Death of the beast forms

i had originally wanted to write a wrap up for 2019 a nice good and bad list of things i personally felt and get insights from the community as a whole on it. instead im here writing about the death of beast forms.

!!! TLDR is nerfing animal players for being overpowered when other skills clearly outclass them makes me feel as though you dont want players using thees skills. fix the warden stun traps by removing the chance to make an extra trap mod. and if your thinking this is just the ravings of some butt hurt player... well maybe your right. but if so at least read on to see where I'm coming from

lets start by saying i <3 <3 <3 <3 beast forms and have been an avid animal player for well over a year now running almost every form through GK i have earned some room to talk about them in my opinion and can offer insight to players that until lately the pros outweighed the cons if you too wanted to be fluffy and cute. however i don't feel this is true anymore.

lets just start with the hardships that we all agree to take on when playing an animal form, you give up certain NPCs and skills. while not having hands, certain materials like wood and milk and also significantly more difficult to acquire. minor but worth noting your fashion/appearance is pretty bland, unable to use dyes on the few animal pieces of gear that do exists* (certain exceptions such as lycan armor). thees are what we originally gave up[ to enjoy a unique skill and access to animal town. however the list of what we miss out on is growing. a prime example of fae mollusk slime a material needed for endgame players seeking cloth but so rare and annoying that player do not gather and sell it and animal players are unable to gather themselves without WOP's or illusions. all this can be worked around sure, money and friends can still help you but this inst even the biggest issue to me. what has lead me to finally write a post on the forums in an attempt to reach the people who need to see it is this. Stop Nerfing Animals

lycan a permanent choice always felt the best to me, you gave up the most but were clearly among the strongest animal players by maxing this skill out.it felt like a fair trade to me every month i have to participate in the wolf quest or suffer a sense of weakness for a month until the next chance. i had been blissfully enjoying being one of the top dogs for awhile. though even geared and rerolled , min maxed with potions WOPs, booze, i stood no chance of coming close to to the top dps on many of world bosses or events that were held. its simply not a there. yet rather than looking at the consistent top "overpowered skills" managing to always stay at the top of those list and consider nerfing them or looking at the players who could survive tanking zuke indefinitely and not rely on others for healing, you neutered puppers. whatever your reasons may be the 9k epic combo was too strong or something sure... ok fair enough... if other skills couldn't do the same >.> skulk bite... overpowered right? what was the cd needed to pull off that combo? for 9k aoe damage right? do you think fire/bc/druid/ice/bard could also do the same amount of aoe damage in that time? pretty sure the only difference was skulk bite made one big number versus 3 smaller numbers (or several in case of bard). but then again this is old news so lets move on

Warden, god damn you guys did good with this skill! from the quest, the secret grotto, all the way down to the synergies! sure it was abit buggy and things didn't come out perfect but hey, you live and learn right... right? well apparently i guess those of us who maxed out stun traps hurt everyone's feeling we made things look too easy and *dramatic music* we were OP PLS NERF OMG... yea.. the stun traps were strong . fully modded the rivaled an epic attack i have screenshots to confirm this. but 4 nerfs...4? i mean 1 is redundant. increasing the cool down. this is just kinda kicking a dead horse you can't stack them. or use them in combat anymore not without a tank. but here's the kicker imo it wasn't OP because of the damage. it was OP cause it could drop multiple traps. let me try and explain my view. to be overpowered it would have to be significantly out of balance with other skills right? its not in that regard lets be extra generous with some quick math, fully modded 7 mods plus base damage mods + fairy gear+ pots + booze + all the white treasure effect you could throw on lets say 3500 per trap, for fairness sake lets say you always hit 3 traps every 14 seconds you never fail 10500 damage per 14 seconds that's about 257 time an hour ( 3600 seconds in an hour divided by 14) run the math and... (257*10500) / 3600 = 749.5 DPS of a single skill great now lets pick something fair to compared this too. how about fire breath another aoe single skill with similar cd, 12 seconds or 15 when modded throw in our mods 6 fire breath mods + base damage mods + fire orbs staff and fiery mask + potions + booze and were looking at... 3800 (this does not count any indirect fire damage bonuses you could also throw in) per 15 seconds. runs the math again (240*3700) / 3600 = 246.6 DPS again in an aoe and in single skill that's some serious difference! unless... you just get rid of the multiple rune mods... (257*3500)/3600 = 249.86 ... much closer numbers! a better solution if i say so myself! but ummm that's not what happened. instead were looking at this measly (180*4000) / 3600 = 200 dps and this IS ASSUMING YOU ALWAYS GET 3 STUNS TRAPS while not getting interrupted in your 2 second cast.

right sorry if it came off like a rant im just very passionate about the warden skill and animal forms . i really believe in Project gorgon and look forward to see whats in store for us all next.

