Critical Healing? :/

[Glythe]

I came back to the game after being away for a while and found that elite mobs now heal sometimes as a function of rage. I feel like this was a huge mistake.
I could not find a post about this topic but someone told me it was part of the game now.

https://oi1124.photobucket.com/albums/l577/Glythe/troll.jpg

https://oi1124.photobucket.com/albums/l577/Glythe/puck.jpg

*note the troll in this picture was on fire the entire combat - so this is a full rage heal with no "natural regeneration".


I often solo the first floor of WN as a level 80 character (limited to lvl 70 snail armor) running battlechemistry/shield. The mobs are trivial and they should be given where I am in the game and that I have a build designed to make fighting them easier.

Is it really the design of the game to have mobs be healing more than double their max health? If this is me fighting these monsters in gear that makes the content a joke ... then what are level appropriate players supposed to do?


Battle Chemistry does not have the big hits of fire damage but is punished by the same criteria of when a mob is on fire it has stupid extra rage. Wih the trolls this is a monster that has a crazy heal rate if it is not on fire.

In the case of Puck he actually killed me as I was leveling Ice. As I am still leveling it this build as not as strong as my main build but I suspect I did well over ~35,000 to a boss who has 13k health (probably closer to 40k) and did not kill it. To me this seems absurd. I came back with my main build and killed it.

Key issues:

1. Damage over time abilities have never been stellar compared to direct damage and now are even worse.
2. Battle chemistry is severely nerfed by this change as a huge portion of the damage comes from a long dot with the mob being on fire.
3. Can we limit how much healing a monster can get as a fuction of rage?

I feel like 25% rage healing max would be enough. After a monster heals 25% as a function of rage it cannot heal more. Let the monster's armor however reset often. There are a lot of really good armor breaking skills that are essentially useless because it is too easy to tear the mob's armor off and leave it in health only for the majority of the fight.

[AgentBbrian]

Have they tried the armor repairing like health on enemies instead of the health being healed? before?
Wouldnt mind seeing some rages proc to heal armor, havn't seen any of that in the early stages of the game so far, it's either vampire health steal or just more health and healing when they have like slightly no health left, but what if sometimes health was not healed and armor was?
I like that idea, it does feel like the armor isn't really a threat to deal with on enemies or needed unless you want to do skill blocked blacksmithing or augmenting/skill blocked aswell unless you use the npc and ignore deconstructing and augments skills haha.

[Citan]

I'm working on relevant changes to monster stats and higher-level combat for the next update, stay tuned for more on that.

[Glythe]

I'm working on relevant changes to monster stats and higher-level combat for the next update, stay tuned for more on that.

Wow thank you for the quick reply. I am glad you have realized there was a problem with this system. If I can make a suggestion for BC specifically - maybe an existing mod could be changed (instead of a new one added as most of the gear pieces have 9 mods per slot)?

Would it be something you might consider to change the ring/offhand mod slots from : All Bomb Damage +96

To instead read as : All Bomb Damage +96 and burning caused by your bomb attacks reduces rage instead of lowers it by x. (?)



Such a change might totally not be necessary with what you have in mind but Battle Chemistry has zero ways to remove rage.


One of the overall problems I see with the game right now is that front loaded damage is king. I have seen a lot of people switching to archery so that you can just ignore rage by killing the target in 2~3 hits. What's a rage bar if the monster never lives long enough to hit you?

If it helps design your new system at all I think it might be smart to have a speed of damage relative to rage buildup.

[AgentBbrian]

Someone was talking about an idea with abilities that reduce rage being changed to something that makes the enemy vulnerable instead and or causing a brief stun or slow in movement or attack speed.
As in the enemy that rages causes a few second debuff on themself and if the person has a mod to counter the rage and they use it within that time, like 3-5 seconds then the mob is stunned and vulnerable.

[Delfofthebla]

Is it really the design of the game to have mobs be healing more than double their max health? If this is me fighting these monsters in gear that makes the content a joke ... then what are level appropriate players supposed to do?


All difficult content is easily handled by simple having two skillsets with stuns and/or fears in your group, and rotating between them off cooldown.

ezpz.


One of the overall problems I see with the game right now is that front loaded damage is king. I have seen a lot of people switching to archery so that you can just ignore rage by killing the target in 2~3 hits. What's a rage bar if the monster never lives long enough to hit you?

I definitely agree with you here, DoTs are super underwhelming compared to frontloaded damage, and rage feels completely unmanageable when a single person in your group has pets or fire abilities.

If you get a group of any size really, you're going to fill that rage bar almost immediately on all mobs. There's all these treasure mods that cause a certain abillity to reduce rage but I find that idea completely laughable. Like sure, I could grab 2 abilities and 4-6 treasure mods for rage reduction and maybe delay a mob from using a single rage attack by a second or two (max).

...Or I could just stack damage and CC abilities and burst him down.

1) Direct damage is too strong.
2) DoT damage is underwhelming and unsatisfying.
3) The rage bar fills too quickly with even the smallest groups / ability usage.
4) Pet AI, Pet UI, Pet maintenance, and overall feeling of using pets is straight up garbage, yet they contribute a lot of rage.
5) It does not feel rewarding to nuke a mob's rage bar, as it fills up immediately after nuking it.
6) Stuns/fears require absolutely no investment but are much more useful for "delaying" the rage attacks.

I would love to see DoT damage become more relevant, the rage bar be less "swingy", and for pets to be an actual part of the damn game, but I aint holding my breath.

[Glythe]

Idea after I wote the rest of the post : why not have all dots in PG reduce rage? This would obviously exclude those cause by the 'fire' skill explicitly.


All difficult content is easily handled by simple having two skillsets with stuns and/or fears in your group, and rotating between them off cooldown.

