Update Discussion: March 2, 2023

[Sims]

The update notes are here: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?3115-Update-Notes-March-2-2023

Discussion is in this thread! But please remember to report any bugs through the in-game reporting system so we can track them.

[poulter]

Max-Enchanted Recipe change:
Whilst the rationale for removing the extra mod from max-crafted items (i.e. balancing) is understood & accepted, I would highlight that crafting (& the ability to create best-in-slot items) is a major reason why I have played this game so long (since 2015). Any diminution of that aspect would reduce my enjoyment & ultimately play-time. That is, a primary reason for me to play the game would be diminished.

I would therefore request that careful consideration to the crafting 'advantage' be undertaken & that it be replaced with functionality that is more balanced, but still constructive and meaningful.

I would also express concern that with the reduced number of players at high level currently active, that forming groups to run end-game dungeons (to obtain best-in-slot loot drops), is likely to be quite constrained and lead to a further drop in high-level players. If you can't craft, or loot, the 'best' items, then that becomes a dis-incentive to play at end-game.

[Celerity]

Combat XP Changes:
Overall idea is good. Forcing people out of their comfort zone is a good idea in this case, too often you hear about the noob who's lvl 40 and still farming in eltibule, but I think it's too strict with the xp dropoffs, especially for higher level mobs.

Take the example where you go to Kur Tower at lvl 40. On the wiki and everywhere else, Kur Tower is always advertised as a lvl 40 dungeon and most of the mobs there are indeed lvl 40. But now with these new changes, you get reduced exp from the lvl 50 skeletons that are mixed in with the lvl 40 zombies. This makes no sense, you're going to a dungeon at the recommended level and yet you can get punished for killing mobs that are too high level? In fact, the only level you get full exp from both the lvl 40 and 50 mobs, is when you're exactly 45 which just doesn't make any sense. At least make it so you get full exp from mobs 10 levels above, then it can drop off from there to 0 for mobs that are more than 25 levels above you like it is now.

I haven't reached this issue yet, but it also seems like with the bonus levels counting, getting the last few levels if they're past 90 seem to be an absolute nightmare since you only get reduced exp from mobs because they're all too low level.

Channeled Ability Changes
Glad to see it's being embraced as a mechanic. I really do think it is a balance issue though; most channeled abilities would be pretty bad if you couldn't use other abilities while channeling. Solo, they're practically impossible to get off unless you have a pet tanking, but 99% of pets are single target so wouldn't be able to keep aggro on multiple mobs. Even in groups, they get cancelled very often with aoes, so they're actually quite weak overall. Only priest manages to be ok and that's because of their insane burst evasion.

Weather Witching
It seems ok, I like the fancy animations at least, but from initial impressions I just think meh overall. It's an electricity/nature damage skill, so another spring fairy set, yet unusable by most of the skills that synergise with that. I don't really feel like it has too many good pairings, except possibly fairy magic, druid or warden through butterfly. The compatible skills is broken in the JSON though and warden isn't even listed which means you can't make warden/weather witching gear. The base damage seems to be quite weak and almost half of the abilities are channeled, which sounds like a nice gimmick, but in reality just makes the skill a pain to use and kinda junk solo, for the reasons mentioned above. Additionally, when Jack has been talking about warden nerfs, which is one of the only decent pairings, I just don't feel particularly thrilled about this skill whatsoever.

Max-Enchanted Recipe Change
Saved the spiciest for last.
I don't think it's a bad idea in and of itself, but I think things have been done in the wrong order and the full effects haven't been thought out and planned for.

Firstly, please don't make this change until AT LEAST lvl 90 comes out, if not a month or so afterwards. If the change is made before, then lots of people will be throwing gear they spent millions on down the drain. If we can replace the gear with lvl 90 gear first, then at least it won't feel like a waste.

Secondly, let's just examine the immediate effect of this change. Nobody has to craft max-enchanted yellows anymore, crafting purples instead is now the BIS and this means your required crafts have just been cut probably by a factor of 10. This means demand for crafting mats goes way down, now it's up to the reader's discretion if this is a negative or not, but most games aim towards making crafting stimulate the player economy and this is basically undoing that.

Next problem, what do end game players have to aim for now? Before you would reach the max level, obtain a basic set of gear from dungeons, then probably make a purple set, farm more dungeons, make money, level your crafting skills or buy mats to give to a crafter, make a full set of max-enchanted yellows, then finally you have your BIS, and it was a long term investment. New progression; you reach max level and get a crafter to make a full set of yellows immediately. The full yellow set is now more accessible than the full purple set was before this change due to the inevitable crash in crafting mats. You could probably even just skip the basic set of dungeon gear just with the money you get from the lvl 40 - 50 casino dailies. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that a new player could reasonably achieve a full set of BIS gear the same day they hit lvl 80 now. This works for closing the gap between players sure, but now there's nothing to aim for, no cool items to farm, no way to improve your account further. Boss gauntlet arguably could still drop some upgrades, but this is a temporary event which is going away.

So how does this get solved? Well the only way to make crafting the way it was before is to rescale the rarity of purples to give it the rarity that yellows have now, and then rescale everything else accordingly, making yellows some minute chance to craft. But if this change then goes through, the same thing has to happen to dungeon farming or crafting is the most irrelevant thing in the entire game, requiring a high barrier to entry, then actual costs to craft and worst results at the end of the day.
Why would you ever pick that over running a dungeon which has lower barrier to entry, actually gives you profit and makes you money rather than costing money and then would also give a higher chance for better gear?

So then does dungeon farmed gear also get a nerf? If so then suddenly the original aim which was closing the gap between the high end players and the new players has been lost somewhere along the way, because now it's harder for the new players to gear which makes everyone weaker in the game where new players are already struggling. I've seen people take 11 man groups into WT, I know that at least most of them are level 80 and they're still wiping in there and that's with at least 1 of them having max-enchanted yellows. What happens when you downgrade everyone's gear?

But maybe it shouldn't be changed, maybe it's fine that BIS is super easy to acquire, as it will simplify the balancing problem and make it easier to now individually balance the skills. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

[Mikhaila]

I agree with a lot of what Celerity said about crafting of max enchanted gear. I keep playing and trying out new combos of skills, and then grind to make a max crafted set for that skill. Have a dozen sets. Having those become trash would be horrible. I'm not taking those skills to 90 that fast and will need that gear.

