Welcome to Project: Gorgon!


Project: Gorgon is a 3D fantasy MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) that features an immersive experience that allows the player to forge their own path through exploration and discovery. We won't be guiding you through a world on rails, and as a result there are many hidden secrets awaiting discovery. Project: Gorgon also features an ambitious skill based leveling system that bucks the current trend of pre-determined classes, thus allowing the player to combine skills in order to create a truly unique playing experience.

The Project: Gorgon development team is led by industry veteran Eric Heimburg. Eric has over a decade of experience working as a Senior and Lead Engineer, Developer, Designer and Producer on successful games such as Asheron’s Call 1 and 2, Star Trek Online and other successful Massively Multiplayer Online Games.



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  1. #1
    Senior Member Yaffy's Avatar
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    May 2018
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    Question Tanking with Flat Mitigation vs Percentage Mitigation and Enemy Critical Hits

    Since enemy critical hits were added to the game there's been a lot of different view points on it, with some people claiming critical hits are unfair and way too strong, while other people don't seem to be very affected. I might be a bit late on discussing this, but I think these viewpoints stem from a problem in the game's design; The scaling on flat mitigation and % based mitigation compared to the damage enemies deal isn't done well. Flat mitigation is powerful early game while being extremely weak late game, while percentage based mitigation is extremely weak early game and powerful late game.

    Basically, this issue is caused because flat damage mitigation doesn't scale nearly as fast as the damage mobs do as you fight higher level enemies, meaning flat damage mitigation becomes less effective overtime. On the other hand, percentage based mitigation bonuses are super low early game when you need very high amounts to see any actual effectiveness.

    As an example, let's compare the mitigation given from two similar mods from two different skills at two different levels, both are passive effects that are on 24/7:
    Level 1 Shield: +1 physical damage mitigation
    Level 70 Shield: +6 physical damage mitigation (Actually a mix of 5 and 6 but let's just simplify it and say 6)
    Level 1 unarmed: 3% physical damage mitigation
    Level 70 unarmed: 18% physical damage mitigation

    Now let's compare the level 1 mobs vs the kind of damage you'd expect to see around level 1-10, so let's say a low level enemy hits you for about 10 damage.
    The shield user reduces the damage from 10 to 9, so they reduce the damage by 10%
    The unarmed user reduces the damage by from 10 to 9.7, which is over 3 times less effective than the shield mod

    Now on the other hand, let's compare the damage mitigation from the kind of mob you'd expect to solo at level 70. A level 70 Seething Citizen mob from Rahu attacks for 186 damage without any mitigation bonuses.
    The shield user reduces the damage from 186 to 180, so they reduce the damage by 3.3%
    The unarmed user reduces the damage from 186 to 152.5, so they reduce the damage by 33.5 points, which is 5.5 times more than the shield mod.

    A comparison like this makes it blatantly clear that the flat mitigation is way better early game and percentage based is way better late game. It only gets worse when you consider mobs intended to be fought in groups like bosses or elites which can do several hundred damage per hit or when enemies crit (Or even worse when a boss/elite crits!). If an enemy crits you for 600 damage, the +6 physical damage reduction shield mod from level 70 would be three times worse than the level 1 unarmed % mod!

    This sort of scaling has always been a problem, but critical hits make it an even bigger issue. Many players who have not built % based mitigation get completely obliterated by critical strikes because their flat mitigation essentially gets negated. Another problem this causes is that it heavily limits what skills are good for tanking at end game. Either you need percentage based mitigation or some way to negate damage entirely. Additionally it can be very difficult to get mitigation for certain damage types. For example elemental mitigation is very limited which means for the majority of tank builds the 20% fire resistance meditation is necessary to do well in higher level dungeons.

    One thing to keep in mind though is that there is a reason why flat mitigation can't just be super buffed. If flat mitigation were balanced around elite mobs hitting for 600+ damage then players could easily stack enough flat mitigation to reduce normal mob damage to 0, which would cause a lot of other problems.

    So because of this, I would like to suggest the proposed changes:
    1. For lower levels, consider changing percentage based mitigation mods into flat damage mitigation, or have the lowest level mods bottom out at 10% so it does something even when enemies aren't doing much damage.
    2. Give all "Tanky" skills some form of percentage based mitigation for the majority of damage types. It doesn't need to be super huge, but even something around 10-20% would help a lot of the weaker "Tank" skills. This would also be a good opportunity to change some weak flat mitigation bonuses into % based bonuses at higher levels.
    3. For any direct flat mitigation bonuses that stay flat, boost the values at higher levels. A value of 6 is far too low when enemies are hitting for hundreds! I'd honestly say that doubling these values would be completely reasonable. Flat damage reduction for indirect damage is balanced very well though, so things like "Poison damage reduction" don't need to be changed.
    4. Create armor pieces or armor enchantments that can reduce damage by a percentage. This would be a super great way to customize our characters more and there's a lot of super cool ideas that could be made here! For example you could enchant cloth armor with fire damage protection, or maybe there could be a plate mail made of ice that reduces cold damage. The values on these armor pieces don't need to be very high, even a value around 5% would be great. The Evasion and Nimble armor sets are a great example (In fact you could easily argue they can be better for tanking than pieces with high armor depending on the build due to being percentage based) but non-evasion pieces open a lot of good options.
    5. Change crits so that damage gets reduced by flat mitigation BEFORE it gets doubled. This way percentage based mitigation isn't a complete necessity to survive ridiculous critical nukes since flat reduction will still help.

    Anyways, I hope this post was helpful and not a bit too long winded! If anyone would like to share their opinion on this please do!

    TL;DR Flat mitigation is bad late game and % mitigation is necessary late game. Crits blow up people without % mitigation.
    Last edited by Yaffy; 12-13-2018 at 08:50 PM.



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