Critical hits, bad behavior & "end game" content

[spider91301]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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