I'm depressed at the thought of the change. Once I get a yellow of that gear, why do I need two? That's just something to sell or phlog.

What if you made a change that getting a yellow MC gives another effect from a small group of treasure effects? It can be rerolled using phlog similar to an endurance mod. Call it a 'crafting mod' or whatever. +20 crafting points was mentioned, that would be awesome. You could also have other effects such as cold resistance, increased metabolism, less effect from alcohol, +1 OOC sprint, etc. Make it a quality of life mod.

[Mikhaila]

Some questions come to mind with the addition of Wwitch.

First question is on the intended compatability for Wwitch. Is it a valid combo with Warden, as a butterfly, or not? Gear can't be made with Warden and Wwitch skills, currently.

Butterfly has nothing of it's own, and a limited amount of skills to work with. Warden is probably the best thing they have going. I've run unarmed/warden and mentalism/warden with butterfly.

It would be helpful to know if this is not intended to be an allowed combination of skills, since butterfly takes a panacea to negate.

Second question: If the reason gear can't be made because you don't want that skill combo to happen, why haven't you taken away druid/warden crafting? It's been said several times that druid/warden wasn't intended to be a skill combo, but about the only thing that is a problem to make are the deer/cow shoes.

Last question: Can we shift the ability of rabbits to use Ice Magic to the same slot as butterflies use to get Wwitch? There are a lot of problems with the Tiara. No recipes to make them, limited drops of the item means low chance of ever getting a good one. Two-legs have many better options for the head slot. Just change the tiara to that slot, have the same little halo if using it, and let bunnies get the same headgear as other ice mages. If not, put in recipes to make them and give them similar stats to the two-leg masks.

[Casalia]

I don't think this recent Patch specifically targets advanced players, sure they'll have to give up a mod of their gear at some point. But the far more stupid thing is that the currently existing builds cannot be cought up with, in terms of combat proficiency. The incentive to work on new build has completely vanished. Newer folks not having already made their gear are at an unfair disadvantage. Poeple like myself, whose main endgame content consisted out of probing the combat system, and trying out different builds have probably lost interest in playing further (though I can obviously only speak for myself). I don't really think the crafting change as they've been introduced are a bad thing, they just got introduced at the entirely wrong point in time (should've come with lvl 90 when everyone would be making new gear anyhow).

I wouldn't have minded some nerfs to my builds, however NONE of the already existing builds have seen ANY nerfs what so ever ("The Nerfening™", what a joke Jack) Instead, some builds that are "500% better then others" (paraphrasing Citan, who apperantly acknowledges this issue but thinks its not a top priority) remain at their current strength. Spring fairy gear, one of the major factor in those builds saw NO CHANGE at all. Meanwhile 2 things that have been changed are: Cow stampede (and I assume other abilities that are supposed to work when stunned) now works when being hit with 10 stuns per second, and BC is supposed to have its "skinning gear" erased. While I think both those things should happen, implementing them without re- balancing these skills just further increases the gap in power of different skills. This tells me that the devs are far more concerned with "getting it right" (for whatever that entails) as opposed to creating an enjoyable gameplay experience. A direction in which I will not follow.

I have no idea what on earth this new xp-change is supposed to accomplish, but along with the changes to auto-deleveling mods (which has been attempted at a previous patch), it looks like a whole lot of effort has gone into something that will have an absolutely negligable impact on gameplay. Why was effort focused here?

Whats up with Weather Witching? Suddenly it got resurrected just to be yet another AoE / DoT / Nature / Electricity skill? Just what we needed more of...

I like the GUI changes in general. New Font looks sharp. Though I really wonder in how many places I have to see my own hp/armor/power? Maybe stop once that info is found 10x on the screen... And why are we not seeing the changes to the broken bones debuff icon on things like the stampede stacks or the bard stacks??? Again a positive change in general though.

I am somewhat sad about this. I guess all good things must come to an end. None if this is meant as a personal offence to anyone. I had a great time in the game and don't regret playing it, but it just looks as if this game has crossed the zenith. After I've seen my latest build thru, sometime next week, you will probably no longer see me in game. I will keep my eyes open for new patches and LVL 90 (should it come out) but I won't hold my hopes up for it.

repost from https://discord.com/channels/592041654677012480/666853408853983254/1081523420094795817 as a means to make it easier to find again.

[poulter]

Max-enchanted crafting change:
With all the recent emotion concerning the removal of a mod from max-crafted gear, I reviewed the anticipated impact on 3 of my most used builds.

Tank
Staff /Shield Current max mods = 62 Future max mods = 54 Current used mods = 58 (1 mod yet to be added so target is 59 mods for the complete build)
Impact: Lose 5 mods. 2 'optional' mods identified, so loss is 3 mod
Conclusion: Serious impact on tank build. Threat generation or mitigation will be reduced

Healer:
Bard /Druid Current max mods = 63 Future max mods = 54 Current used mods = 61 (build complete)
Impact: Lose 7 mods. 4 'optional' mods identified, so loss is 3 mod
Conclusion: Minor impact on healer build, due to overhealing capacity

DPS:
Fire /Priest Current max mods = 62 Future max mods = 54 Current used mods = 60 (build complete)
Impact: Lose 6 mods. 6 'optional' mods identified, so loss is 0
Conclusion: No impact on DPS output. Build will continue to deliver 12.5k to 18k damage /rotation

Summary:
The proposed change will have little to no damage reduction impact on my current builds i.e. a better balance will not be achieved.

[Ranperre]

I'd like to address this from a different angle, your priorities are wrong. New players need to be carried through higher level dungeons and only four tanks have done the gauntlet in the past month (and three of us are basically with the same group and do the same thing). You have a serious problem getting players to jump from "good enough to level to 80" to "good enough to not be a worthless piece of shit in groups" and your response is... nerf everyone and raise the bar of "good enough to level to 80"?

Players trashing their way through dungeons isn't an economic problem. The fastest elite farming in the game is slower than solo money making options for the same group of people. All you're doing with these changes is decreasing the value of the only end game content we currently have.

I'm losing 15-20 million because of your impromptu max enchanted changes. That doesn't concern me as much as how out of touch you guys appear to be when it comes to group combat. The worst part of all of this, it doesn't seem like you guys even know where you want to end up and we're being used as guinea pigs (imo you lost this right when you started taking money for VIP). Whether you do or not is immaterial, appearance is enough in this situation for many people.

