Update Discussion: November 6, 2020

[Sims]

The update notes are here: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/show...ovember-6-2020

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

[Ranperre]

I would urge you to reconsider giving only the changed skill a lower reroll cost. The lower reroll cost should be tied to the other skill on gear so that your guinea pigs, I mean player base, can feel the full effect of your changes. Example: Cow/unarmed has changed to increase the value of tough hoof, thereby decreasing the value of weaker unarmed attacks (eg infuriating fist). So I might start modding tough hoof more, while deleting infuriating fist mods (augmenting with cow/tough hoof instead of infuriating fist), this would require me to reroll unarmed mods (at 20-25%) to feel the full effect of your changes.

[Glythe]

Generally speaking it seems like very few people build for a tank. I've seen about 2.5 that worked.

Won't the new Bulwark mode present a huge problem? If you deal half damage you will never keep aggro because about 90% of the other people I met run full dps builds.

It doesn't really seem worthwhile to use considering the best defense from dying in combat is to just use a run skill and make the monster take 20 seconds to chase you. For solo play it also makes zero sense to take -27% damage but deal -50% damage.

Overall 13 armor regeneration is fantastic - when you are fighting level 20 mobs. When monsters can deal 600+ armor in one hit it doesn't matter that you got 13 back.

*suggestion* : change the new skill to make the ratio more like : -27 incoming, -35 outgoing.

If you change the power ratio so that full power skills are dealing half damage the net result with the current changes is :

1. I do half damage but take about 25% less damage.
2. I get a miniscule bit of armor back
3. I get a little bit of power back (shaman infusion provides more)

These three together should offer the player a net gain but what you have offered currently is a net loss. The only time the new ability sounds worth using to me is to make content way below my level deal zero damage thanks to the new 27% modifier. The only problem with that idea is I already have a build that does that with full damage.

[Tandiril]

First things first
- Ilmari desert: very nice, finally the lemon trees make sense^^ Just fix the boulders please, rn they are sometimes solid and sometimes only solid after you walked through half of them (and you get stuck).
- More defense options for cow was really needed, thank you. I am not yet sold on the split behaviour against elites, but it is an interesting take.
Now...

The following wall of text might be long, and very specific, and maybe not 100% cohesive all the time. I apologize in advance. However the issue has been on my mind for quite some time, and now is probably the right moment to talk about it. Bear with me please

Damage Mitigation: Flat vs Percentage.
In short:
- Why do we have both?
- What is the „vision“, are the use cases for the 2?

So Elemental Ward and Blocking stance got drastically changed, and now have flat mitigation as their main feature. This might become an issue for all the staff/shield wielders. There are some points that seem problematic to me.

1) Flat mitigation „level scaling“

What does this mean? Basically, one problem with flat mitigation right now is that the combat power of mobs grows much more compared to typical flat mitigation. For example my old lvl 55 cow gear can provide me with a mod that gives chew chud the effect to buff my mitigation against elite enemies by 22. If I read the data right, this is increased by 4 every 10 levels, starting by 6 at lvl 10. However, it is something completely different to have 16 Mitigation against maybe hits for 48 damage at level 30 vs having 38 mitigation against a 300 damage hit at lvl 80. The linear scaling of the buff can't compete with the stronger scaling of the enemy's damage. The numbers are only made up examples, but not that far from the truth I think. Percentage based mitigation doesn't have that Problem, it scales automatically. Which brings us to the next point.

2) Flat mitigation is better against weak enemies, and worse against strong ones.

So let's take a made up enemy that hits you for 300 damage. If I have 50 mitigation, this means I mitigate 16.67% of the damage. Compared it to a 10% damage reduction, I of course mitigate 10% → 30 damage.
Now let's take an enemy that is twice as strong, 600 damage. Now my 50 mitigation is only worth 8.3% of the total damage. My 10% mitigation however is still worth 10% → 60 damage.
So far so good, however the issue is that having a type of mitigation that becomes better the weaker the enemy is kinda defeats the purpose. If the enemy is weak I don't really need the mitigation to begin with.

