Update Discussion: November 6, 2020

[Proximus]

hey, I like the update nice!

[Glythe]

Because it's not just a big bonus with zero investment. You lose half of your direct damage.

I believe I said zero mod investment. It is a small distinction but an important one (more on this later).

There are other options for building tanky than just bulwark mode

Is there a viable tanky feeling build option for shield without using bulwark? I think the answer to this question is no. As a result I propose the idea that bulwark as a design idea is a faulure to shield as a single class.


The patch notes mention that other classes such as unarmed will be addressed in the future. Do you think it would be a good change for Unarmed's resistance bonuses to be changed as follows?

1. You must use a new skill in order to be tanky (in other words play with 5 damage skills).
2. Activating the new skill will cut your damage in half (possibly again).

I don't think anyone would enjoy that for Unarmed. Likewise I am suggesting the current implementation of bulwark is not a good fit that will lead to a better game for everyone. Right now Bulwark is a nice change only if you are making a full tank spec. Maybe my opinion is wrong/bad and you completely disagree (that's totally fine).

Maybe I misread or misremembered what you wrote but I believe you suggested the following options were poorly implemented.

-New treasure effect (Feet): "All Shield attacks have a 22% chance to conjure a force-shield that mitigates 10% of all slashing, crushing, and piercing damage for 30 seconds (or until 100 damage is absorbed). Stacks up to 5 times

-New treasure effect (Hands): "All Shield attacks have a 22% chance to conjure a force-shield that mitigates 10% of all direct nature, darkness, demonic, and acid damage for 30 seconds (or until 100 damage is absorbed). Stacks up to 5 times

Ultimately I am suggesting an alternative to the current implementation of bulwark: make shield have an option to be tanky with passive modifiers without the need for the -50% damage modifier or an active skill on your bar.

If we turn those mods into something else as well as some of the things that don't work/nobody uses there might be room to make shield be something else other than this iteration.

Maybe for example Bulwark will be the "budget" defense skill that only people who do not have mods and perfect gear use. The real tanks have 6-9 pieces of modded gear that make them have good defense values (maybe you only get 20% defense but have full damage at the cost of many more mod slots). Would that not make shield more similar to unarmed?

Instead of being something of a "gamble" system like many of the unarmed powers used to be built on maybe this new shield option could be built on an idea that you will always have this much defense (probably lower overall) at a set value.

I am not trying to suggest the idea that shield should be better than skill XYZ. I am suggesting shield has room to be better than the currently implemented idea for shield that would lead to a better (more fun) experience.

That said, I have no idea what you're trying to complain about regarding shield requiring another tanky skill in order to build as a tank.

I feel certain you have at some point in your time playing PG played a half tank or no tank spec. If you combine two skills with no real defense bonuses you are squishy. If you combine a skill that gives you defense then you are less squishy but you are clearly not a tank either.

I thought the objection I made for shield was quite clear. Without using bulwark while using shield you are very squishy vs high level/powerful enemies (if shield is your only defense class). This makes very little sense if you are trying to play shield as a class capable of dealing "ok" damage that should in theory have "ok" defense. I have been playing shield for a long time so I wanted to give my feedback on that perspective.

The last time I looked not many people used shield who were not in a full tank spec or were running something like fire/shield. I can only remember one person running a mirror of my build for a time and someone who used mental/shield for a support build.

Shield has had a few nice changes over the last year but I do not think this is one of them for the class as a whole.

There are at least four skills that you can try to build a dedicated tank around, and shield is the only one with something like Bulwark mode which cuts your damage.

Why does there even need to be one? Does the decision to make shield only tanky when you are dealing half damage make for a better game?

Is it not logical to assume that since there is one class that becomes tanky at the cost of 50% damage then it opens the possibility there could be others? Is that something you want to see more of in this game?

Acting like damage is the only thing that affects farming speed is definitely incorrect.

This is a true statement but sometimes mob density is such that movement speed/travel time becomes a near zero factor (such as clearing enemies in a dungeon for a mission). As encounters reach higher levels some games make recovery time be longer than travel time between mobs.

First off, it's unreasonable to act as if a percentage of mitigation is a baseline...