Happy Ri-Shin
Teloch

Stun Trap had one nerf to its damage. ONE. The rest were mechanics fixes, in my book. The mods that give it random extra traps are powerful as hell, but not reliable -- that's their down side. But I'm willing to talk about other options, sure. Deflating those bonus-trap mods to make room for more reliable damage is an option. But before we can talk about that, though, I have to be clear: I'm not going to avoid fixing things because other things also need fixing.

If a skill can be used to efficiently kill Elites, I'm going to fix it. Yes, that means Fire magic is probably due for a nerf also. What else needs nerfing? Help me out here, I'll fix all the big offenders at once and we can have a more level playing field. It feels like its about time to get it over with, doesn't it?

So what else is more overpowered than Stun Trap was? What yardsticks are people comparing everything to? I need to know what those are so I can fix them too. (Edit: and yes, I really want to know what those are, or at least what people think those are, so I can look at them more closely!) I can't afford to think "Well I can't nerf THAT because that OTHER THING is SO overpowered, I just have to leave this problem FOREVER". I'm one guy trying to make an MMO balanced, along with six or seven other jobs I have to do, and it's hard as hell. I make mistakes and I have to fix them, retry things, sometimes retrying over and over and over. That's just the way it is.

People want me to play this shitty trick on myself where any mistake I make, I have to leave it forever. "Why not just buff everybody else?" Because then I have like 50x more work to do for myself. And when everybody can kill elites, I have to add Mega-Elites and Ultra-Elites just to compete with the growing power curve. Great, even more work for me. And for what? I do tons extra work just so beta-testers don't have to suffer a small power change? How is that sane?

The game is in beta. It needs nerfs as much as buffs. Probably MORE than buffs. So you'll need to get used to nerfs because its going to keep happening. In cases where I can catch myself and fix an obviously-overpowered problem quickly, like in this case, I think it makes sense to do the nerfs fast. But that doesn't mean longer, slower-burning problems in other skills won't get fixed eventually.

If you want to discuss the pros and cons of different ways to change the skill, I am all ears. I'm willing to talk about how to make each skill work well. But I'm NOT playing the "other non-mentioned things are more powerful so you are forbidden from fixing problems" game.

Agreed?

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If so, then let's talk about options for Stun Trap. It's now in the damage range of several other skills. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more. One benefit is the ability to pre-cast. Fire Breath costs a ton of Power, and you pay that cost in combat. Stun Trap's power cost is paid out of combat, so you can just wait a few seconds before starting the fight and its like the spell was completely free. That's a big advantage. The two-second casting time more than counterbalances that, but its not something we can just ignore. That said, I'm willing to entertain other ways to organize the skill.

My thoughts on the extra-drop-chance mods: they're VERY powerful, but they're unreliable, so that makes them much less powerful. It's super tricky to find the sweet spot for mods like this. But I think they're fun, so I want to keep them if possible.

I'd frankly like to go for a bit more utility on Stun Trap instead of yet more damage. It's a STUN trap, after all. Maybe those mods could become something like "and the target gets stunned again five seconds later" type thing. Mrm, yeah not a lot of room there between exciting and overpowered... but the point is I'm not sure Stun Trap needs to be more DPS. It's in the proper range: it hurts things real bad. And also stuns them. I want to make sure the damage-boosting mods are worth having, but I don't think it needs to be, like, the best burst damage in the game or anything.

Ok, I'll throw my 2 cents.

When I saw change sto Stun Trap, my first though was - well, now Warden has one less ability to use. There are few skills that have abilites with cast time, and I never found them usefull. I'll use old Shadow Feitn as example - it offered some nice sustain, and had unique mechanic with its teleport (granted, it's not very usefull, or fitting for wolf, but it's topic for another discussion), but why would I choose it over any other support ability? BOTP, or old See Red offered simialr benefits, without this restrictions - so even though healing/utility they provided might have been lover, I used them because they were more reiable and consistent.

