Critical hits, bad behavior & "end game" content

[Mbaums]

Using GK mobs at the entrance at as example, I find the difficulty the damage types dealt. Infiltrators deal poison and their crits are rough. Troopers deal 100% fire, and their crits are rough. The meditation buffs are nearly mandatory for troopers. Very few builds can really shake off these types of crits and the builds I see people talking about are masters at physical damage. I don’t want to get into the weeds of one build vs another, but I am overall in favor of physical damage crits. Without crits there would be solo players inside GK.

I believe Citan is looking at the player’s death part of the group’s experience. The rez timer, cost, and drop rate of greens makes this not fun. Since crits were added, the overall size what I pull into group has decreased—and this is good. Even though I sound pro-crit, I assume a level 70 with perfect lvl 60-gear’ed can be 1 shot via crits, and I’d agree that’s not fun. Crits less than 85% of the players health/armor or physical only crits I am in favor of. I think those conditions are good enough.

But how do you shut down people soloing, or duoing content meant for 6 people? The other night I had a party I had with 4 people and it was an absolute struggle but when we added 2 more people it became smooth sailing ride. Overwhelming DPS fixes a lot of things because a mob can die in the length of one stun. Instead of crits, what if some mobs rage-support? Examples could be a mez on the tank (please from 3 meters meters only!) until a cure disease, or even a rez on other elites , a self-30% base dmg boost or a temporary damage immunity.

Re Root: I think the root as CC is good. The way root works currently, it really allows for ice-magic tank builds to be very handy and it makes the CC added from ice magic to be a welcomed addition to most groups. Root as a CC makes the few rooting classes very strong. And with how much groups break mez, and how root still allows the mob to call for help, I’m cool with it staying as is.

[Yaffy]

Using GK mobs at the entrance at as example, I find the difficulty the damage types dealt. Infiltrators deal poison and their crits are rough. Troopers deal 100% fire, and their crits are rough. The meditation buffs are nearly mandatory for troopers. Very few builds can really shake off these types of crits and the builds I see people talking about are masters at physical damage. I don’t want to get into the weeds of one build vs another, but I am overall in favor of physical damage crits. Without crits there would be solo players inside GK.

I believe Citan is looking at the player’s death part of the group’s experience. The rez timer, cost, and drop rate of greens makes this not fun. Since crits were added, the overall size what I pull into group has decreased—and this is good. Even though I sound pro-crit, I assume a level 70 with perfect lvl 60-gear’ed can be 1 shot via crits, and I’d agree that’s not fun. Crits less than 85% of the players health/armor or physical only crits I am in favor of. I think those conditions are good enough.

But how do you shut down people soloing, or duoing content meant for 6 people? The other night I had a party I had with 4 people and it was an absolute struggle but when we added 2 more people it became smooth sailing ride. Overwhelming DPS fixes a lot of things because a mob can die in the length of one stun. Instead of crits, what if some mobs rage-support? Examples could be a mez on the tank (please from 3 meters meters only!) until a cure disease, or even a rez on other elites , a self-30% base dmg boost or a temporary damage immunity.

Re Root: I think the root as CC is good. The way root works currently, it really allows for ice-magic tank builds to be very handy and it makes the CC added from ice magic to be a welcomed addition to most groups. Root as a CC makes the few rooting classes very strong. And with how much groups break mez, and how root still allows the mob to call for help, I’m cool with it staying as is.

Call me crazy if you want, but I would be all up for boosting elite HP by 50% to 100% over having crits. It would make soloing significantly more difficult, because usually people who can solo kill elites mobs rely heavily on burst damage and negating damage/stalling via CC effects. Increasing the enemy's health would make it harder for players to kill the enemy before they run out of nukes/CC effects. Even if a player could manage to build enough sustain to last their way through the whole fight, it would at least make it much slower and therefore difficult to advance through the dungeon and more worthwhile to get a group to speed things up. Plus, it'd encourage more people to build tank/healer and more sustainable damage rather than just burst.

That's not to say I would just want enemies to have more health and not the other stuff I suggested, but I think it'd be a better path for the game to go down. Tanking would need a bit better balance with this change, but it'd be significantly easier than the rebalancing tanks need with crits.

