pask crits a player for 1400 damage...
A shield user with 1000 armor and thick armor would reduce the damage by 50.
An unarmed user with 0 armor but the 18% physical damage reduction passive would reduce the damage by 252.

This is why I keep talking about % based reduction and why it's so important, and why crits limits tank builds heavily. It simply scales way better than flat damage reduction when dealing with huge numbers. That's not to say armor is worthless. It is effectively doubling your life which is important for having a buffer against spike damage, but the damage reduction it offers might as well not exist at end game.


This is my own 2 cents on why things are how they are based on all the facts filtered from the myths

To know what crits do lets have a little history first on how crits came to be
Long ago in a galaxy far far away before crits existed gk was getting to easy and people were bragging about going into gk aka gazkeep currently the only endgame for level 70+ players with full pocket armor and getting rich other low levels/ungeared players comlained about it and the admin said let their be Crits, so blame crits people that complained over it also fyi I still wear pocket armor in gk so pff load of good that did


Armor provides 1 point of damage mitigation for every 25 points of armor remaining. says wiki so me having 1k armor assuming its at full will only negate 40 points of damage hmm now I see why crits work for enemyies but not us they have like 14k of armor compared to us which that would mitigate 560 damage no wonder crap in gazkeep which is the only endgame for level 70+ players can screw us just on rng one shots alone
Crits in a nutshell do not bypass armor it only tears down our tissue paper barrer that we are limited having
So essentially crits don't bypass armor the just say fk it and eat it becuase to even be effective for mitagation to counter crits you will nee 18k worth of armor and maintain it to close to full which is the main problem crits were built on a pre existing system that works for enemies but not players

To sum it up crits aren't the problem the pre existing system for mitigation is in which case I have no fking idea how to fix it cuz I suck at coming up with solutions which leads us to our current problem and im pretty sure the devs are having the same issue in deciding on how to fix it so we cant really blame this on them cuz if even they cant make quick stable fix what right do we have to bitch about it all in all give the admins some time this will get resolved 1 way or the other also I will go full on rabid on anyone who decides to give the devs a hard time ingame joking about crap is ok but dissing them is another

PS. at work so I dont have time to pretype this and proof read so meh however it turns out it turns out sorry if its to blunt

[ErDrick]

Call me a sadist if you like, but I do Like the idea Mbaums suggested about giving mobs different effects for their rage attacks besides 'killing you".

Some suggestions:

-As mbaums said, short range mesmerize.
-As mbaums also said, Resurrecting their own allies.
-Healing themselves for 25%-50% or so(possibly with or without a knockback). Or an AE heal for a smaller side of that amount ( 25%).
-Fully restoring their armor ( this might be better then self healing actually since that could potentially become an infinite self heal).
-Hookshotting( or charging) whoever is lowest on the aggro list and putting them on top temporarily, say for 1-3 attacks (or one big attack)..then resuming normal behavior.
-Temporary evasion buff, high amount but short duration..like 50% / 5-10 seconds.
-Fearing you( maybe an AE fear from a boss...short duration).
-Charming a player temporarily turning them into a pet.... actually this would be too insane unless stats were changed under the hood to be akin to the mob you're fighting( as in you hit like an npc while charmed).
-Call in an actual pet of their own, some mobs already do this though I "think" ... GK mage lieutenants?
-Strip your armor instantly no matter it's current value.
-Temporarily negate your food buffs ( or all buffs) like anti magic shell in a certain radius, not dispell them though, just temporary suppress them.
-Become Immune to ranged attacks /magic attacks/ or melee attacks for a short duration ( depending on mob type).
-Increase "call for help radius" for a few seconds.
-Cause everyone on their aggro list to immediately turn 180 degrees.
-Immediately reset their aggro list. ( dropping all hate except 1 point on anyone they already hated).
-Drain a large amount of power ( or all of it) from current target.
-Randomize aggro, as in keep the same numbers but assign them randomly to all players on hate list.
-Forget the person that they hate the most. ( erase hate from highest threat).

Even better, give mobs a pool of a few of these abilities and have them select one randomly when rage is full... so we don't just say "oh these things drain your power, be ready for that".


Any of this would be more entertaining and more chaotic then just being killed outright instantly. Also these are just random ideas literally off the top of my head with zero forethought.... Citan is much more evil then I am and can probably think of even crazier things. I could also go on but you get the idea right?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Also, I feel like armor is "pretty fucked up" as it currently stands and needs to be changed drastically( you will probably not like my suggestion though, and that's okay), but the current system isn't really working.

If it was up to me though, I'd get rid of the armor bar completely and increase player health by a large margin.. so if you have 40 mitigation from armor you always have that mitigation. This would actually make armor value noticeably better then pockets, because one of the biggest reasons pockets are better ( besides inventory space ofc) is because armor is much harder to restore then health is, and once it's gone it mostly stays gone and might as well not even have existed at that point ( but you always have your pockets). It would also be drastically easier for us to tell exactly what's killing us, 2 numbers popping up at once with no combat log currently makes that difficult unless you record it and go frame by frame to see. Of course, this would also apply to mobs, as in they also keep their mitigation. Things that damage armor directly ( like acid) could be a temporary mitigation debuff similar to rotskin instead. I don't feel like having 40 mitigation permanently from 1000 armor would be gamebreaking though. I am making this suggestion specifically because it seems like it would be a lot simpler then rebalancing everything from a code point of view ( to be fair though, I actually have no clue about that ), and I'm not really sure how you can salvage the armor bar otherwise. Not to mention armor / health and heals for armor / health are needlessly complicated atm. There is a difference between difficulty and complexity just for the sake of complexity. The difficulty can remain the same ( although it will actually be harder I imagine) but you won't have to constantly watch 3 bars, just health / power.