Cast time, especially if ever hit will interrupt it, makes any ability basicly unusuable in combat, outside few specyfic situations(group combat, or builds with pets). It's, in my opinion, bad choice for any ability with instant effects, at least if it's damaging ability. Only skills that, I think, could get away with having cast time, are the ones intended to be used in party setting, or strong, long-lasting buffs. Abilites such as Summonign pets, Heart/Spleen power (with extended duration, and maybe a bit strenghtened effect) or Fill With Bile comes to mind.

About Stun Trap specyfically - since I was busy lately, I nevr got to finsihign levleing my Warden, so I don't know how powerfull it could be, but, honestly, I don't care much for damage on it. Havinf AOE stun is valuable by itself, but to make it more appeling, without(hopefully) making it OP, I would add more utility and/or changes in funconality. Here are some examples:

- Targed is prone to random self-stuns for x seconds after stun.
- Targets stunned have chance to miss (more suriavbility is always nice)
- Stun trap throws all targets away from it on activation/few seconds after activation - could be good for more ranged-focused builds, or just to create a bigger breathing room
- Slow for stunned targets after stun ends.
- pulls enemies withing range towards trap - If it would be too storng, might be balnced out by removing stun, or changing it to this random self-stun effect.

Well, thats it from me. I just want to say, that I agree with OP hat Warden is amazing skill, imo one of best skills in the game - not because of damage, but utility/synergies. Hell, I'm still leveling it with my wolf/unarmed gear, and I already like it. This says a lot.

First off, thank you for answering. Again i apologize about the ranting nature of my post. for whatever its worth i can relate to the massive work load this places on a small team. im not here to rage quit the game and point fingers at everyone and instead will try to stay more constructive and less negative about this.

my proposed changes to stun traps specifically would be this, maintain the damage nerfs on the 85 >45 % , maintain the no stacking and 20 second (modded) cool down changes. remove the the chance at double or triple stun trap chances for more consistent damage/use. remove or alter the cast time to one second channeling so there still a strong chance you can reliably use this in combat as a solo player. maybe not when overwhelmed by a bad pull but still abel to make it out ina 1 on 1 fight. a single reliable aoe stun is more than enough to prove useful as a skill. if the power cost could rival skills like fire breath or tundra spikes to help keep them more in line then im all for this. im well aware this a trap skill and this does not function in a trap manner the way i have just suggested, but other traps dont take up space in your modding or main skill bar so it doesn't feel quite right to make it behave like normal traps and sigils (as always an exception, things like web trap)

now if were talking about the idea of it being more utility focused and wanting to be less damage over all. going entirely in that direction i think it could be more practical as a side bar skill. with a lengthy CD and removing damage mods almost entirely. random rooting chance over 5 seconds. cooldown reduction to get more stuns out in a pinch or long fight. perhaps a mod changes from single target to AOE , chance to disorient enemies and make them wander away like a .5 second fear just to give you breathing room from things or allow for escapes when running from a bad pull. while this is not what i would personally want doesn't mean its a bad idea. and im sure a majority of players would feel like this is a great use of the skill for both solo and group play.

then finally to address the skills that i personally feel are used as benchmarks and would say are standing above other skills are things like Druid Bard Archery Staff. while my friends in game certainly love thees skills and im sure ill earn no favor pointing thees out builds around this have been dominating when it comes to soloing elites with strong damage , CC , Sustain, mitigation pairing 2 of thees skills allows players to consistently fight elites in the daily FR level of elites. druids DPS is astounding when modded and stacking all the dots in terms of just a raw dps number it may be the highest of any single skill, with also the possibly highest hitting epic attack, (cosmic strike hitting consistently for 15k), druids also may take a healing mod or two and get pretty nice heals without sacrificing much damage. Staff can stack enough mitigation to be nigh immortal while still being able to heavily hit the enemies and return damage. archery has fast rapid attacking style attacks perfect for picking off enemies before they can get close makes sense until you can find yourself stacking huge dps long before an enemy like feral boogeyman or wartrolls can reach or combat a player. slow the enemy down with a cc shot and you've extended your window. and other skills like fire ice have this too but one deals less dps, fire enrages the crap out of something so it hits damn hard if it makes it to you and its rare to find a peirceing immune/resistant enemy compare to a fire or ice. then finally bard. when modded it can tank elites by standing still playing a song. the healing is a wonderful addition to party trying for harder content. until your tank and healer are one in the same. pair this with a pet and you made a mindless character who can pres 1 out heal the enemies and let there pet slowly systematically kill off the enemies.