[Celerity]

I wanted to get a bit more specific with weather witching now that I've looked at it in more detail.

I think overall the skill isn't bad, but I still retain my initial judgement that it feels a bit meh.

The ways I would like to see it improved:

Change channeling so that it's not cancelled unless you take a certain amount of damage
Make the tornado summon a non-channel if you're not in combat like stun trap for warden
Lean into the cold synergy a bit more
Lean into the pet synergy a bit more


Now to explain these points:

1. Channeling itself is just a bit weak as I explained previously. Not only does it take longer to cast than a normal ability, but it's cancelled if you take even a "no damage" hit. I would like to see this changed so that at least no damage hits don't interrupt and further to that, I'm actually envisioning some allowance, depending on the level of the ability for how much damage you could take before it's cancelled. I think this is a better option than outright removing the channels completely and also gives an advantage to building for mitigation, even if you want to dps.

2. You pretty much always want to summon your tornado pre-combat and the channel is just unnecessary busy work for the pre-combat summon. Stun trap already does this exact mechanic very nicely to still suffer the in-combat channeling penalty, but allows you to instant cast if you're not in combat.

Just as a side note here, can we please make it so that dot effects don't keep you in combat after you have killed the caster? The kuvou ones are especially annoying as they last 1 minute and stop you from regenerating your stats, making them incredibly inefficient to farm.

3. I propose leaning into the ice magic synergy a bit more, since ice magic is the only skill with lots of cold damage, and there is only fire magic and battle chemistry with small amounts. Whereas we already have druid, bat and bard which are primarily nature, as well as cow and deer which have a bit of nature. Weather witching also has a lot of electricity, but we already have hammer, mentalism, fairy magic and warden which are heavily electric. Now I am aware that weather witching can't be paired with most of these skills, but I feel like ice magic has always been a bit lonely, with fire magic (and maybe animal handling, but not really? Fire magic actually pairs better with the cold wasp due to calefaction's cold debuff than ice magic does... but that's getting off topic.) being the only real synergy in any pairing of skills. It does seem like there was a small amount of effort to try and achieve the cold synergy with dampen and hailstorm. However, dampen is the basic attack so you want to use that as little as possible and although hailstorm is good, you actually have to give up one of it's damage mods which changes it to nature, if you want it to remain as a cold attack.

I'm not saying the skill should be changed from electricity/nature to cold entirely, but a couple more mods could be added for tsunami and deluge let's say, to change them to cold direct damage.

4. Possibly this would be a role more suited for animal handling, but I would love to see some aoe pet buffs, that make stacking pets actually useful. Storm shield sounds cool at first, with people mentioning how you could buff your animal handling pet to tank, or your cold sphere so it doesn't die instantly. But, since you already get the tornado from weather witching itself, and storm shield is single target, it doesn't really make sense to dedicate another whole skill to pets when you already have the pet to use the buff on. At best it would give a minor advantage over the tornado since the cold sphere has an aoe for example or your animal handling pet might have higher % buffs, but I feel like the advantage would be small at best. I would just like to see running multiple pets actually synergise when I consistently see people asking in discord if they can go necro/animal handling and have tons of pets out, and the answer is well yes you can, but there's 0 synergy or benefit to actually having more pets out, since there aren't any pet aoe buffs. Again though, maybe this should be a buff to animal handling rather than weather witching.

Edit: I've seen people mention that storm shield actually is aoe? If so then point 4 is already covered, but I was going off the description of the skill which specifically mentions "a pet"

[Melkhiresa]

Celerity makes a lot of good points that honestly were mirroring my own when it comes to Weather Witching, it's channeling, damage types ect. Overall I'm a big fan of the skill and the various unique things it brings but as mentioned it suffers from some specific shortcomings that could easily be rectified.


1.The channeling idea being instant outside of combat is a wonderful addition but above and beyond that when you take in to notice the Wind Ward mod below..

-Wind Ward absorbs +62 damage before dissipating. While Wind Ward is active, attacks that hit you hasten the current reuse timer of Summon Tornado by 1 second

It comes to mind that perhaps doubling up on that concept overall could be a solid boon for the skill. Perhaps making Wind Ward via mods or baseline provide the next channel to be uninterruptable or in the specific case of the mod above lower the channel time per proc. This would reinforce the concept of the mod and provide a much needed safety to actually getting a needed channel off while still allowing crowd control to interrupt such. For grouping one could make the proc from the mod above also count any form of damage taken but at a cap or limit. This way it still remains a viable mod even outside of solo play.

The mentioned % of HP by Celerity to stop the channel is also a solid route of this in general but not without it's issues in content. Hence the above idea.


2. In specifics to the Cold Synergy I feel like Variants of some of the abilities within Witching are ripe for this without taking away from the current. Albeit i am super disappointed that the one perfect moment for Indirect Cold to happen it instead is only nature. I'm not suggesting taking away the Indirect Nature but to treat it like how Druid works with it's mods offering a choices between poison and nature respectively. Plenty of room to bake such in and provide a new playstyle to the Cold damage type beyond Direct based entirely.


3. This one partially ties in to the above but specifically to the abilities themselves it feels weird the damage types chosen. Tsunami doing Electric just feels a bit wrong. Cold baseline with a variant of it to Electric seems the better route to take considering. Plenty of ideas as a name or idea on the Variant, Thunderstorm ect. It allows it to still remain thematic to the idea of the ability itself while giving options in pairings above and beyond. Not to mention it would, to the best of my knowledge, be the first Cold based Epic available. This same concept could also be done in the Nature route if so wanted via something like Typhoon ect. These variants also would fit in better with the below mod and it's bonus.


-Tsunami Damage +116, Targets also take +20% damage from sentient weather phenomena for 30 seconds


Cold leading to increased wind/nature or Typhoon leading to a bump in the Tornado's speed doing increased nature damage. Thematically it just makes sense. Above and beyond this the whole Cold to Electric concept could be reinforced here as well. Ice Magic has the worst integration of a second damage type in Ice Lightning. Changing around a few mods and taking the ideas of Cold/Wet to increased Electric could open up a lot while still staying within theme. There is already examples of this in mods such as the one below.