Along with that you could change armor patch to a different skill entirely, like remove indirect damage effects on self. Or, as much as I hate this idea... make armor have durability( like buckle artistry) and armor patch fixes that as a crafting skill.

I am also still in favor of increasing mob health, but if you change armor in this way for mobs and players...they'd have it. ( doubling my health would get me 1200 or so, doubling a GK troopers health would be adding thousands and again, keeping their base mitigation so the health they have goes farther) Soloing elites would remain out of reach for the most part because...power.

I been up all night and it's past noon now, so if these are stupid ideas feel free to call me out on it.

P.S. Why does battlechem thick-skin have worthless 56 point heals per 20 seconds as two of it's modifiers instead of crushing damage reduction?
P.P.S. I still cant tell why an Onkara debilitator which I can tank indefinately ( tested it, can literally tank them forever or until I get bored) drops me so quickly when any other mob joins the fray. If anyone knows please enlighten me.

Thanks for reading!

[ErDrick]

Or keep the armor bar for UI reasons but still increase health( to compensate for losing the "health bar" that armor gives us now), and have specific attacks like acid still reduce armor ( and be restored by armor patch) but regular attacks not touch it whatsoever.

In hindsight this seems like it might be a better idea.

And again feel free to call me out if these ideas are dumb, promise I won't get upset over it !

[spider91301]

Or keep the armor bar for UI reasons but still increase health( to compensate for losing the "health bar" that armor gives us now), and have specific attacks like acid still reduce armor ( and be restored by armor patch) but regular attacks not touch it whatsoever.

In hindsight this seems like it might be a better idea.

And again feel free to call me out if these ideas are dumb, promise I won't get upset over it !

Yeah thats one way or make 2 separate combat systems for mitigation one for enemies enemies and a tweaked version for us probably not as simple as it sounds with coding but meh I got nothing else

[Pugmak]

Been doing raids in games since EQ pre-Kunark expansion.

They're almost all rote by the numbers setups. Boss mob x does y so suit up and be ready for that. Then it's just an endurance test.

I really like the concept above about a whole range of rage attacks available to randomly fire.

That would go a long way to keep the fights fresh and interesting.

[Golliathe]

Call me a sadist if you like, but I do Like the idea Mbaums suggested about giving mobs different effects for their rage attacks besides 'killing you".

Some suggestions:

-Hookshotting( or charging) whoever is lowest on the aggro list and putting them on top temporarily, say for 1-3 attacks (or one big attack)..then resuming normal behavior.
-Temporary evasion buff, high amount but short duration..like 50% / 5-10 seconds.
-Fearing you( maybe an AE fear from a boss...short duration).
-Charming a player temporarily turning them into a pet.... actually this would be too insane unless stats were changed under the hood to be akin to the mob you're fighting( as in you hit like an npc while charmed).
-Strip your armor instantly no matter it's current value.
-Temporarily negate your food buffs ( or all buffs) like anti magic shell in a certain radius, not dispell them though, just temporary suppress them.
-Become Immune to ranged attacks /magic attacks/ or melee attacks for a short duration ( depending on mob type).
-Cause everyone on their aggro list to immediately turn 180 degrees.
-Immediately reset their aggro list. ( dropping all hate except 1 point on anyone they already hated).
-Randomize aggro, as in keep the same numbers but assign them randomly to all players on hate list.
-Forget the person that they hate the most. ( erase hate from highest threat).



Most of these options would make for super shitty play. Fighting monsters should be challenging not annoying. As an example Jack giving George push is annoying and pointless; having push on a mob who can launch you off a platform presents a real challenge (fall to your death into a pile of mobs).

What are the main mob types in Gk?
Trooper, Infiltrator, LT, mage LT, Tactician, Worg. That's enough of a list to have each one do a special rage thing and call it a day.

"-Fully restoring their armor ( this might be better then self healing actually since that could potentially become an infinite self heal)."

That's the only neat option and it would be fine for one mob type or boss.




Also, I feel like armor is "pretty fucked up" as it currently stands and needs to be changed drastically( you will probably not like my suggestion though, and that's okay), but the current system isn't really working.

If it was up to me though, I'd get rid of the armor bar completely and increase player health by a large margin.. so if you have 40 mitigation from armor you always have that mitigation. This would actually make armor value noticeably better then pockets, because one of the biggest reasons pockets are better ( besides inventory space ofc) is because armor is much harder to restore then health is, and once it's gone it mostly stays gone and might as well not even have existed at that point ( but you always have your pockets).

Along with that you could change armor patch to a different skill entirely, like remove indirect damage effects on self. Or, as much as I hate this idea... make armor have durability( like buckle artistry) and armor patch fixes that as a crafting skill.