I think the game has always been a little silly in that there has never really been a dedicated 'tank' required for any content. A huge portion of tanking is actually: abusing monster pathing combined with cc abilities paired with a big taunt ability (especially an aoe). People play like this because the bosses have always been completely on the ridiculous side (looking back to when critical hits were completely insane and far too often - now they are just insane when they happen). Other games handled this with a deatouch mechanic ( which made everquest so tedious at times) or having the monster warp back to spawn at full health.



I definitely agree with you here, DoTs are super underwhelming compared to frontloaded damage, and rage feels completely unmanageable when a single person in your group has pets or fire abilities.

If you get a group of any size really, you're going to fill that rage bar almost immediately on all mobs. There's all these treasure mods that cause a certain abillity to reduce rage but I find that idea completely laughable. Like sure, I could grab 2 abilities and 4-6 treasure mods for rage reduction and maybe delay a mob from using a single rage attack by a second or two (max).

...Or I could just stack damage and CC abilities and burst him down.

First of all I feel it is important to note that some mobs come to you with a full rage bar. Maybe this is a display error but rage should be reset to zero on a monster when their health bar resets if they are out of combat.

I think rage fills too quickly overall and always has but if you have ever played in a two or three man team that did all use rage reducing mods it is a completely different experience.

I think the problem with rage reduction modifiers is that given a choice between doing more damage or choosing rage reduction the answer is obviously skip the rage reduction and build for damage.

Look at a power like Electrify for mentalism. Your first mod will always be the one that makes this ability a stun because this is an incredible change when you have it compared to when you do not.

Then you will likely slot this mod twice : Electrify Damage +45%

This modifier will get skipped in an end tier build : Electrify generates no rage and removes 1200 Rage

Why not combine those two mods? In the case of mentalism I feel this would be a huge boon as that ability has some slots with 13-14 abilities to roll between.

If damage is too strong of a mod to apply the rage reduction to then why not add it to one of the utility options? Actually what about this:

Electrify generates no rage, removes 1200 Rage and restores 64 Health to you

I feel making changes like this across all powersets where applicable would be a very solid rework of the rage reduction portion of the game. Someone wanting utility will have the option to slot for utility that will actually compete for relevance. Everyone knows nimble boots are best in slot. But what if you can build a high damage / high utility powerset that runs with the ability to effectively turn rage off when you fight monsters. That would be super cool.




I would love to see DoT damage become more relevant, the rage bar be less "swingy", and for pets to be an actual part of the damn game, but I aint holding my breath.

I would personally love to see rage bars be much larger relative to the expected power use against them. Gazluk keep mobs have a rage bar that seems like it is appropriately sized for about 2.5 people. Single pull non elite mob rage use feels pretty good overall. What if we combine a rework of critical hits with a much larger rage bar? Make the rage bar actually matter! Can you imagine what the game would be like if monsters did not crit except when their rage meter filled up? Maybe every time their bar filled up they got a very high chance to crit for a single attack in the next 10 seconds (meaning it might be their rage attack or not).

If you look at the rework to fire since it got way more rage from burning enemies this power feels much better balanced. You can shoot a fireball with the extra rage mod and elites can be ready to instantly rage from one attack. I suspect so many people go to fire because it has been overpowered at times in the past but I do not think that is the case now (post rage change / post aoe nerf). Now the high damage comes at the price of many more rage attacks suffered by you and your team.

What I would love to see for this game is the ability for players to pick rage reducing powers that do not come at the expense of damage. Alternatively it might be good/interesting for super high DPS powers like fire/archery to be beyond punishing for rage.

I do not want archery to be ruined but I think it is pretty clear it needs some rebalancing. I suspect archery needs a change along the lines of what fire got in that using this ability generates greatly increased rage.





3) The rage bar fills too quickly with even the smallest groups / ability usage.
4) Pet AI, Pet UI, Pet maintenance, and overall feeling of using pets is straight up garbage, yet they contribute a lot of rage.
5) It does not feel rewarding to nuke a mob's rage bar, as it fills up immediately after nuking it.


All of this is very true but it is really interesting if you have a nuke that reduces rage instead of generating it (mentalism/druid can build a really high damage single target no rage combo).

Pets have been bad for what I hear close to 4 years. I would love to see a rework but pets need a huge AI rework, ability stance rework (follow me without attacking until I tell you otherwise / only attack what I tell you mode) and general health/QoL upgrades. Why are pets not +4 their master's current speed for example (someone suggested that recently). Why does having a pet keep you and the party in combat an extra 5 seconds? There are so many bad reasons to have pets. The only good one I hear is : animal handling at 80 is great for powerleveling.

-Hopefully the fae update for pets will bring some much needed love! /Hype

[AgentBbrian]

That was a nice read,

I liked the talk of:

How there should be more options to tank and how to tank., although i feel like the game is missing like a talent/feat system that could handle these types of things better than clothing mods.
The rage bar stuff, with it filling up and causing buffs to the enemy as it grows, not just a damage or heal ability dump when it's full but making the enraged mob get stronger and stronger as it gets up there, it's rage after all.
Ofc the pets rework, would be welcomed (4 years ouch), wish i could tame wolfs too, and medium versions of them so i could have 2 pets out at once instead of just one :)
Necro pets i would lvoe to see the skeletons visually degrade with damage instead of just death, like the skeles can be crawling around on the ground without legs biting the ankles n stuff and slowly regen back to a full body, its undead not life, works different right?
Dot damage currently feels like it ticks too slowly and feels like its support damage not not a main source, if you have damage numbers turned on you watch it do its thing and it feels slow.. hard to explain the entertainment value of fots in other games where it was like a chainsaw if it was done well.