-Deluge deals +102 damage on contact and increases the target's Poison Vulnerability +15% for 30 seconds (non-stacking)
-Dampen deals Cold damage and debuffs the target so that it takes +90 damage from future Cold attacks for 10 seconds
-Dampen debuffs the target so that it takes +90 damage from future Nature attacks for 10 seconds


While I find it weird Poison was chosen for this let alone Deluge does nature not cold I digress. I get it was probably to promote pairings with AH and bee's specifically. The concept is still the same. Wet things are more prone to Electric ect. Does not have to be vulnerability it could just be the next electric attack after the target is wet/cold from the ability or a copy mod for Electric of the above Dampen ones. It would finally give Ice Magic a proper secondary damage type if this route was chosen.


The above talk about variants could also be applies to things like Deluge as well and would fit in with the mentioned options to bring Cold Indirect as a thing finally while still keeping the nature. Depending on how much is done the balance of damage type abilities would be better overall and not so heavily leaned towards one or the other as Celerity mentioned.


4. I'm a huge fan of the pet synergy concepts and how it does seem to solve a lot of the negative of some pets and make them at least viable or have the ability to stay alive to fulfill their purpose. In terms of Storm Shield I did a lot of testing personally and it seems to follow a few specific variables.


- It does not requires you to specifically target a pet to cast it on
-It prioritizes all pets before being casted on a Tornado
-It works on every single pet from undead to temporary summons to even Ursula spawns. It was mentioned a Variant was intended for this ability for it to effect undead so the above is probably a bug but I hope it stays until said variant is released. Opens up a lot of lovely Necro play.


It only effects a singular pet though from all my testing so that does come with a problem on multiple pet builds. Perhaps a solution would be the defensive portion or at least absorbed attacks effects all your personal pets around the pet but any damage boosts via mods only effect the target or main pet in this scenario so the ability itself doesn't become too powerful. it would have to be yours personally though as ALL pets within a radius would leads to some rather dumb things.


The provided damage type boosts of the ability via mods are all lovely and spread out. While it's sad it doesn't effect Cold in terms of pairing it with Ice Magic and cold sphere it's for the better as that would end up being way to strong. it already can get the boosts from the tsunami mod for weather variants in this case. What does come to mind is the lack of pets to do certain damage types it buffs though.


-Storm Shield increases target pet's Electricity Damage and Nature Damage (both direct and indirect) +20% for 15 seconds
-Storm Shield increases target pet's Poison Damage and Acid Damage (both direct and indirect) +20% for 15 seconds


I'd imagine the future will bring more pets to suit this but in the case of Electric it seems like Witch is ripe to take advantage of this. A mod that changes the tornado's damage type to Electric specifically. It makes sense a Weather Witch could electrically charge such as well as open up a use for the buff above and open up further build variances and comboing. One such thing would be a pet build focused around Necromancy and their Ratkin. Both skills provides bonuses to electric damage done or vulnerability and in the case of the above could really lean in to a side of Necro's damage not too often seen and via pets no less. it would also provides better use of the below mod.


-Summoned Tornado attacks deal +160 damage and cause the target to take 15% more damage from Electricity for 10 seconds (non-stacking).


Perhaps too strong when combined it's hard to say but still food for thought.



5.The below are more specific nitpicks to Cloud Trick itself or mods in general in regards to Witching.


Cloud Trick is somewhat a weird skill in what it provides and intention is. The idea of it makes a lot of sense but baseline it virtually provides nothing as you just instantly die to most things regardless. There is also the fact one cannot truly tell if they are skirting the 35 range of the ability as no circle or anything is shown but that is more of a quality of life issue regardless. Considering the wording of the ability itself saying it holds on to a thread of your lifeforce it might be better to bake in at least some of the below healing the mods provide.


-When you trigger your Cloud Trick, you recover 142 Health(2)


That way at it's base it's an emergency teleport heal than can then be moded above and beyond such to provide other things. I.E the power mods ect. This makes the ability at least somewhat useful regardless of mods spent. Some of it's mods though otherwise are a bit underwhelming and could use a slight tweak.


-While your Cloud Trick is active (before you teleport), your Movement Speed is +1 and Combat Refreshes restore +66 Power


This one is rather neat in concept but the movement speed is much too low to even be noticeable. Up the number and if one could reliable tell the radius of the 35 yards you create sort of a sprinting zone for oneself that allows better maneuverability and even in the case of dropping something like a Calm Skies under the melee/tank and retreating to avoid damage yourself. it still has the radius so it does not promote issues with kiting cheese overly much. This could also just be removed and added in to Wind Trick via mods as well as thematically it makes more sense that ability would increase speed. Perhaps the speed boost would effect those within a radius? More interesting utility never hurt.


-When you trigger Cloud Trick, you recover 115 Armor over 10 seconds and the reuse timer on Summon Tornado is hastened +4.5 secs (so it can be used again more quickly)(2)


The Tornado aspect seems spot on if a bit weird to use a defensive for it to be slightly faster. The armor restore is a bit low considering the over time aspects as well.


-When you trigger Cloud Trick, your next attack deals +336 damage if it deals Nature damage


Haven't fully tested this one out so I could be wrong but it seems like it might be better served if the initial cast of Cloud Trick Provides this boon over the secondary port activation. It creates a better play dynamic where you don't waste the defensive aspects and can still get the boon out of it


6. Shocking grasp only comes with one major % increasing mod and a lack of mods overall comparatively to most abilities. Adding in a sister mod would help with the scaling of the ability.


-Shocking Grasp Damage +114. Every other use has a 25% chance to stun the target


The every other use nature of this mod and it being % based is a bit suspect. Sure its just a boon above and beyond the added damage but honestly a chance to stun and reset at a lower % chance might make for a more exciting use. Plus it gives a benefit when things are stun immune in such a case.



I'm sure there is a ton more specifically about Witching I could write but I don't want to make it overly negative or nitpicky. I absolutely love the skill and many of it's abilities. I personally find it one of the better done skills as a whole in a long time even if the above might make you think otherwise. It offers up a literal ton of pairing options, even if some of them might need just a tiny little more of a nudge to make it work fully. I'll probably end up writing more about the other aspects of the patch later but just want to give my two cents on the new skill while I had the time. It honestly came out almost exactly how I imagined it would be if it ever happened and have talked about in guild forever ever, minus a few surprises. So colour me surprised and happy.