[Ranperre]

My forte, bunny/unarmed, was mentioned so I must comment on it. This is my "I'm going to drag you through GK whether you are ready for it or not" build. It's not necessarily a tank like cow/unarmed, staff/shield, or unarmed/shield, but I can drag pretty much ANY level 70 to Melandria. It lacks a proper aoe taunt so your pulls are limited to 1-2 at a time, maybe more if you have a root and/or high dps. That said, you have a movement speed buff (hare dash), an excellent self heal (eat carrot), and enough damage to hold hate face tanking one mob.

Also I should ask just to make sure, but it is correct to assume a dedicated tank player should be able to pull more than one mob right? Currently a group with no tanks can still clear Gazluk quite reliably, meaning tanks aren't necessary. That's 100% fine, but that means in order to be useful, a tank needs to be able to allow a faster, more reliable clear compared to a full damage team. This usually means having the ability to pull more enemies at once or consecutively so damage builds can take advantage of AoE abilities and to lessen downtime between pulls to make up for the loss in damage.
So basically how many enemies should a group be pulling in group dungeons? Should a full DPS group be pulling only 1 elite at a time? Should a group with 5 DPS and a tank/healer be pulling 2? A group with a tank and healer be pulling 3 or 4? Should a group with no dedicated tanks/healer even be able to beat the dungeon? I would really like to know because it'd really help us give feedback to what you want group play to be like.

The best overall option in pick up groups right now is as a tanky dps. Yes, if everyone has good gear, it might be better to go as a tank or cloth dps and clear it in two hours, but nothing in this game is less fun than tanking for a group that can't take advantage of your ability to pull a ton of mobs. And these groups happen often if you aren't very careful about getting a high quality core group of 4-5. Similarly, if you go as a dedicated healer/support and don't have enough damage, you're in for a bad time.

[Mbaums]

Call me crazy if you want, but I would be all up for boosting elite HP by 50% to 100% over having crits....

I'm absolutely in favor of increasing their HP by ~120%, nerfing mob crits, and doubling the amount of items they drop. This would change the demand for indirect damage builds and power supporting builds.

[INXS]

I don't mind at all the way GK is i think the crits are at an adequate level, people maxing 2 skills and going to GK for gear that's just a liability on the party. Unless people have done some Lab runs you got also lv 70s showing up to GK without intense fight group mechanic knowledge. Maybe things kind of were done right when guild mates willing to go were taken at around lv 50 to Lab for many runs to a point where we can finish the guild quest (lv50) in 3-4 days, we make 3-4 runs a week to it and i think this is the missing link that many guilds are overlooking for their lv 50ish it's the step before GK load them up on lv 60/65 yellows helps out in many ways to fill that lv 50-70 void ,learn group play, nice phlog, transmutation/augmentation xp, experimenting with different builds and when most got around to lv 65/70 were all eager to try out GK we did just fine. Cleared the bottom floor with a group with not that many GK visits under the belt including the rhino area.

[ErDrick]

So many good posts in this thread, it makes me really glad to see people actually giving feedback on this stuff.

@Citan your point about not giving feedback while infuriated is a good one, I definitely do that sometimes and for that I apologize. In fact, lately I have been a dick in general and I would like to formally apologize for that as well. I want you to know I still recommend this game to people ( and also gave a positive review on steam). Even though there are currently some aspects I am unhappy with, this game has given me well more then $40 worth of entertainment, and the devs are awesome and I will always support you.

As for specific examples of how critical hits are over-tuned, there have been a lot of examples already given for Gazluk keep. So I'm also going to mention the monsters on rahu plateau, they are non-elites and can one-shot 935 armor / 600 health with a rage critical. Monsters 30 levels below me can sometimes 1 shot me with an unlucky rage critical with those same stats .. you know damn well my gear is usually optimized 90/100% or thereabouts, typical player that's not even 70 doesn't have that luxury...those poor fire mages. I'm especially having doubts about any group-level content actually being doable by a group that will benefit from the drops acquired, when you see people advertising for dark chapel and saying "level 60 combat skills minimum" you know there is a problem there. I don't think a group of people geared in 40-45 gear( unless it's full optimized purples / yellows) could actually complete nexus for that matter, it's hard to really see though because 9/10 times there is someone carrying...which is great, this is a social game after all, But doing stuff at-level seems like it's highly unlikely.

You know, the problem might not even really be criticals, it could just be "RAGE criticals". Perhaps try disabling rage abilities from being able to critically hit if that's even possible and/or not a ridiculous amount of work? There are also a lot of rage attacks that currently ignore armor, and this compounds the problem I think since it's impossible to stack health high enough to avoid direct health critical hits for 1k or more.