in conclusion i'm not here to tell you how to your job, i am a fan and supporter of you and your teams work. and yes this a labor of love and a beta. things will get nerfed changes i may not always like or agree with will be made. i appologize if i came off like a personal attack against your change and you. i know im not entitled or owed anything by you or any of the members of the team here. im merely a player in this wonderful world of alharth and rarely will you ever hear how great something is compared to how much people will complain. i dont mean to say look at how broken something else is dont nerf my skill go after them instead. im just comparing what i can do and be in this game and when i look around among the 'best' most seasoned players in the game there are trends of skills which come out on top on the list of preferred skills. What makes them the best? is it DPS? abilities to solo content? sustain and utlity? or just personal preference? i dont' know i cant answer that. but its worth looking into when reworks/nerfs/buffs are going into the long list of work you set forth for you and your team.

Again,
Happy Ri-shin
Teloch

I don't want to get too involved in this but I do want to point out a few things:

Firstly, comparing damage numbers on world bosses is a dreadful way to find balance for skills even if you're just trying to compare pure damage.
This is because mob vulnerabilities become much more important the more hp the mob has, so say 2 people have completely balanced skills but different vulnerabilities to the mob then if they both "dealt" 100k damage, the person whose skill was effective would actually deal 125k and if the other person's was ineffective they would only deal 75k damage which makes it seem as if there's a vast difference between the skills when in reality there isn't.
Even if you account for this, when doing world bosses there's normally enough players using bard or mentalism restoring power that the power tradeoffs for skills such as archery, hammer and fire magic become irrelevant which makes them much more powerful than they would be in normal combat.
Another difference from normal combat is that skill cooldowns limit your dps rather than just the damage of your abilities. This is because in a normal fight there is almost no situation short of soloing 20k+ hp mobs (which shouldn't be possible anyway) where you will have all 12 of your abilities on cooldown, which means your damage during the fight is based off of how much damage the abilities you use can do upfront rather than how much damage each individual ability can do per minute or per hour. This is of course different for world bosses but basing balance off of fringe cases like this doesn't reflect the real mechanics of the game. Another similar idea but less important is that hammer specifically does a lot worse versus world bosses since their rage bars are bigger, which means it gains the bonus damage from the enemies' rage bar being 66% or more filled a lot less often than during normal play.
And of course just looking at damage numbers on a boss doesn't account for any other benefits of the skill such as mitigation, power regen, cc, ranged vs melee etc. which again are much more useful in normal play.

Secondly, I don't think the nerf to stun trap has made it unplayable. From your own numbers you say that fire breath does 3800 damage aoe, and with the mods for extra stun traps on average you get 2 stun traps per use of the ability. This means even if it did 2k damage per trap now after the nerf, which I'm fairly sure it's a lot more, it would still do higher damage than fire breath and still could be pre-cast and stuns, which next to tundra spikes' 10 seconds delayed stun are the only aoe stuns in the game. You also shouldn't look at individual abilities in isolation since not only does fire magic take more power and produce more rage than warden too but it also has no epic attack which warden also has, alongside the best thorns in the game with higher base damage, higher and more damage mods than any other thorns ability in the game AND can affect both ranged and aoe enemies with the correct mods which no other thorns ability can do either.

In short, basing balance off fringe cases is bad and warden isn't overpowered, but it's ridiculous to say that it is unplayable and the death of beast forms.

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Originally Posted by Celerity

This is because in a normal fight there is almost no situation short of soloing 20k+ hp mobs (which shouldn't be possible anyway) where you will have all 12 of your abilities on cooldown, which means your damage during the fight is based off of how much damage the abilities you use can do upfront rather than how much damage each individual ability can do per minute or per hour.

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I agree with most of your post, but i'm not so sure i agree with this statement.

Of course, it's true for situations when you are fighting a single mob and then waiting for your cooldowns to refresh (which would be the case when you are fighting mobs that you can only barely solo, for example).

But if you are fighting a "constant stream" of mobs. (Killing one/multiple, then proceeding to the next without waiting for cooldowns), then your abilites' total dps is (i think) a good indicator of how fast you are able to farm.