EDIT: I forgot to mention but the long standing bug of freezing mist triggering root immunity also applies to the slow from Hailstorm. Thus if you hailstorm before a Tundra they will not be rooted. Same with any other root as such.

[Tandiril]

Personally I am still on the fence on the max-enchant change. I think it is a complex problem, considering mod slot distribution, different skills needing different amount of mods to be effective (e.g. UA vs FM), its place in the grand scheme of balance, etc. Right now this seems more like a PR problem of a maybe necessary change, but since this would require a whole wall of text on its own, I will skip it for now.

Combat XP change, agreed on the Kur Tower example of Celerity, I experienced that myself today. My suggestion: Treat a too high level enemy as if it was lower level in terms of xp gain. Not sure if this is the best approach, but I am absolutely sure that you shouldn't feel getting punished for actually managing to best the more difficult enemy. But overall a good change, mass murdering enemies 40 levels below your main skill shouldn't be more effective than actually fighting enemies on par with you.

Weather Witching being resurrected came as a total surprise, but as a good one!




3. I propose leaning into the ice magic synergy a bit more

So far I have experimented a bit with Ice Magic and WW, and I wanted to chime in on this point to name a couple of additional synergies.
- 2 mods for Tsunami that debuff targets to receive more damage from "sentient weather phenomena" -> this works for the cold sphere (tested).
- A mod for dampen that makes it deal cold damage and debuff targets further for cold damage, can even be made into a cluster aoe. Bugged right now, because all debuff stacks are lost if you get hit, which turns it into a silly/funny game of tag. Whether this is a really interesting bug or an experimental feature that slipped into production remains to be seen.
- Blizzard snare (and fear if you play the full chaos experience), Tundra Spike root/stun and Freeze solid mezz gives you the break you need to pull off channels mid combat, even solo. Ranged enemies are a bit of a problem, but that needs to be tested and overall would be ok. EDIT: Ranged enemies turned out to be a real pain, especially if there are multiple. I therefore second Melkhiresa's proposal of baking in some channel protection into e.g. Wind Ward. EDIT EDIT: I played around with ranged evasion. It does kinda do the trick, but needs a lot of gear/mod investment for only an okish result.
- Silly side note: popping Wind Ward with mod that reduces the cd of Tornado on getting hit, following up with Cryogenic Freeze enables you to get hit for 0 damage, therefore still triggering the effect without consuming the ward (roughly tested).

Overall the skill is very pretty to look at and fills my personal itch for an ice based offensive mage combo (and I can finally fly now!), even though right now it feels I am playing the "Gazluk Anarchist". That is also the issue this skill has imo: Its signature as chaos magic skill is well deserved, and can be quite a bit of fun, but is not well suited for grouping, where control is paramount. It doesn't have the tools for tanking, nor for proper supporting (calm skies doesn't cut it), instead it has solo tools and knockback pets. The former is of limited value for a primary damage dealer in a group if you have a dedicated supporter, and the latter can very well be a real problem in a dungeon. And if you remove it, you are left with your generic fairy spring dps that is probably outclassed by other skills in this regard.
So to me, at least in combination with Ice Magic, this is really more of a solo combination. And summoning tornados, and ice spheres, and rooting and fearing your opponents was very fun so far! But having your tornados knocking around enemies is not a very efficient way of defeating them. Now, imo fun beats efficiency, but it really depends on what you want from a skill.

To sum up, Weather Witching seems to be an outdoor skill ... which makes sense, given the name. And it overall looks promising. Thing is, there are lots of indoor activities in this game.

(On a different note, when I first heard of weather witching years ago, that they would be at odds with the druids, and that you were working on a weather system, I kind of expected something...mightier. Like making it actually rain in a region, screwing with the fire mages. Fingers crossed we will see something like this one day, assuming the full fledged weather system is still something worked on. Keep up the good work!)

[Maeglin]

Ok. I don't often come to the forums anymore. But I need to now.

I am a long time PG player. Started 7+ years ago. Contributed several times to the game and am a VIP subscriber. I followed Citan here when Asheron's died because I loved that game and just knew that he would develop something that I would love to play. He did. But...

The recent changes to the max-enchanted gear crafting is, in my opinion, a grievous mistake. Don't get me wrong--I believe that Citan and Sandra are brilliant game developers and designers. But this latest patch was not well thought out.

Why learn high level gear recipes now? Why spend countless hours gathering materials just to get that ONE extra mod on a maxed out piece? Why go through the anguish of trying to get a max-enchanted Yellow when the previous 40 tries have failed? I have personally crafted many sets of level 80/80 max-enchanted gear for my Guild mates. And was happy to do so.

If you can get the same thing now, with a drop, what's the point? I'm guessing that 30-40% of the game's incentive to craft/gather/level has been nerfed. And I'm used to nerfs. This one just doesn't make any sense to me.

Maybe I'm wrong and not looking at it correctly. If so, someone please show me where this isn't an unfortunate decision on Citan's part.

Respectfully,

Maeglin

[poulter]

The stated reason by Citan for the max-enchanted change is to facilitate balancing of damage output from builds? i.e. it can't be achieved with 7 mod gear in the game.

My review of my current Fire /Priest build (A known powerful combo) suggests that the removal of the mods will impact survival /healing /non-damage capability i.e. damage output will not change. Thus, the intended outcome of the change will not be achieved (see earlier post for mod figures).

Please could I ask other people to undertake a similar review with their builds & to share the analysis?

[Casalia]

Brain dump #2 (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=2) in reference of https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?3116-Update-Discussion-March-2-2023#6

After some more time has passed, giving me more time to think things through, my initial post has perhaps been a bit premature. The general tone is still unchanged, but I might take some time to at least evaluate WW a bit more. Bringing me to my first point for this comment.

The reason I lashed out at WW was that it has a lot of what makes a lot of all the other top dps so strong (synergy with spring fairy + a lot of AoE with dots). I completely neglected that it also introduces some unique gameplay options, synergy to pets, channeling, conditional AoE based on distance to mobs. Also interesting shield mechanics with cooldowns and more... However, since it has the firstly mentioned traits which are a known good way to obtain high damage, this seems to a skill with two routes. Low risk - high reward or high risk - low reward. Because there it is really hard to come up with build combos and synergies for the latter mentioned parts of that skill it's high risk. Looking at possible synergies revolves around channeling which is rather unpredictable, and I don't consider synergies with pets a good trait either, given the current state of pet AI. Leaving the shield - which is at most useful for soloing. And thus a Skill that is clearly intended to be a DPS, with some solo options will simply be reduced to the AoE dots / nature /electricity thing in practice. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad skill, or that it won't be more viable in the future, leading to my next point.