I am also still in favor of increasing mob health, but if you change armor in this way for mobs and players...they'd have it. ( doubling my health would get me 1200 or so, doubling a GK troopers health would be adding thousands and again, keeping their base mitigation so the health they have goes farther) Soloing elites would remain out of reach for the most part because...power.

1. Buckle artistry armor having a health meter sucks - please never do this for armor (and remove it from BA).
2. Armor would make SO much more sense if you had like 60% mitigation for an armored tank with full armor. The challenge then becomes keeping armor high. Having an always flat high bonus is boring (and makes unarmed way too op when it is already the best tank choice). You probably think crits are boring because all they do is damage you. This would be fine if there was a sort of mini-game to keep the tanks armor high.
3. One problem this game has is that lvl 70 cloth has like 110 armor and the tanky snail armor has like 80 armor. Makes a lot of sense right? But that snail armor has low values of flat mitigation. I could see a change where each level of snail armor has +1% mitigation per piece (increasing by 1% per tier per piece or something) with lowish overall armor. And then for metal armor you could do a thing where it has more armor but no mitigation. Both end up at the same place with balanced stats but different have a different combat refresh (this would of course assume that armor just became a % dmg reduction based on how much you had).

4. Part of the problem with pocket gear is that 2 pieces of armor give you like 40-60 inv slots. What if we changed pockets? Maybe let head/chest/legs/hands/feet contribute to pockets? Example: the hat could be If worn with pocket chest, doubles chest pocket slots. The boots could do the same for legs and possibly hands (which would affect your belt). Make pockets require 5 or 6 armor slots. Make them need to be a matched set to be most effective. We could also have the pocket belt increase all slots by +2 prior to doubling.

Say for example you only get +10 inv with a pocket chest and your hat doubles it. The hat AND chest need to have the "enchant" slot wasted for pockets.

that would make a pocket set be: 10+2 (2x), 10+2 (2x), 8+2 (2x). So that would mean you get 68 slots but you don't get an extra power slot for those areas.

Then again maybe if cloth gives 100 armor.... leather should be like 150 and plate/snail should be like 300 armor. The short version is that pockets are too appealing and do not take enough away from the armor. Sadly thats +1 thing Citan needs to spend time fixing.

5. I think personally it's dumb to have some attacks be armor only.... especially when you look at competing spells and they do like the same damage but also damage health. I could maybe understand for example if the acid attack for BC did 2k damage (modded) but only affected armor and the regular 2 spells did 1k damage (modded) but worked for armor and health.



P.S. Why does battlechem thick-skin have worthless 56 point heals per 20 seconds as two of it's modifiers instead of crushing damage reduction?
That's a super great question. I'd love to see bc flat mitigations changed to something like 5% dmg mitigation per mod type. Maybe the healing from the mods could be changed to crushing and then have the level of the spell have some built in healing/second (that isnt complete crap).



P.P.S. I still cant tell why an Onkara debilitator which I can tank indefinately ( tested it, can literally tank them forever or until I get bored) drops me so quickly when any other mob joins the fray. If anyone knows please enlighten me.
What food did you have on? Is this a regen issue?

[Golliathe]

Or keep the armor bar for UI reasons but still increase health( to compensate for losing the "health bar" that armor gives us now), and have specific attacks like acid still reduce armor ( and be restored by armor patch) but regular attacks not touch it whatsoever.


This sounds like you have cake and are getting to eat it too.

How do you keep an armor value and not have it buffer into health? Is armor giving a fixed mitigation % now?


Armor only reducing attacks are rare. This would make keeping your armor value high a joke and require no change.


It would be the same song and dance with unarmed player just killing GK mobs solo with psych secondary. Isn't the goal to kinda prevent that without ruining the content for groups?

[ErDrick]

To answer your points and questions Golliathe.

About those rage attack ideas being super shitty play :
Citan said his goal was to make combat more challenging because it can be a snoozefest ( and I'm glad he posted, because understanding his intent helps a lot here). The thing is, what he did was give them the ability to critical hit and current rage attacks that "do damage" now have to a chance to instantly kill you from full health and armor. The point is to get away from stuff instantly killing you but maintain a challenge. ( we are mostly talking about elites here btw, aka group content). For non-elites ( especially bears) rage criticals have to go or be severely toned down, period. Being instantly killed really isn't preventable and has no counterplay for most people. Personally I think they are okay ideas, but could be better ( they are all better then HaHa you are instantly dead, though).. the biggest problem I'd think would be coding all of that shit, which stops development on other stuff while he is working on it, so optimally I'd rather see criticals get a severe rework, but felt like I'd at least try to offer another approach, because he has a point about regular encounters being on the easy side ( when you aren't getting swarmed by 5-10 things, anyways). If people have other ideas how to fix this that is great, I never said any of my ideas need to happen, they are just ideas for discussion( but "something" def needs to happen).

Durability on stuff does indeed suck, I would hate it. After rethinking that line of reasoning I added another short post with another idea of how to make armor worth something( but I did that long before you posted your reply, it was there and readable). 60% base mitigation from armor on a tank would be completely insane though, nothing would scratch you ever( except prask rage-critical). Also that would require a total rework of monster armor because how would that work for them? Also armor heals in that case would be extremely overpowered, a heal for 300 is a heal for 300, an armor heal for 300 if you had 60% mitigation would give you MUCH more then 300 effective more health.