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Originally Posted by Citan

What else needs nerfing? Help me out here, I'll fix all the big offenders at once and we can have a more level playing field. It feels like its about time to get it over with, doesn't it?

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I mentioned this in a post I made before on the fae realm update discussion but I think epic attacks in general are over represented. It's also mentioned in the post I made above this, but during end game group elite combat, the mob dies in something like 3-6 abilities used per player depending on the group. This means to get the highest damage you simply use your highest damage abilities and not often do you worry about comboing together attacks to boost your damage further, dots or the cooldowns on your abilities, combo mods such as nice attack damage +x are good against high hp bosses and multiple elites but not individual elites, dots are only good against high hp boss mobs when in a group and the only situation where you need to worry about cooldowns is if the mob survives long enough but this is only an issue versus world bosses or the very end game bosses when you are with a weak group so it is fairly niche.

The epic attack cooldown is less important since you spend about 7-15 seconds fighting then about another 10-15 seconds waiting for the next pull to come in, since you have to loot the corpse(s) or even longer if you have to run to the next elite like in the fae realm. The low cooldown skills are already off cooldown by the time the fight ends but the long cooldown skills benefit greatly from this extra down time between fights which increases their effective dps. I think the skills where this is most apparent are archery, hammer, psychology, priest, druid and staff. Mentalism's epic is generally a bit lower damage than the others since it has the dot and the damage shield, although this would need to be addressed if the dot becomes more effective and I have not seen/played around much with giant bat, knife fighting, unarmed or warden's epics.

For soloing elites it's slightly different, the epic attacks are still important as you need to be able to output damage quickly enough to reduce the number of attacks you take from the mob but things like cc, kiting and survivalability in general become much more important, and since relatively speaking the mob has higher hp, things like dots and combo mods also become more effective. This means there really is a wide range of builds which can solo elites so it's hard to point out any such "yardsticks". Staff and archery probably shine out the most, staff since it has both very high damage plus skills giving you insane mitigation with no mods required (blocking stance and deflective spin) and archery since it has very high damage, enables you to kite and has great cc such as stun and mez.
But it's unfair to just point out those 2, spider/druid can really ramp up damage with dots when the fight lasts long enough and certainly has the survival and cc required too. Psychology is another easy one to point out, especially paired with sword since you can reduce the damage of a single target by 50% with that combo but things such as fire/ice work too due to the great number of combo mods you can get with that build and ice magic has good single target control with mez, root and random stun from frostbite. Priest, mentalism and druid all offer great damage and great healing, especially druid since you can pre-cast brambleskin and healing sanctuary and it's definitely possible to solo elites with fire/priest, archery/druid, staff/druid, hammer/mentalism builds for example.
Fire magic and hammer builds are less useful for soloing because they both increase rage much more quickly which is a big issue and you also can't kite with hammer too effectively since it is mostly melee. Despite this I'm still able to solo a phoenix in fae realm with my hammer/mentalism build, but this is mostly because I use nimble boots to evade the rage attack and evasion body + legs + belt which gives me much more survivalability against the projectiles they fire. I can also solo a basilisk in fae realm if I use an accuracy display and get lucky with no rage crits since I can slow it using seismic impact, my nimble boots let me evade its attack which normally slows you and my 2 epic attacks are usually enough damage to be able to kill it before it kills me with the rest of my abilities. If the basilisk heals from a rage crit however I normally still die.

It's honestly difficult to find builds that can't solo elites though, even things such as necromancy can provide good damage when modded correctly and I'm sure if you paired it with psychology or similar you could do it too, although I've never tried nor seen anyone do it. Maybe skills such as unarmed and shield are less effective, even if it is possible just because your kills would take so long but in general I don't think elite soloing (at the level of the elite) is ever really worthwhile or fun, I personally never do it outside of just seeing if I could. Since loot is given to everyone in a party it's just simply quicker, easier and more entertaining to party up.

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Originally Posted by alleryn

But if you are fighting a "constant stream" of mobs. (Killing one/multiple, then proceeding to the next without waiting for cooldowns), then your abilites' total dps is (i think) a good indicator of how fast you are able to farm.