3) Flat mitigation and its “mitigation, direct mitigation, and indirect mitigation”

This is something that is really confusing and should probably be changed at some point. We have “mitigation of direct damage”, “mitigation of indirect damage”, and something that is simply called “mitigation”, which mitigates both. Because indirect damage mitigation works per tick, the actually mitigated amount is number_of_ticks * mitigation. So 5 mitigation against a dot with 10 ticks protects you from 50 damage total, etc. Which means that having a mitigation of 30 for both direct and indirect damage is totally busted for the indirect part, basically making you immune in most cases, and therefore most higher number mitigation are only for direct damage even though it is not explicitly stated. Physical sources have no dots, therefore it doesn't matter for staff for instance. This applies right now for elemental ward, however. Which also means that you no longer get cold protection from it outside of the 3 second immunity window. Percentage based mitigation again doesn't have that problem, due to the mentioned “auto scaling” it simply mitigates that percentage from the dot, which is balanced.

4) Flat mitigation is calculated before percentage

Let's look again at our 300 damage enemy, with a 50 flat and 10% mitigation at the same time now. This means rn: (300 -50)*0.9 = 250*0.9 = 225. Which is a 25% mitigation. It is not a 16.67 + 10 = 26.67% mitigation. In short: it stacks multiplicatively, not additively, which in turn means that the more % - based mitigation you have, the less use you get from your flat one (or the other way around, however you want to see it). Whether this is good or not I can't really say, I just think giving people the incentive to try to build for both (and therefore try to branch out) might be a good idea. This is highly debatable though.

So after all this babbling, what are my issues? In the long run I simply don't see how flat mitigation can keep up. Right now it seems to be used the same way as percentage based mitigation. However it has the above mentioned disadvantages: scaling is slower than enemy power, which means it falls behind compared to % when you actually need it. Also it is extremely inconsistent in regards to indirect damage.
Which brings me to my questions from the start: Why do we even have 2 different kinds of mitigation, if they stack multiplicatively(=if there is no benefit in “branching out”)? The game would be much simpler if we only had 1 way. Unless →
The “vision”, the intended use case for the 2 is different. Meaning flat is better in scenario A while % is better in scenario B. However right now I don't see that. So what is the intention behind having two types if they are doing the same thing?

There are other points and details that follow and can be discussed, but I will stop here. There are of course ways to solve the mentioned issues, and use cases that could be introduced to give each kind its purpose. But first I was simply curious if there is actually an answer already to the underlying question. Thank you for staying with me. If this is too specific and derails the intent of the thread, I am sorry, please tell me and I will move it to a separate one.

Kind regards
Tandiril

[Melkhiresa]

This is mostly all in regards to the Bunny changes so skip if you hate cute animals.

-The stacking damage to bun-fu blast was a nice change and welcome addition but as I have reported probably numerous times none of the mods that add damage to the ability work. I've tested it both without the ice conversion mod and with. This sadly makes the above change less awesome than it could be.

-The bun-fu strike mod is mislabeled that it changes it from crushing to ice when in fact it starts as slashing(personal gripe why is the base damage so so low on bunny attacks?)

-I'm all for love tap mods but currently it has to be one of the worst skills in this game. Melee range, extraordinarily low base damage with no mods to increase that. Even with the mods it does have it falls short of ever warranting a slot. This new evasion one helps at least a little.

-"Carrot Power: Base chance to consume carrot changed from 33% to 10%" I'm happy for the addition so i don't have to garden so much but at the same time there are two mods that decrease the chance to consume by 34% which this drastically makes them useless. They also only add a separate decreased chance if the first chance happens to fail.

Overall it's nice to finally see at least some attention to rabbit but hopefully there is more to come one day. It has the potential just bogged down by clunky mechanics and lackluster mods.

[Tandiril]

Won't the new Bulwark mode present a huge problem? If you deal half damage you will never keep aggro because about 90% of the other people I met run full dps builds.

It doesn't really seem worthwhile to use considering the best defense from dying in combat is to just use a run skill and make the monster take 20 seconds to chase you. For solo play it also makes zero sense to take -27% damage but deal -50% damage.

The skill is definitly situational, but I think that is the point behind it: you go into turtle mode whenever it seems sensible, and exit it when it's not. For free. I agree that it will be most likely useless in solo combat though.
Regarding taunt: there are 2 mods mentioned in the patch notes that take care of that: "While Bulwark mode is active all your attacks taunt +50% and restore 17 health/28 armor (depending on the slot)". With those 2 you can elliminate the taunt loss at least.
Regarding kiting (letting the monster chase you): Agreed, however kiting is not always an option. Especially in dungeons simply running around might hold nasty surprises if a mob comes patrolling around a corner. Also keeping aggro might be difficult while you are on the run.