Crafted cloth chest and legs actually gives you 20 pockets per for 40 total by the way. I do agree the base armor values may be off though, especially for snail and the stuff that's supposed to be tanky (plate). The issue isn't that it's so much better, it's that armor value in general really means almost nothing for players. If you had 2,000 armor prask would still critical rage on you for 1320 damage, instead of his base damage of 1400, considering players cant even get 2,000 armor ( and if they could it wouldn't matter anyways really). So if armor doesn't really do anything their is really no downside to losing a few hundred of it for 40 more inventory. Now, if armor wasn't part of your health, but was just armor by itself ( and you kept it except for when specific attacks lowered it) then it would always be meaningful. Always having 40 mitigation means something, having 40 mitigation for the first hit, 20 for the second hit, and zero for the rest of the fight.. is why it's nearly worthless.

I think in that light it would sort of still make sense for certain monsters or abilities to lower your armor and thus overall mitigation (if it was changed the 2nd way I suggested that is) and for you to be able to do the same thing to them via acid and stuff. The part I didn't add because I thought it was obvious, is that modifiers for healing armor would all be changed to health instead , with a longer base health bar representing what we would lose from losing the armor bar as part of our health ( the way it works now). And the reason I suggested the health increase is because it would require less rebalancing of mob damage ( I mean if we just lost the armor bar completely with no extra health added, just about everything would 1-3 hit kill you with it's regular attacks). The only ability that would actually "heal" armor damage in that case would be armor patching. To be more clear I also meant that as in it would apply to both players AND monsters, and the simplest way to do it would be to double everything's health pool ( including ours) and leave armor at it's current value, but just make it untouchable except to certain skills that specifically destroy armor.

For your other point about armor reducing attacks being rare / having your cake and eating it too...we are talking about something that AT MOST is giving the best geared players 50 damage mitigation ( assuming they get to 1250 armor, which no one I've ever seen has), not 50% but -50 damage per hit when some stuff can rage on you for 1200-1400 at the point when you actually have armor values between 600-1,000. And it would definitely stop me from soloing high level elites, if a GK mob had 20k health and every attack I did on it was reduced by 240 damage per hit due to them having 6,000 armor, I would either run out of power or just die from running out of ways to heal myself before they did.

As far as battlechem, yes I would like to see higher tiers of mitigation abilities all be percentile based instead of flat number based, what I meant specifically though is that there are 2 mods for "reduces slashing damage by xx" and 2 more for "reduces piercing damage by xx" but Nothing for crushing and instead we inexplicably have that worthless heal per 20 seconds.

As for rahu Onkara debilitators, I am using top tier food, (and sometimes battlechem's thick skin, they deal piercing damage which I have 2 mods for that reduces it on top of the base amount). What I am seeing is that I can be fighting 2-3 mobs there and I'm able to keep up with the damage I'm taking easily.. well I shouldn't say easily, compared to how it used to be it's definitely not easy , but as soon as a debilitator sees me fighting and comes to help his friends in that scenario, I die almost instantly and nothing I can seem to do stops it from happening. A debilitator as far as I can tell, hits for about 60 damage and 100ish rage.. (or maybe that's 200 and i was seeing 100 to health and 100 to armor, but either way that's not explaining why I'm dropping from it) and a damage over time effect for 9 points which can stack up to 3x, but rarely does. I think something is going on under the hood with those guys that doesn't show up in your buff window..I'm not sure what it is but it could be something like a healing debuff, something that would explain why a guy that can barely harm me suddenly spells death when other mobs are involved. I still have no clue though what they are doing.

I am glad you made these points though because it gave me a chance to explain myself better, and even if you still disagree it's fine, it's just food for thought for both players and devs to think about or add better suggestions to.

[ErDrick]

More feedback on my last 3 posts would be great though, we know that Citan is checking this thread, this is our chance to make some good points or ideas that have a chance to be implemented (or to explain why my ideas are bad so they are not implemented inadvertently). I am fine with either scenario there, I don't think I'm some sort of super genius and my ideas are the best ideas. In fact once in the past I had a very bad idea that DID get implemented temporarily and it unexpectedly turned us into immortal gods, that's the sort of thing I definitely want to avoid happening again.

Yaffy pretty much showed perfect evidence of what's wrong with rage criticals, so I'm not sure that aspect needs much more feedback. Keep in mind that just because he showed these examples in level 70 content doesn't mean it isn't an issue at every level though , I'm fairly certain it is! So, we really don't need more proof that this is bad, but can definitely use some possible solutions which will still maintain a challenge.

I just figured we might as well discuss armor while were discussing crits, because they're relevant to each other. And a lot of people that understand game mechanics solidly can (probably?) agree that armor in it's current state is not working well. It does something, but it doesn't feel like it does what it's supposed to do, or so many people wouldn't wear pockets. Armor is great when you have it, but after it's depleted it is not so great.

I like the idea of armor being worth %mitigation instead of flat mitigation, but that would be insanely hard to balance not only now, but all the way to level 125. The best ideas are probably the ones that will require the least amount of work for the developers.