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Depends what you mean by constant stream, let's try some quick maths and feel free to tell me if I say something stupid but this is the way I see it from my own personal build and personal experience. I have 9 main "damage" abilities on my ability bar alongside 1 basic attack, 1 heal and 1 mentalism wave. If I constantly use my abilities, it doesn't get to the point where I would have to use my basic attack, heal or wave due to cooldown availability until I have used roughly 15 abilities, since the first abilties come off cooldown when I'm using the rest. Therefore I don't think there's any situation where having lower cooldown skills with respectively lower damage per use of the ability could possiblely be of any use until I've used at least 15 abilities. Across these 15 ability uses, counting some used twice I have an average damage per ability of just over 2k but we'll round it down to 2k for ease. So assume you have a group of 6 with 1 tank, 1 healer and 4 dps players and assume both the tank and healer deal 0 damage which isn't normally the case for the tank anyway. This means assuming all the dps players are the same as me, there's a damage output of 15*2k*4 = 120k damage before cooldowns are an issue. In gk this would be equivalent to fighting roughly more than 8 elites (~15k armour + hp each) at once before cooldowns should become any real factor or 5-6 fae realm elites (~20-25k armour + hp each). This also takes no consideration for aoe attacks which would increase the number of elites you could fight at once too but taken as a very rough assumption you could say the extra effects of the tank plus aoe could roughly balance the overkill on each mob plus the fact that not every dps will be fully optimised end-game min/maxed. Now this obviously isn't true in reality since for my build power becomes an issue quicker than I can use 15 pure damage abilties, without needing to use dig deep or a basic attack and with soloing the issue would be hp, so I would have to use a basic attack to heal or specifically use my stun early outside of an optimal damage rotation just in order to survive.

Now of course if you meant a truly endless stream then you would be partially correct but I think the limiting factor in that case would be power again rather than ability cooldowns, unless you mean low level content you could use lower level versions of abilities for and this would also imply you weren't stopping to loot anything either.

I didn't read Teloch's posts because... capitalization dude. If you're going to write a wall of text, be respectful and make it easier to read.

My concern is you overnerfed stun trap. Though you're the dev and that just seems to be your way of doing things, overnerf then revisit it sometime in the future (Hammer says hello, BC waiting in the back). Making it uninterruptible AND the damage decrease might have been too much.

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Originally Posted by Citan

Yes, that means Fire magic is probably due for a nerf also.

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Fire already got a nerf with the rage "fix". I believe sometime in the past 6-8 months, you increased the rage most of the abilities give. If anything, you should consider increasing the amount of mods necessary to do the present amount of damage. The advantage of fire magic is that you mod super fireball + fire breath, and those 11 mods (plus an optional four for the random flat bonuses + indirect) can outdo at least half the classes in terms of damage for a maximum of 15/55+ mods. Reducing the base damage of fire breath and adding base damage increases thereto would be healthy.

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Originally Posted by Celerity

Depends what you mean by constant stream...(snip)

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The main example you are giving is 6 players with i'm guessing purple/yellow modded gear. My experience is mostly red-yellow gear with no transmutation/augmentation done in a solo environment, so of course it's quite different. I'm not fighting elites, just regular mobs.

Here i find i'm better off not equipping any epic attacks (unless i happen to have really good mods for one) and going for abilities with higher dps. If i can kill one mob with 4 moderate cd abilities, then one with another 4, then one with another 4 so that the first set is coming off cooldown (or something like that), i can work into a good rhythm of constant killing.

Cooldowns are the limiting factor in how fast i'm able to farm, rather than power (generally waiting for one or two ticks from food between mobs is enough). I haven't worked out the numbers, this is purely anecdotal/experiential.

A lot of comments here clearly show people’s care and enjoyment of the game.

However i may get shouted down, a Simple question to provoke debate:

Does true class/CA balance really matter in PG?

You are not locked to any permanent choices like other mmos. Save perhaps Lycan (I am not a wolf, yet I’d have no issue with this benefitting due to its “penalty”

As long as something isn’t truly game breaking, read: doing things you shouldn’t be able to.... then who cares.
Players will gravitate to what they enjoy in the end

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Originally Posted by alleryn

I'm not fighting elites, just regular mobs.

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In that case I would agree that epic attacks are not nearly as useful due to the overkill and things such as aoe and thorns become much more effective but I think it's generally agreed anyway that solo combat is relatively well balanced already.