"The Future" Alot of things currently are planned for the future, I for one was expecting balancing changes for this patch, which is why I am mostly disappointed. Balancing has once again become a thing of the future, as has the removal of 7 mod gear. Given the rather infrequent updates of this game, it make is it really hard to handle things of the future. They could be happening in 3 months or 3 years... (careful of hyperbole, I took some artistic freedom here to get my point across)
I think the current change to the max-enchanted crafting system should either be reverted until LVL 90 hits, thus giving veterans an incentive to venture out into other skills, as well as giving new players that want to invest a lot of time into it, catch up to veterans. Or just rip off the bandaid now and immidiately remove (or have us remove) one of the mods from our max-enchanted yellows, thus once again leveling the playing field between newcomers and veterans. This inbetween state is very unhealthy for the game imo.

Now once again the new max-enchanted gear. I actually really welcome the whole 6 mods max on gear regardless whether its crafted or not. Crafting still won't be useless because there are many craftable gear sets that cannot be looted. Furthermore Crafted gear has 'some' more crafting points allowing for more stuff to be added. [A recommendation here is to maybe increase the crafting points on crafted gear further, allowing still only 1 augment but much more utility like pockets] Though I have to point out that mod distribution is actually horrible on some skills and also should be reviewed "in the Future", if you want to know more about which skills are in desperate need of some mod restructuring just ask the community, we really do know these things ;)
One reason I think this will have less of an impact then some make it out to be, is my personal experience with just sticking to purple max-enchanted previously. For builds that I really liked I made the effort to make them yellow max-enchanted. But for the majority of my builds the difference is somewhere between negligable and immeasurable. The majority ofc also implies that there are some builds for which that does not hold true, where having 7 mods really makes a huge difference, a lot of times gloves come with all the AoE mods for abilities meanwhile also having alot of extra dmg there as well. I guess this might be intended as you now have to make a trade-off, which you can currently skip by having 7 mods.
I doubt these changes will currently have an impact on bringing the Power-Gap between individual skills closer together though. This is why I initially had the knee-jerk reaction of condemning this patch. I also want to add here that having a timeline or even a current WIP viewer would be a great thing. I don't really care for what you are developing or the pace of developement or anything... I just don't want to be surprised like this, it was a rather unpleasant surprise. And this also means not having jack impose ENTIRELY WRONG impressions about whats upcoming onto us.
If I knew that lvl 90 is 3 - 6 months away, that'd be reason for me not to throw in the towel, but thinking it might take until next year, just make me want to pull the line here. Managing expactations is really important to me, and saves me a lot of trouble. And apperantly others as well, when I review current chats on discord and in the forums. You should work on that.

I hope this was a bit more constructive criticism then my last comment and that it may lift some of the bad spirits around.

[Dumdidum]

For me you guys lost the plot. Endless tweaks of systems that are fine as is, while leaving the elephant firmly sitting in the room. The game is not growing in active players online, at least when i am logged in, and it is not because of how xp was earned or maxed modded crafted gear.

Crafting:
- it is a drag to craft for other players because of the number of ingredients required (and storage space), and the time consumption of it all. Therefore no council incentive when there are other much more lucrative ways.
- new players have to somehow find a kind spirit to craft for free, or level crafting themselves, which they do not have the funds for
- that leaves dungeon drops, and if you do not like to be carried or hate doing daily runs, you are screwed
- it also shows in less and less player stalls, the game's player economy is not very healthy
- as a side note, i levelled all crafts to max, and there is no way i ever will earn back the counsils spent. Unlike other MMO's where crafting for others was my main income stream and time sink
- make crafting great again. Crafted gear should always trump dungeon drops. Items/ingredients for crafting should be accessible whereever they are stored. Modded gear should be tradeable. Player stalls should have way more room to sell crafted gear. Player stalls should be way cheaper to maintain and not go bust after 3 days. If you feel the need to make crafted gear obsolete, compensate us. Our time is the most valueble thing we have. There is no way i will make any new gear set worth 2 mil, just to see it go poof in the next patch.

New players
- for a real reason why new players drop out you would have to ask them, but here are my 2 cents
- no storage space
- no counsils quick enough
- levelling feels very very slow in the beginning (and is much much harder lvl 1-35) than lvl 35 and up, when it should be the other way around.

Other things to do besides fighting
- the game is centered around fighting, i get it. But the more you find other things to level up/earn an income, the more players will be interested.
- ie crafting, merchant, housing and house decoration, and yes, pet breeding/levelling. But not what we have now, a genetics spreadsheet on a timer.
- dare i say some sort of 1 vs 1 ladder system? i know people here seem to hate pvp, but it would give a huge boost to the need to find niche builds, and you could make a bettting system or monthly ranking system around it.

Time sinks
- plaese get rid of time sinks. The hours i have waited in fae realm for nightfall so i could finally hand in my wo's. The endless times having to go to the wo's boards to get the wo i need, etc etc. Its no fun period, and it only makes me want to play less, not more.

[Enphuego]

To be honest, the max enchanted yellow gear was long overdue for a nerf. The way a lot of bonuses and stats in this game tend to multiply together leads to a lot of the balance issues especially when a highly motivated player starts stacking the snot out of it. You see it when one player is doing 10X the damage of another or one tank takes so little damage in a top level dungeon that the healer switches to DPS gear. Removing the extra mod from max enchanted crafted gear at least reduces the difference between average and top tier.

My main issue with it though is that it made dropped loot into useless phlog fodder. I'd much rather do something interesting like assemble a set of Scorpiclaw armor for tanking or wear Winter Court armor. With the wide variety of white stats on dropped gear, you could build some really fun sets and it would take quite a while to get a full set. I do wish that the white stats or at least just the armor value would scale with level so the more interesting gear sets (like the GK ones) could somehow be found in a better form.