If someone is going to tank high tier content (successfully) how often do you see goofy tank builds with low mitigation? How many people really play full spec tanks in PG? When you see one what gear are they using? In my experience the answer is only : well rolled max level yellow sets with exactly the mods they want. I don't think there are many " hold my beer while I tank this with mentalism" active builds. And yes that is a joke (not aimed at you or at your expense).

I have seen two real dedicated tanks in my time playing PG : yourself and Ranperre. Both of you did an excellent job pulling, maintaining aggro, keeping the group safe during large pulls, etc. I have seen nobody else even close to being on the same page. I have played with a number of people who can pull "old content" safely and quickly in their favorite hybrid build but it isn't the same thing as someone who uses taunts and maintains full aggro. There are a ton of really good dedicated support players by comparison that use a wide variety of skills.

I will invite you to disagree (if you wish) but one of the things that tends to happen with game design is that the bar gets raised when players gain new abilities (or old abilities get better). What happens to the difficulty of a game if players can gain 20% more defense? If things were balanced before then giving that boost will likely make all the content super easy now. But quite often I see games that make 20% more defense possible (not necessarily without great cost) because they just made the game 20% harder. If you cannot or are unwilling to make the changes to get 20% more defense then you are sliding down the wrong side of the curve.

In this case I think the addition of more defense to tanks is well deserved. For a long time it has been a better plan to not get hit by high level elite monsters
rather than being able to absorb their damage. This made the game feel quite silly to me. For other players I saw the decision : it isn't worth trying to tank high level monsters.

The problem I see for shield is that if you are not using bulwark with shield then you basically have no % mitigation. I think that design sucks. Is there no room to make shield have some levels of % mitigation without a damage penalty?

Lastly, when I state that those enemies are the most dangerous that does not mean that a good tank build cannot handle those enemies at all.

A perfectly geared tank should have 0 trouble handling just one, the issue is that they can be dangerous in larger numbers due to their damage stacking effect. Furthermore, Unarmed/Shield does not have "Incredible levels of defense" vs melee physical attacks, it takes about half damage with physical resistance + bulwark mode.

Before I spent much time playing PG I can look back an see a time when the game was apparently "too easy". I think the developer sometimes errs too strongly on the side of making things difficult vs the top tier players who are very well geared.

I feel like 50% resistance is an incredible level of defense - maybe you don't (maybe for example you have little to no experience playing squishy classes in PG with 0% mitigation). Having as little as 20% extra defense can be very noticeable in my experience (depending on the situation).

Honestly, please stop it with all the loaded questions.

I think you miss my intent. I want to have a discussion with you - not a needless internet argument. I am not asking questions that have no answer or only lead you to answer a question in a very specific way that forces you to arbitrarily agree with me.

You regularly post really good insights into tanking for PG but I can't agree with you about bulwark.

Bulwark is great for a double tank spec but terrible for shield as a single defense class.

[Mbaums]

Is there a viable tanky feeling build option for shield without using bulwark? I think the answer to this question is no. As a result I propose the idea that bulwark as a design idea is a faulure to shield as a single class.”

Isn’t that argument like… Cows can’t hold agro without Deadly Emission? Like, they have it. They can use it. Shield is in a much better spot now than it was, and the subtlest of every mod (ie the bash restore armor mods) are hard to judge without testing it firsthand. Your posts feel like you are approaching what you want to say, but juking away at the last moment. Is the problem that 2 tank skills are the super efficient and 1 tank skill is less so? Or just Bulwark makes high damage difficult? I think we need a reference point or a goal before you judge these skills. As you know, this isn’t a highly competitive MMO, and I get that argument can be made to make things easy or impossible. But where I’m going with this: the fact that you, a dedicated player/tester with strong opinions has only met two people going absolutely ham on a tank build IS an issue. Or I should say WAS, because these skill changes carve new paths and options for tanks, as long as you accept a specific tool in the skill exist.