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Originally Posted by Lasc

Does true class/CA balance really matter in PG?

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I agree, I don't think it matters too much that people can solo elites relatively efficiently with certain builds because it's just not fun and always slower than with a group. I personally don't do it or know anyone who regularly does it despite having the ability to. The only problem is that group combat just sometimes becomes a bit too boring if you get a really good group, but that's not a problem caused by balance issues between skills since so many skills are capable of achieving it.

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Originally Posted by Lasc

Does true class/CA balance really matter in PG?

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Personally, i would say yes. For me, a great deal of enjoyment is achieved by theory crafting (and in the future manifesting) different builds and comparing them. If it turns out that one skill (or one set of skills) dominates others, that process feels less interesting and less rewarding.

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Originally Posted by Celerity

In that case I would agree that epic attacks are not nearly as useful due to the overkill and things such as aoe and thorns become much more effective but I think it's generally agreed anyway that solo combat is relatively well balanced already.

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I'm not sure that's the case i'm talking about. I'm talking not about the situation where you have fully modded thorns and can walk around and everything dies, but the situation where you struggle to kill non-elite mobs (mediocre mods or gear in general). Maybe this situation doesn't matter as much, because a lot of people choose not to play that way; i thought it would still be useful to offer my perspective that at this stage of the game, abilities with high dps are more important than burst damage.

I'm generally surprised people are consistently thinking in terms of what defines a meta at any given time; sure it's nice to be overpowered, but we're not exactly in end-game territory yet.

A lot of the initial appeal for animal forms (way back when), was that you were essentially stuck as a cow for awhile (unless you called out for help), and had to level to 18 to get the items to free yourself from the form; it felt like an accomplishment in its own right. Beyond that initial experience, the animal form mechanics (less lycanthropy, and to a lesser extent deer) feels like gimmicky restrictions intended to make gameplay more frustrating.

That said, I really don't think animals should be seen as overpowered or even balanced in any capacity - you've likely slew a few thousand pigs, why should you, as a pig, be an immortal powerhouse?

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying animals forms are in a good place, but I sincerely doubt it's because of combat nerfs; they're an alternative way to play, and I don't really think that deserves any sort of power-creep to off-set their restrictions.

Another bad thing about being an animal is when you use a bookcase or table to access storage, after you choose a storage, i doesnt have the listing of all the other storages in the zone. When accessing storages from a NPC, it does show the listing of all the storages. Is it supposed to be this way or was it a mistake?

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Originally Posted by Figger1

when you use a bookcase or table to access storage, after you choose a storage, i doesnt have the listing of all the other storages in the zone. When accessing storages from a NPC, it does show the listing of all the storages.

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This is how it works for humanoids too. I suppose animals are more dependent on the bookcases (I would question whether being able to interact with the storages of NPCs who won't talk with you is a bug... It certainly makes it easier to be an animal than it was 'back in my day').

It's pretty easy to re-use the bookcases anyways. When you are done with one storage just press the "Use Selected" key. The bookcase will still be selected and that will bring up the list of storages again.

For me, using FR as a benchmark, the damage situation, is pretty well balanced at the moment.
Reason: the mob health regen rate in FR, especially on elites.

For example, I have 7+ combat skills at level 80+ and 3 of the builds allow me to wander FR solo with near impunity - as long as I avoid the elites.
If I want to kill elites then it takes 2+ vets to do so reliably - due to the health regen rate of FR mobs.

I think a way of checking out what is working 'best' (note: Not the most OP, for that try a Staff build) might be to check the skill sets, builds and mods used by veteran players (many of which are equipped with level 70+ gold, modded and augmented gear) as they tend to use what is most effective.

For the record, my most effective builds in FR are currently:
Fire /Druid using Thorns and Molten Veins. Cast them, heal as required - wait for the mobs to kill themselves
Unarmed /Psychology Triple stun /rage reduction build. DPS of a stunned mob is 0
Archery /? (Druid) Stun and damage build. Kills mobs as they reach you - not useful if you want to level Endurance
The above (using level 70 max gear) allows me to 3 shot kill non-elite FR mobs and to reliably farm FR elites with 2+ people.

Bard /Druid Song twist build is looking like it will be very effective also

Note: No animal builds used at the moment. I have tried Spider, Deer and Cow in FR, but whilst viable, other skill combos have proven more effective.