The xp nerf hasn't seemed to impact me that I've noticed, but I do feel that the upper level range is a tad restrictive. If you are leveling a second skill it's pretty easy to end up fighting things that are above your level. Especially with good food buffs, I've found myself not even taking damage against mobs around my level. As a test I just took my 45 lycan / 48 unarmed skills out to Rahu where a level 60 Invincible Bulwark hits me for 16 armor / 16 health after food and with crappy leather level appropriate gear - seriously I even have a few green items. I got ~250xp. So I figured why not take it out to Povus where I easily soloed a 75 Deinonychus which I got zero xp for. Knocked out an 80 Ratkin while I was at it, got an add, didn't have an issue. It's not really out of the question to solo something 30 levels above you. I'm not sure how I feel about this - honestly it seems like it's going to be a pain in the rear to find level appropriate mobs to hunt. I'm not sure where I would even head at 45/48 - Eltibule gnashers? Those are 30/36 so a bit low. Tor-Uraks look like a better bet (~500xp). I tend to hunt in places where I'm either able to farm materials or gaining xp in secondary skills like Elf anatomy or sometimes above my level so I can have gear ready to reroll when I hit the next tier of mods. Now I'm going to need to be pretty particular about what I'm killing. Wouldn't you rather me out in Povus or Rahu instead of in Eltibule streamrolling Tor-Uraks? Honestly it's a tad boring.

I can see what you are trying to avoid with powerleveling, but maybe it needs some tweaking? As an example if I got 500 xp for taking out a level 60 mob at 45 then there'd be no real advantage to it other than fun. All I'm saying is that this puts a cramp in the way I like to level which is generally to tackle the most difficult content I can reliably solo or just go farm stuff I needed to farm anyways. I'd totally take the wolf out for a run on Povus night for XP so long as I can reliably improve the situation without constantly dying.

[poulter]

Max-enchanted mod change:
There are still 54 mods available to use in a build, so the impact on builds is only if you need 55+ mods. That is, if your current optimum build uses 60 mods then the impact is 6 mods.

As previously posted, a review of my current Fire /Priest build suggests that the damage output from the build will not be lessened as I can accommodate the change by removing support /survival mods.

This negates a major aim of the change i.e. balancing damage. The main impact of the change is expected to be on my tanking & healing builds.

XP gain:
This is very messed up at the moment.
I have been levelling Weather Witching (from level 55, now level 65) in Rahu Sewers (using Fire Magic, level 86) & am getting xp /kill c. 2,500 /mob, without any XP buffs.
Even worse, I can 1-shot kill multiple mobs with AOE (my gear is max-crafted). E.g. 6 mobs for 2.5k xp each in 1 fight.

Needless, to say, levelling has become trivial. (I also levelled some in Povus & was getting 1,100 xp /kill).

[Enphuego]

This negates a major aim of the change i.e. balancing damage. The main impact of the change is expected to be on my tanking & healing builds.


Not necessarily. The net impact of changes depends on the rest of the game balance. The game designers could easily tweak damage output from mobs to reduce the difficulty of tanking and healing which would level out the playing field between newbie tanks and fully geared tanks. To some extent the damage output from high level dungeon mobs had to be cranked up *because* tanks and healers would be bored otherwise.

As for the XP I haven't tried min/maxing it yet. I will definitely try targeting the +5 level mobs and see if I can gets some more xp per kill.

[Coglin]

I invested a MASSIVE amount of time and energy in leveling fishing and the ridiculous amount of other classes required for the bonus levels to make the Conch for my beloved bard.

That conch will now, not even be close to the top in slot for value to my build.

It makes me feel as if that time and energy is not respected and I ABSOLUTELY had no reason to believe crafted gear was not expected to be best. All the other MMOs do the same thing. Thus this was the only one I ever bother with crafting in, now I simply feel the rug was pulled out from under me on that.

Why are game developers so against the time and effort put into crafting, allowing it to create best-in-slot items?




I mean, honestly, what is next? Will I discover the hours and hours of killing tens of thousands of spiders prove useless too because taming the correct wild one will supersede the value of the ones I breed after all the time/energy I spent getting the correct tools to do so?

[Mikhaila]

I think along with the removal of a 7th mod, there needs to be a look at the classes that benefitted from those slots.

Not all skills are equal. Some became OK by making that 2 million council set of master crafted gear. Others get by with normal red/purple.

[Dumdidum]

We had a heated "discussion" online. Thanks for the personal message after, but to make things clear.

You have a great game on your hands. And i understand it is your game with your vision. But player numbers do not lie. Now, you can chose to ignore them and maybe player numbers do not even matter for your business case. If so, fine, just tell us, and we (I) will not give that kind of feedback anymore. But fine tuning systems will not make a dent, imo, in getting more players to stick around. Some core design systems need change, and i am not talking 1 mod less or more. I am talking storage space, end game longevity, time sinks, yadda yadda.

I am not the kind of person to give detailed information on if skill X needs 10 or 20% more damage. But i can tell you if i have more, or less fun playing your creation, than when i started years ago. And my answer is, less.
To the why..i want to feel like with the skills i chose, i make progress every day i log in. I do not want to be forced to run certain dungeons i dislike because you want us to reuse content, do dailies, or read a spreadsheet (pet breeding). And my precious free time needs to be respected. Thats why i play a MMO, for the PERSISTENT world, not like moba where you start new over and over. Case in point, changing how crafting fits into the game or mods after 8 years, really?
And above all, will those changes get more or less players to stick around (again, if that even matters) ? Because at this stage of the game, that would be my prime focus: will this change make the game more fun and will it bring in more players overall. There is a core number of players that play no matter what you do. But what about the rest? I for one dont see these changes have any positive impact at all on the concerns raised above.

[Deldaron]

Max Enchant Changes:

I am actually quite excited about the loss of max enchanted gear. I say this as a crafter and as someone who currently has 6 actively used max enchanted set at lvl 80 and who has previously crafted and abandoned many others. What I like about this change is that it puts drops and crafted on a more even playing field. Spring fairy for a lot of builds will continue to be best in slot b/c its implicit mods are great. Previously I have ignored dropped gear outside of a few specific pieces and even gear with decent implicit mods couldn't hold a candle to a 7th skill mod. This also means that gear will take less time/rolls to go from crafted to finished. Long term I would like to see a lot more variety of gear drops and implicit mods while still keeping a slight slant towards crafted. One of my favorite things about PG is that it asks its players to be situationally prepared - and I think this change gives us a better chance of doing that. I could see keeping a set of FF dropped gear for nature resistance and using that there, but switching for WT or GK even on DPS. To that end I would also love better ways to store/retrieve loadouts, sort gear in inventory by loadout, and a means to put loadouts that are not actively used into long term "loadout storage" so if you take a break from a build you don't have to recreate the loadout later.