Increasing base armor values on heavier armor types would also be another possible solution, but also has it's own problems ( and doesn't touch on the problem of depleted armor leaves you a sitting duck waiting to be one hit killed anyways). Having too much base armor would make you take so little damage you'd be in very little danger of losing it though ( aka boring aka what Citan wants to avoid).

To me, this (my idea of mostly removing the armor bar from being part of the health bar) seemed like a decent middle-ground solution that requires less dev time. Also since several people are in favor of increasing mob health...this does that both directly and indirectly through mitigation( since they keep their armor).

I still am 100% for you calling out any aspects of this that are not well thought out or are downright stupid though, this isn't about them using "my ideas" It's about Improving the game. They may very well read all of this( including whatever other people have to say) and come up with their own idea which is better, but more angles to look at it from I'm sure would be helpful to the developers.

[Golliathe]

About those rage attack ideas being super shitty play :
Citan said his goal was to make combat more challenging because it can be a snoozefest...

This is one of the reasons I mentioned overtaunt and cheese tactics. Sure it's fun to clear the dungeon faster but you are basically exploiting the content for faster drops.



60% base mitigation from armor on a tank would be completely insane though, nothing would scratch you ever( except prask rage-critical). Also that would require a total rework of monster armor because how would that work for them? Also armor heals in that case would be extremely overpowered, a heal for 300 is a heal for 300, an armor heal for 300 if you had 60% mitigation would give you MUCH more then 300 effective more health.

60% mitigation might be too high for this game but you will see plenty of other games where tanks go much higher with mitigation values (if the game uses a trinity system). I'll come back to this in a minute. Instead of tweaking health values what if enemies had a similar style (not the same scale) system where they got damage resistance based on their armor?



Crafted cloth chest and legs actually gives you 20 pockets per for 40 total by the way. I do agree the base armor values may be off though, especially for snail and the stuff that's supposed to be tanky (plate). The issue isn't that it's so much better, it's that armor value in general really means almost nothing for players.

You can make generic armor with 28+ slots. The point I was trying to make is that 40 slots for 2 pieces of armor is kinda messed up. What if you needed to wear 5 pieces of armor to get +50 slots. You end up with a net of +45 slots but are required to wear 5 pieces. That's massively more restrictive and that too is the point I was trying to make.

As for armor being noting it is important to mention armor because honestly as it stands being a tank in this game means unarmed+________. Overall that seems stupid to me when you consider that there are supposed to be multiple viable options. Nobody will make the informed decision to choose poison when darkness is so much better (see above for anyone skimming).



I think in that light it would sort of still make sense for certain monsters or abilities to lower your armor and thus overall mitigation (if it was changed the 2nd way I suggested that is) and for you to be able to do the same thing to them via acid and stuff. The part I didn't add because I thought it was obvious, is that modifiers for healing armor would all be changed to health instead , with a longer base health bar representing what we would lose from losing the armor bar as part of our health ( the way it works now). And the reason I suggested the health increase is because it would require less rebalancing of mob damage ( I mean if we just lost the armor bar completely with no extra health added, just about everything would 1-3 hit kill you with it's regular attacks). The only ability that would actually "heal" armor damage in that case would be armor patching. To be more clear I also meant that as in it would apply to both players AND monsters, and the simplest way to do it would be to double everything's health pool ( including ours) and leave armor at it's current value, but just make it untouchable except to certain skills that specifically destroy armor.

If you change armor to a system where your armor value gives a % mitigation there's no reason to change abilities that restore armor other than small value tweaks.

You start the rigid like steel and as the fight goes on you become soft like butter unless you keep your armor high.




As for rahu Onkara debilitators...


I've seen this at various points in the game with different characters. Fight one and you are invincible. Fight two and you die or almost die. This is why some people want a combat log but I think that would take a crapton of work.

[Golliathe]

My comment about the cake was referring to unarmed combat currently. Much of your mitigation comes from buffs and the icing is the magic 18% that never goes away.

The danger with a flat % mitigation system is that you dont have to bother fixing your armor. Why would we want the game to be like that? We have skills that restore armor and it would be far more interesting if you needed you keep your armor up.




Yaffy pretty much showed perfect evidence of what's wrong with rage criticals, so I'm not sure that aspect needs much more feedback. Keep in mind that just because he showed these examples in level 70 content doesn't mean it isn't an issue at every level though , I'm fairly certain it is! So, we really don't need more proof that this is bad, but can definitely use some possible solutions which will still maintain a challenge.

I think rage criticals might be fine as they are with tweaks if:

1) armor values were based on type (cloth having value 1.0, leather 1.5, plate 3.0 - or some variation)
2) % mitigation based on armor values were added to the game
3) monsters lost rage when out of combat for 10 seconds


This could alleviate much of the snooze function citan sees in groups. DPS types need to be careful or they pull aggro and get hit. If they take a crit on a rage attack they die. I think I can live with a dps character dying from a rage crit but having tanks be beefy enough to survive them. In fact I kinda want the DPS to die. Why? Because specialized damage characters should not also be tanky. That creates problems where you have the best of both worlds. This is why D&D wizards/rogues (the highest dps classes) don't get to wear plate.