If any of you read any of my older posts you already know I'm in favor of increasing mob health by a ton and slowing down re-spawns to compensate, I think that would leave the game in a much more enjoyable place similar to the old style of game you seem to be shooting for. Right now combat is feeling like a twitch-reflexes game, like anything new(ish) does.. with big red circles that one hit KO you unless you avoid them and stuff, except here they are unavoidable ( yes I know, there are roots and stuff..but those aren't reliable due to cooldowns etc unless you are soloing 1 mob at a time).

Yaffy has also made some excellent points about flat mitigation / percent mitigation and how they relate to critical hits or damage in general at different points in the game, I feel like it might be good to make all mitigation abilities under a certain level..say 40-50 flat numbers, and change them to be percent based at higher gear tiers after that point( specifically battle chemistry..but I'm sure there are others).

Root : In everquest a rooted mob would ignore aggro and prioritize whoever was the closest to it until root wore off, then resume it's normal behavior/aggro. I feel like this would be a good system to use but not 100% necessary. Snares didn't effect aggro at all ( except for generating some for the person snaring).

Mez and dots: Yea if you change that without doing something else, like making mesmerizes unbreakable/ the mesmerized mob immune to damage for at least part of the duration ( 5 seconds at least) I would rage! They are already almost completely useless in groups UNLESS you are the puller and using mesmerize to split the pulls, which is a viable way to use it currently. Being able to mesmerize something after loading it up with dots and watch it die is sort of enjoyable and I wouldn't change it if it was my call, it only works on non-elite trash anyways..otherwise like has been stated, you're just filling up the rage bar with minimal damage and screwing yourself.

Overtaunting: Have not really seen this happen, I played healer yesterday in GK and was frequently healing random dps people ( we had a dedicated tank who did really well though). I'm not trying to say you're wrong though, just that I have not noticed it to a point where I'd consider it easy mode or an issue.

You wanting us to die when pulling large groups of mobs: Nerfing ae damage is fine, nerfing damage in general is fine, but please for the love of god stop throwing 10+ monsters at us at once, there is a difference between intentionally rounding up a few monsters and 8 more just adding from 2 rooms/ or 100 feet away. The radius in which they 'hear" each other calling for help seems a bit big or mobs are just too packed together... personal opinion is they are packed too densely and increasing the health and difficulty of each single mob would allow it to be spaced out a little more and still remain challenging. It also just "looks weird" and not like a living breathing dungeon to see 20 mobs walking around one short hallway and 15 more in the adjacent room.

I kind of want to bring up another point that other people may or may not agree with ( which is fine, go nuts). Currently you have us in a situation where we get hit for 300 damage and a typical healing ability max modded only heals back 150-200 of that, which works okay when you are healing someone else but not so great when you are healing yourself ( you basically just waste 1.33 seconds for a net loss of health). I feel as if a long-cooldown heal should negate at least 2 hits worth of damage, so double what they currently do. ESPECIALLY with channeled heals or abilities that require you to stand motionless to perform( Bard/ Priest) Although In bard's case id rather you just change the health / armor mods for song of resurgence that all say "heals YOU" for x health or xx armor to be "heals the PARTY" ( because lets be honest here, a 33 point ae heal that requires you to stand motionless and only "ticks" every 4 seconds to begin with, is utterly pathetic).

I didn't expect this to turn into a wall of text, whoops.

Edit: forgot to hit spacebar between a paragraph!

[spider91301]

Honestly in my view the value of healers like priest have lost value ever since crits came out cant heal whats already killed with a 1 shot

[Speczero]

I just want to say that almost no other MMO's use one shot mechanics because they are just not fun.

1. As already mentioned while you can run a tank it will be inefficient and hurt the group; I mean a full DPS character will die in one hit and so will a full tank specced character so it is better to bring the DPS and kill mob as fast as possible.

2. Same thing with a healer since he will not be able to heal you thru a one-hit death anyway.

So essentially you are saying you want this game to go the way of Guild Wars 2 where everyone just plays DPS and no one else is welcomed into groups.

My idea is to get rid of the 1 hit mechanics(not necessarily crits) raise the health of both mobs and players and let us make the fights more interesting.