But on the whole, I think assuming the game is balanced in the end (I would hope mobs get some nerfening as players do through this) it doesn't really matter if we have 7 mods or 6 - 6 mods means there's less "wrong" choices to make so a player who isn't great at theory crafting vs an overtuned build will naturally have a lower absolute difference of dmg output (even if relative dmg is the same) which should help the more casual playerbase.

As of right now crafting yellows is too easy, but I hope it doesn't scale back to exactly what it was when it changes - or I hope this change doesn't come soon. With gear being more accessible from crafting right now I feel even more excited to test out builds that I don't have high hopes for b/c it no longer costs me an arm and a leg to give a build a fair shot. As for making crafting continue to be useful I could see at true end game higher tier recipes with better implicits and less accessible or more time gated resources - I think that would appease the concerns of crafting focused players.

As for how to make yellow max enchants useful - one idea I had is to give naturally rolled yellows from max enchant recipes more transmutation durability. That way even if its not best in slot there's a reason to go for it - it speeds up the time from crafted to rolled and could be a huge boon to testing out builds you're not sure of.

The timeline of change is obviously a concern many of us have - the gear we have now was intended to be temporary, but people put a lot of time into these sets (myself included). We knew we would move on from them, but the terms of which we'll move on have changed and we don't have a clear picture of when or how that change will happen. We're also now in a transitional period where the existing "end game" veterans have a quality of gear that is inaccessible to new players. If I could set the timeline we would keep our existing gear until 90 comes out or maybe a month after to ease the transition - in that time max enchanted for lvl 80 would return so new players could craft (with a warning) gear that would otherwise be inaccessible to them. My guess is that you will be tweaking mods in a way that will make some max ench gear feel more exploitative or unbalanced before 90 and we'll see the departure of these items sooner than many of us hope.

To that end though, I think this would be a perfect time for a dev blog. Even if you're unsure of the future, even if things are likely to change, I think the community would be grateful to be let in on where things are going. Let us know what your thoughts and plans are in a detailed way and how you see the game unfolding from here. I know you've written things in the patch notes and on discord that give us some insight, but this is a pretty big and unexpected change for many and some messaging around it could go a long way in comforting those who are afraid of or unhappy with this change.

XP curve rework

I really like the core aspect of these changes - it changes the "leveling meta" in a way that encourages people to go to places that were previously not great for xp - I am max on Deldaron in every combat skill except druid, lycan, fairy magic, and now weather witching and most of those skills were leveled in the same few locations. I agree with Celerity's point on kur tower having lvl 50 mobs mixed in with the lvl 40 mobs - I think the more recent patch has addressed some of this, but I think it might be worth looking into flattening the mob level differences if possible so mobs in a given section of a dungeon are more likely to be same level or in a tighter range.

Also, part of the reason I leveled in the same areas on my characters is that I was using racial xp boosts with booze and other buffs. Rakkies have the best options here in that you can boost your righteousness such that killing a few sentients riddled in with non sentients isn't super likely to mess up your buffs, but for elves even if I was in water in rahu sewers killing too many at once could lose my cleanliness. With the encouragement to move around and find more areas to level I would love to see a rework on humans/elves racial xp boosts.

Weather Witching

I haven't played around with this too much yet, but I'm excited to see this made it back into the game and love the flavor of it - the rituals are a fun concept, I wouldn't mind seeing more uses for the energy and hope we see it on a bar/visual representation sometime soon. I was a bit sad to see more nature/electric dmg since there are already so many builds that benefit from this - more cold or even crushing/trauma (force of water hitting you) mixed with elemental would be interesting. Haven't thought too long on that point and I feel "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" is appropriate since we got a new skill that benefits from an already strong craftable gear set, but my initial reaction was that of disappointment. Outside of this, the two issues I see with WW out the gate are channeling and knockback. For solo play unless you're using a pet to tank, channeling isn't exactly viable and for group content so many mobs have burst attacks and rage control is in a rough space imo so its unlikely you'll get many of your attacks off. It's nice that you can continue to case, but you're launching a lot of universal CDs in hopes an attack goes off. Theoretically you could learn and time it right, but for that to be the case I think we'd need stronger rage reduction mechanics. I second Celerity and Melk's ideas here I think they are good ones. I could also see rage attack evasion being interesting here, but I think WW needs something to assist getting channels off in situations you otherwise wouldn't. Priest builds often come with high burst evasion so they're less likely to see that with their channels, but WW/priest doesn't have natural synergy and as a DPS skill not getting attacks off slows down the encounter.

The other issue I have is the knockback from tornados. Knockback is fun in theory, but from my experience (running gauntlet with a WW) it detracts from combat encounters. I haven't tested if clear skies applies to mobs, but even still I don't think that would "fix" the issues we encountered. Tornados were able to knockback mobs but more importantly bosses such that they were constantly on the move and out of range of melee attacks. Moving in combat costs power and a decent amount of it, I found myself losing time (and therefore DPS) from having to run to the mobs as they continued to move and then being out of power more often because of all the running. I like the idea in theory, but I would love if the tornados came with a toggle to prevent them from knocking mobs back or make it so only the first attack on each mob triggers knockback. I can't imagine any situation that isn't incredibly cheesy where having a persistent aggressive seek pet knocking back w/e mob it lands on with every hit is a boon to combat. Having their knockback be more situational or controlled however sound like a lot of fun.


Overall I am happy with the changes made in this update, I know a lot of people have strong feelings to the contrary and I hope many of those who are stepping away return after the dust has settled.


Edit: I would also like to add that the level 35 requirement for seeing buffs/debuffs on elven players is a huge ask - I've been playing for 6 years and Deld isn't lvl 35. Granted I don't run DC much, but there aren't a lot of elves in game. I know Sedge is coming soon and will likely have some elves to kill, but I would love if this change was reverted until sedge comes out unless its in the next patch.