I think we need to backup and ask questions:

A) Does Citan intend for us to prevent strong boss mobs from using their rage attack in order to succeed in certain tough encounters?

Right now the answers is - who cares if the boss has a rage mechanic. I find that boring honestly. That being said WOW went overboard with this and each boss fight was - ok here's the song and dance you do for this boss. That was stupid and boring.

Likewise it would be shitty if you NEEDED an ice mage to make a boss fight smooth to make his rage bar stupidly long with the double +66% debuff thing.

B) Should tanks be the only ones who live through strong hits? (tank definied as specialied armor+ mods for classes like shield or unarmed)

C) is it ok for people to solo in places like GK at the level of the content (last part being very important).

If not then please make the first room be a linked all or nothing pull. Anyone who figures out how to kill 4 mobs at once deserves to solo there.
If the answer is no then as I said before certain skills probably need a rework so you cant stack crazy amounts of dmg reduction.



we might as well discuss armor while were discussing crits, because their relevant to each other. And a lot of people that understand game mechanics solidly can (probably?) agree that armor in it's current state is not working well. It does something, but it doesn't feel like it does what it's supposed to do, or so many people wouldn't wear pockets. Armor is great when you have it, but after it's depleted it is not so great.

I like the idea of armor being worth %mitigation instead of flat mitigation, but that would be insanely hard to balance not only now, but all the way to level 125. The best ideas are probably the ones that will require the least amount of work for the developers.


I don't think it would be as hard to balance as you think. Level 50 armor would count up to X value total offering a % to damage and mobs at that level could be tuned based on changed resistances.

Armor if based loosely on how it is now.... you have 2 options.

1. Unarmed is initially tankier but has no ability to restore armor so you become squish much faster.
2. The armored guy has less base mitigation but can use multiple abilities to restore armor.

I see the game needing to progress so that these are equal options - not one being 5 times better than the other.



Increasing base armor values on heavier armor types would also be another possible solution, but also has it's own problems ( and doesn't touch on the problem of depleted armor leaves you a sitting duck waiting to be one hit killed anyways). Having too much base armor would make you take so little damage you'd be in very little danger of losing it though ( aka boring aka what Citan wants to avoid).

If the tank has to worry about using abilities to restore his armor instead of spamming damaging abilities that makes the fight more interesting. If the DPS needs to maybe back off OR possibly try and steal aggro form the tank to keep the tank alive that keeps the fight more interesting.

Right now an unarmed tank has pretty flat % mitigation and that's boring. I feel THAT is what citan wants to avoid. Dynamic % mitigation based on fluctuating armor values would make combat spicy.

The most successful groups in GK are boring. Pull mobs- kill with cheap tricks - repeat. There is very little danger except from the super rage criticals. People are usually rezzed mid combat.



To me, this (my idea of mostly removing the armor bar from being part of the health bar) seemed like a decent middle-ground solution that requires less dev time. Also since several people are in favor of increasing mob health...this does that both directly and indirectly through mitigation( since they keep their armor).
.

I think it's neat to have an armor bar but it would be so much better if it meant something. Imagine for example if your character sheet told you that at 1000 you had 50% mitigation. If your armor is 50% full then that means you lost half your mitigation (no matter how much armor you have).

Skills that restore armor become way more valuable and combat becomes way more interesting - keep your armor up and be safe or ignore it and potentially die.


One last closing thought that will probably be extremely unpopular - why do animals get to use a shield as an animal? Ok sure fine let them use the mods or whatever but it seems like a cheat to be able to use the armor from a shield while playing an animal (this of course would assume that we change armor to a % mitigation system).

[Golliathe]

Very late page 7 edit:

Did we talk about fear? We didn't right?

Fear probably also needs some fair play balancing.

1. Bosses should probably be immune to equal level fear abilities (but if you fear them with a lvl 70 item or spell and they are maybe lvl 50 or below it should work)
2. Fearing a monster should probably do what everquest did - keep assist radius if it runs away. This makes fear a tool to use in "if" situations not a crutch.
3. Fear should probably break roots and vice versa. It is beyond cheese to root everything and then fear it (to prevent subversion of point #2 (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=2) ); nothing actually moves and just stands there to die without attacking. Once again D&D is a good model for the why on this aspect : fear a monster and it will run unless you corner it and then it will fight you to the death.

[ErDrick]

Going to agree that EQ had some solid mechanics we don't have here (although it got dumbed down to the point where it's pretty shit now). EQ had a team of devs behind it though, PG doesn't really have that atm, unless we want to drive Citan, Srand and Silvonis (more) insane, we need simple solutions, at least I think we do.. I could be wrong though, maybe they want to do balance right once and for all and move forward from there.

You have some good points though, and I sort of agree that unarmed is overpowered right now for tanking (or everything else is underpowered, take your pick). One thing I actually had thought of as far as extending health / making armor untouchable though is that it would mitigate some of the other problems you mentioned. 5 seconds of cheese tactics (root/fear) becomes less relevant if the monsters live for 20-40 seconds, same for 6k aggro..6k taunt is crazy when a monster only has 6k health, not as much if it has 20 or 25k though ( and bosses with 90k). More then that really since they wouldn't lose the mitigation from their base armor for the most part, much higher effective health. Also this would give damage over time and pets (which are basically damage over time as well just with a visual) to shine and be useful, though that also has the problem that pets would never be able to damage certain monsters through their armor mitigation unless you also lowered it somehow, hmmm (technically they could just change pets damage type to indirect though and not change anything else to make up for that). I am not trying to discount any of your valid points though, just to show that I had thought about them and this seems like it covers most of them ( but not that it's the "right" suggestion... end of the day it probably isn't).