How about this; give group level dungeon mobs random high resistances such as one mob may be 75% resistant to fire but also 50% weak against ice; the next mob may be 75% resistant to piercing or melee but 50% weak to fire. This would make having a full and diverse group much more attractive while adding some added stratagy to encounters. You could have some almost immune to taunt and some easily taunted. I mean in these instances you would want a tank, cc, healing and diverse dps; this sounds like much more fun than just boom your dead.

[Silvonis]

I see a lot of people saying that they were "one hit" killed, but not much more in terms of details. If possible, please give specific examples and the full details involved. Character specs, health, armor, etc. What mob killed you? What were the specifics of the encounter? The more information, the better. Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming.

[Golliathe]

A couple of thoughts about the unbalance regarding unexpected or "cheap" tactics the enemies use.

Chain stuns:
I love the stun mechanic, and it really is needed for most builds, and certainly any group dungeon attempt. However getting chain stunned - resulting in death - brings my joy level to zero.


Skill Lockout
A couple examples I see skill lockout as a positive are the Llamia mobs, and the Golems rage attack. These are FUN mechanics that are also expected.

An example where it makes me want to throw my monitor out the window is combat with the tacticians in GK. It's too common. As the above situation with the stuns, if you have 2 or 3 tacticians, their rage attacks are going to be around the same time if you cant kill them before they rage - which isn't probable, and also probably not intended to be able to kill gk elites before they rage.


Critical hits
Honestly, reading Citan's reply makes me think the crits are working exactly as intended. I've also never gotten as upset about crits as I have stuns/lockouts. I play defensively most times, and anticipate entering combat and plan my shields, heals and buffs guessing I'm going to be crit a couple of times. I've not noticed any more death in my solo adventures than I did before crits were released.


One hit kills - Regardless of HP/Armor
I'm not talking about crits, I'm talking about the kraken burst attack. When I had over 1k armor, and 900hp, with a 40% damage mitigation buff on, the kraken did 1700 damage to me. I understand it's an event monster, but there is virtually no way to block that attack if you're melee (you're also usually stunned before it goes off if you have agro, so you cannot run) I can't think of other mobs that this is capable of, but if there is any boss that can crit a burst rage attack for over 900 damage, it's not ever going to be perceived as fun (scale for the intended levels of course, at level 100 I hope I have more than 1k hp)

Possible Solutions
Pulling mobs without calling for help. With the GK patch, came a "correction" to hook shot(archery) and grappling web(spider). Both of these skills now make mobs call for help, where they did not int he past. This made the impossible task of pulling that beetle before Llamia locks us all out of combat actually doable. We've never had a GK experience with this option either.

I understand it was unintentional, and was corrected. I put in the suggestion a couple of times in game, but I'll beat the drum again, and suggest a rare mod to bring this back. Those two skills IMO are the best ones to use it, as they are the only two "pulls". Thematically, I really can see grappling web shot over a mobs face, keeping them from calling for help. Hook shot.... well maybe change it to Net shot, or harpoon. Even if these two skills don't get this option, I believe pulling a single mob without calling for help on a longer cooldown skill would add value to the game, without breaking it.

One issue that really bothers me about this whole situation is that what is good for the gander needs to be good for the goose.

Why do monsters get critical hits and players don't (aside from 3 skils). I've been told that monsters get more resistant to stuns when they are used multiple times. If so - why do players not get the same benefit? It wouldn't bother me int he slightest if you could use 10 stuns on a boss and keep him from attacking IF the monsters have the same opportunity to do the same to a player (as you mentioned what happens in the yeti cave).

George... the new Kraken is stupid. He does zero damage to a level 70 well geared character but will kill you unless you have a few instances of death avoidance or you have the nimble boots. Man are those boots overpowered.... they pretty much open the door for you to ignore almost all of the most annoying things in the game : ogre stuns, tactician skill lockout, and aoe deathtouch.

I remember people using the hookshot back in the day. I imagine it got changed because single pulling probably makes for too easy content when you consider mez/stun (see ranperre's post earlier).

I'm absolutely in favor of increasing their HP by ~120%, nerfing mob crits, and doubling the amount of items they drop. This would change the demand for indirect damage builds and power supporting builds.

This would be far more interesting imho. You would not have people soloing and groups would want to start being a smart composition of things like tank/healer/support/ 3x dps.

I just want to say that almost no other MMO's use one shot mechanics because they are just not fun.

QFT.