[Cragstone]

It's early days so far but I am really enjoying bulwark. With the extra taunt augs and power support it is a very useful skill that has also proved to be very handy in solo play as well. Thematically it is awesome to have a full tanking discipline, and in terms of efficacy it works well, I ran WT earlier and soaked a good amount of damage to the point that I actually felt like I was tanking. Before the patch I could only really achieve this in GK and lower dungeons. The damage decrease feels bad, but I get it (you can't have everything). Like I said it is early days and I have a lot of data to record and look at, but it makes me feel like the devs are going the right way with things!

Also, with so many new options added it makes me feel like there's extra dimensions to building tank, and lots of ways to do it, all said and done I think this is a great step forward.

Another good change which will doubtless be controversial is the nimble nerf. It was overpowered to the point that armor seemed almost irrelevant so long as you had enough evade and stun res, this might go some way to addressing the insane amount of damage that people will front load in a fight, if they get punished for it they might be a bit more tactical in the long run.


Anyhow just my two cents. I love the new desert, love the new tank stuff (at least the stuff I have tried) and think this is going in the right direction towards making fights more than a two second hindrance and instead, meaningful and challenging.

[Mbaums]

Bulwark looks like a great addition to the game. It's like a defensive stance that shouldnt always be on and I think players will make use out of it in group settings. I think the -50% damage will solidify it into a “don’t use all the time thing”, which is good because 27% off of direct damage is serious. All in all, shield is now a serious option to pick when tanking with only 1 “tank skill”.

Overall, I like that cheap transmutes effect a few skills. I think last time you had this event on everything prices went crazy on phlog. But because someone might pair one of the cheap-transmute skills with something else, like cow+psych or cow+unarmed, could the event be changed so that any piece of gear that has cow, shield or staff have cheap re-rolls all around? Just because it’s hard to test skill synergy with just half the mods right. I might be tempted to try staff+unarmed next update, but it’ll be a major PITA if I missed the window to roll half of my gear cheaply. But I get it’s meant for existing builds vs new builds.

Existing mitigation mods now look cheaper is a minor issue. Call it mitigation inflation? The mitigation mods for shield team, heed the stick, and battle chem’s skins look less valuable now without “vs elite mitigation”. But at this point I really don’t know the “feel” of these skills+mods in when competing for mods on gear and in combat, so maybe it’s really not a real issue, just something to keep in mind.

[Mikhaila]

It's early days so far but I am really enjoying bulwark. With the extra taunt augs and power support it is a very useful skill that has also proved to be very handy in solo play as well. Thematically it is awesome to have a full tanking discipline, and in terms of efficacy it works well, I ran WT earlier and soaked a good amount of damage to the point that I actually felt like I was tanking. Before the patch I could only really achieve this in GK and lower dungeons. The damage decrease feels bad, but I get it (you can't have everything). Like I said it is early days and I have a lot of data to record and look at, but it makes me feel like the devs are going the right way with things!

Also, with so many new options added it makes me feel like there's extra dimensions to building tank, and lots of ways to do it, all said and done I think this is a great step forward.

Another good change which will doubtless be controversial is the nimble nerf. It was overpowered to the point that armor seemed almost irrelevant so long as you had enough evade and stun res, this might go some way to addressing the insane amount of damage that people will front load in a fight, if they get punished for it they might be a bit more tactical in the long run.


Anyhow just my two cents. I love the new desert, love the new tank stuff (at least the stuff I have tried) and think this is going in the right direction towards making fights more than a two second hindrance and instead, meaningful and challenging.

I was in the same group, and was pushing to see how much burst damage I could deal to steal agro, and was happy that I wasn't getting beat on a lot. The new changes to taunt worked well. Normally, I expect that if i lead with my 3 best attacks that i'll be the one tanking the mob. Was nice to see the changes work as intended.

[Cragstone]

I was in the same group, and was pushing to see how much burst damage I could deal to steal agro, and was happy that I wasn't getting beat on a lot. The new changes to taunt worked well. Normally, I expect that if i lead with my 3 best attacks that i'll be the one tanking the mob. Was nice to see the changes work as intended.

At that point I had only managed to reroll 2/3 of the bulwark threat mods, the third one seals the deal really well. All in all I have really enjoyed playing as a tank today, and it will only get better once I finish rerolling and put SI bacK on all pieces. Maybe next time you are around we can test it out!