Bosses being immune to cc effects is something I have thought about a lot, because in standard rpg's and mmo's they usually are. I would sort of hate losing the ability to "mez boss, pull and kill his guards", though. Fear Immunity definitely makes sense for bosses though at least, a guy with 50-90k health would never be afraid of you even if you tried to force it with magic. Stuff like root and mesmerize though, I dunno .. even though that's the standard it has always annoyed me ( especially in rpg's where you get all these nifty status effects that never ever work). So I kind of like that here they actually do work, but I still get your point.

Assist radius works differently here, feared mobs do keep their assist radius but they only shout when taking damage vs just seeing you/being pissed at you. (I feel you though on this one as well, for me using fear seems like an "oh shit we are fucked if i don't try this" kind of last resort, because that is how it has always been in other games. But I don't know what they wanted it to be in this game, just because I'm used to it being one thing doesn't mean it cant be something else in their vision). Also while the shouting mechanic is realistic, I's harder for a player to plan around then aggro being based on line of sight and proximity to other things that are fighting.. I mean it is realistic for mobs in adjacent room to hear their buddy being squashed and rush to it's aid, but it's frustrating from a gameplay perspective because we lack any tools to be able to look inside that room and know there are going to be 10 more things charging out at us if we attack the guy that looks alone in the hallway.

What you said about root / fear interaction (that is, one breaks the other) I can agree with wholeheartedly though, but it isn't an omg fix this immediately kind of game breaking priority ( but still something that should definitely be noted and possibly worked on at some point).

[Golliathe]

So really the issue of pockets is that people choose pockets over other options. So then we need something where people say I don't know if I want pockets or something else.

The simple solution if you ask me is to have reinforcement of armor be amazing.

What if we do something like:

1. Cloth can't be reinforced.
2. Let reinforcement stay as a 2 enchantment points per point - but change the effect to 1% mitigation per for leather and 2% per for plate/organic.
3. The caveat: This mitigation bonus works as a percentage of your current total armor pool

Cloth armor (including the super cheese nimble set) would still give 40 pockets
So now leather armor would have the option to have 20% mitigation based on armor + the 18%. (monks in plate can't also use the 18% bonus)
Now plate would have 40% mitigation.

Anyone who desires to be tanky can still be tanky and anyone who wants to give up a ton of defense to have pockets can make that choice.

Recode abilities that give you a % dmg reduction to be an either or with a higher/lower modifier. In other words you could still use psychology to get 25% damage reduction but it wouldn't do anything until you had less than 25% dmg reduction active. This type of % stacking would go a long way to essentially having a "no solo" sign on the door of elite dungeons. This would also mean it would make the monk 18% redundant so if you were trying to solo with unarmed psychology instead of getting 18%+ 25% you would be getting 25% and nothing from the 18% reduction. Yes this would nerf the hell out of unarmed psych but it would keep them from being able to solo group content monsters.

*** I highly suggest you putting this into the game to balance % mitigation so that we don't have mega solo combinations like we do right now ***.


Give Elite monsters % mitigation based on armor type. In other words all the armored gk mobs would be a lot tankier and have strong armor. The health would stay the same but it would matter a ton more that the monster has strong armor.

Rather than just giving the mobs more health the mobs just have more of a damage shield (which potentially gives them more life). You could burst them down with pierce damage (maybe a well coordinated duo/trio). Armor only damaging powers would be far more valuable; on that end since they are rare and of questionable value right now what if you made armor only abilities skip mitigation? In other words an 1800 dmg fireball hitting a mob with 50% mitigation full armor only does 900 damage but an acid burst does full damage.



Bosses being immune to cc effects is something I have thought about a lot, because in standard rpg's and mmo's they usually are. I would sort of hate losing the ability to "mez boss, pull and kill his guards", though. Fear Immunity definitely makes sense for bosses though at least, a guy with 50-90k health would never be afraid of you even if you tried to force it with magic. Stuff like root and mesmerize though, I dunno .. even though that's the standard it has always annoyed me ( especially in rpg's where you get all these nifty status effects that never ever work). So I kind of like that here they actually do work, but I still get your point.

Rooting a boss is not 100% - what if he is ranged? That's basically no effect.

What if we make bosses have a 50% chance to resist fear/mez for an equal level ability. Then you have a "risky" option that can pay off but isn't a guarantee. This would still be in line with what CoH did with bosses being resistant to control powers.



Assist radius works differently here, feared mobs do keep their assist radius but they only shout when taking damage vs just seeing you/being pissed at you.
Simple fix: If a mob is feared - have it call for help every time it takes damage.... I mean it is a quivering crying pitiful thing right? Would it not be screaming help? HELP!?

So you could fear a mob away to control it as long as nobody touches it. Rip your team if you put a dot on it however.... as it will mean 10 mobs flying onto your group.

[Golliathe]

I sort of agree that unarmed is overpowered right now for tanking (or everything else is underpowered, take your pick). One thing I actually had thought of as far as extending health / making armor untouchable though is that it would mitigate some of the other problems you mentioned. 5 seconds of cheese tactics (root/fear) becomes less relevant if the monsters live for 20-40 seconds, same for 6k aggro..6k taunt is crazy when a monster only has 6k health, not as much if it has 20 or 25k though ( and bosses with 90k).


Any style of % mitigation would also prolong fights and do the same thing. The reason I really like the idea of having armor be an ablative form of protection is that you have to work very hard to keep your armor value high. If armor becomes untouchable you have to completely rework all powers that restore X amount of armor and the mods that go with them.

I also like the fact that it would make unarmed tanking completely different from armor tanking. Unarmed largely speaking doesn't really have much in the way of armor restoration. But if they had a base "always" percentage that could make it strong, interesting and different from armor tanking. If I didn't say so before the 20%+ 18% would be one exception where you get both forms of DR stacking.

As I said before needing to have active armor restoration would hopefully make people want to make different class or power decisions rather than : I am not the tank therefore I will just stack damage abilities and maybe a self heal or two.


Before anyone goes oh man 40% reduction is crazy! let's talk about that a moment.

Regular armor right now is pretty crap and the nimble cloth armor is better. You ignore the first melee hit, you ignore the first burst attack every 12 seconds and you get to ignore an untold number of archery/magic projectiles. Oops! Pardon me for letting the cat out of the bag but nimble pants can block upwards of 10-20 attacks. It doesn't always work like that but it does work like this for some monsters. In other words when you get the "i'm going to dodge everything" event to trigger you can solo a mage in gk and the only way he will damage you is from his pet (which will miss with its first melee attack). This is in the category of "game breaking" if you ask me.


In the case of two mobs the nimble armor will block at least 2 attacks over a 15-20s engagement. The second attack can in some cases be that experience crippling one hit rage critical.

IF you had 40% mitigation - you would be nearly out of armor mitigation around the 3rd or 4th double pair of hits.

When you consider adding arrow and poison damage into the mix the nimble armor is still probably better. When you remember that the supposed heavier armor doesn't give you any % mitigation there becomes no question that tailoring makes an end game armor product that nothing else comes close to matching.

Is that really the kind of armor balancing Citan had in mind all along? I hope not.

[INXS]

Nimble armor is ok, but with the evasion leather set + nimble gloves and evasion belt i never lose to infiltrators and mages from a distance using archery skill.

[spider91301]

Honestly for the most part I have lost internet in this topic if the time factor is key in this but if its getting this fixed tomorow or getting weapon smithing so I can craft my own swords and shields in a week im going with weapon smithing, topics getting old and honest if your carefull and your rng doesn't full blown suck ass you still can get good loot so this doesn't matter to me much especially since I got a max enchanted cloth armor with a shit load of pockets and soon to be 101% avoid death mod so I will have one on my my necklace and pants, So I can now honestly say- ONE SHOT ME IF YOU CAN YOU FKING BASTARDS

I know coding is hard but with how long its taking to get any traction on a possible fix and that added with the factor of my attention span being the size of a rodent I stopped caring about the crits fixes or ideas on how to fix it

PS: The rodent sized attention span is the main reason/90% of the reason I stopped caring if it gets fixed

https://media.giphy.com/media/uWXDtrRvrLgm7k6PLQ/giphy.gif

[Citan]

Guys, just to keep things on track: we're not changing armor into a totally different thing. We're DEFINITELY not going to add percentage-based mitigation to every "defensive" skill just because monsters hit too hard right now. We're going to tune the systems we have until they work. I need help on micro-ideas, not macro-ideas.

At this point, I really don't need help inventing entirely new game systems that sound fun on paper. The problem is that actually combining a game's worth of systems is hard. It's especially hard in a game like this, with a LOT of different systems interconnected. At this point, replacing any game mechanic inevitably causes other balance problems to appear, and creates a cascade of new problems. Complete system replacement is the nuclear option.

So my point is this: we're talking about game systems that mostly work. They just need refining and adjusting, like all game systems do. Replacing a game system always sounds sexier and more fun than doing the hard, tedious work of tightening an existing system design. But we're in beta now, not alpha, and it's time to buckle down and start solving the nuts-and-bolts balancing problems. I can't avoid them forever by just trying new stuff. Every design has a ton of weird side-effects that have to be worked out, and each time we replace a game system with an entirely new system, that just postpones the hard work.

The current problems with armor seem like they can be solved by monster rebalancing, so that's the first thing I'll try. It sounds like monster crits aren't scaling correctly, because (obviously) there shouldn't be such a thing as "one-hit kills". So we'll work on that first. If any of the existing systems prove unbalanceable, then we'll open the floor to new ideas.

---

Actually, I feel like I'm yelling and I don't mean to: there are no wrong answers to the questions here. There are just answers that are more- or less-useful to me right now. I definitely don't intend to sound upset just because you're giving me answers I can't use!

I wanted to steer this thread toward smaller points of discussion, but really, I've already received plenty of actionable feedback in this thread. So I think it's run its course and has some great ideas, and I'm just going to close it for now. Thanks.