I’m going to assume you play hammer/shield and the issue is damage loss. It’s just a good example of a high damage skill + shield. You want the best balance of DPS and tankiness. I understand the feeling that a specific combo feels like wasted potential, but you don’t need Bulwark on all the time. With a 3-sec refresh, you can toggle it on and off for the big hits as you hold out for your epic attacks. But still, I believe that anything+shield IS in a better spot than what it was before this update and it’s not just because of Bulwark. I think we are all confusing each other because we are all talking about three distinct scenarios of using these skills: solo, in an at-level group, and vs lower level group content. I don’t think Citan has any sympathy for higher level players being unable to dominate all group content, even if its half their level. Solo, I’m sure you are fine without bulwark on. But group? He wants shield to have a specific role, specific feel and universally believes people should not feel like they are soloing next to each other. I think the slow+lower damage aspect of bulwark reflects. You should have a bad time in a group of 3 vs elite content.

All of the mentions of unarmed are kind of empty because you are arguing about a skill that you know will change, but you are entirely in the dark about HOW it will change. The in game description of unarmed: “Mastery of the martial arts. Not especially damaging, but with great controlling and stunning abilities. Generally requires one or both hands to be empty, although you can use kicks even with other items wielded”. I think in a beta phase, you can only really hold the developers to that description, but not “What if unarmed gets another -50% dmg skill!” I might be wrong, but I think Citan wants the skills to feel distinct, so your post makes as much sense as fearing that ice magic and deer to get a fight me you fools clone (even tho fight me you fools is A-mazing).

Some of the other arguments in this thread said that the combo of staff+shield feels too strong after using ~50 universal keys which is comparable to a month’s worth of WT runs for a very active player. I don’t think these ultra-tank builds are better, just more obvious than the ultra-DPS builds. I ultimately hope that 1-tank skill in a group with someone doing 1-support works as smoothly as one player doing two heavy tanking skills. But I understand these tweaks are going slow to clearly measure the effect of each change.

[Glythe]

Isn’t that argument like… Cows can’t hold agro without Deadly Emission? Like, they have it. They can use it.

Deadly Emission isn't a toggle for half damage.

Is the problem that 2 tank skills are the super efficient and 1 tank skill is less so? Or just Bulwark makes high damage difficult?

I’m going to assume you play hammer/shield and the issue is damage loss. It’s just a good example of a high damage skill + shield. You want the best balance of DPS and tankiness.

Actually I played shield with BC - as a combat class. It's a good example of two mid/low damage abilities. Before this patch your only option with shield was to build with flat mitigation. As previously mentioned you could basically build to be almost unkillable vs enemies 20-30 levels below you but you have maybe 5-10% more ability to survive vs even level elite content. As defensive class overall shield felt like a complete joke.

Compared to cow, unarmed and staff -shield was the worst option overall for tanking except in the case of elemental damage (because you had an immunity button). Looking at feedback it seems this patch did not change that arrangement.

Playing shield as your only defensive class now still feels like a joke compared to other currently available options. Does that make for fun play with shield as a single defensive class?

I understand the feeling that a specific combo feels like wasted potential, but you don’t need Bulwark on all the time. With a 3-sec refresh, you can toggle it on and off for the big hits as you hold out for your epic attacks.

The mentality you are suggesting with Bulwark would be fine if it were a side bar skill that could be toggled with no loss of primary skills.

What bothers me about the damage aspect of shield is that somewhat recently it got some pretty nice buffs to damage that changed shield from a very low damage skill to a medium damage skill. All that seems pretty moot with the bulwark changes because you will be dealing half damage if you want % mitigation. Furthermore I disagree that you should want to turn bulwark on and off vs difficult content. My objection with bulwark largely is that other tanking classes get a lot more out of it than shield as a whole. So how about I propose a way for other tank classes to still get great use out of bulwark while making shield get more proportionately when not attached to another tank class?

What if Bulwark were changed so that physical classes other than shield dealt half physical damage while bulwark is active?

This would give the option for someone to build shield as a solo defensive class able to use bulwark and have 27% damage mitigation with full damage. If that's too much maybe shield could deal 75% damage for 27% mitigation. Obviously taunt modifiers would shift to reflect % changes.

I would also suggest that with such a change that fire magic skills also be set for half damage (lore reasons could be something like fighting mostly behind your shield makes fire magic much harder to aim properly). Balance wise this would prevent someone from slapping on bulwark with one or two mods and suddenly being 27% more defensive with almost no investment and dealing the same high damage with Fire Magic.


The danger I see with bulwark being set to function as it does currently is that you are effectively deleting a lot of potential playstyles of any shield + NOT TANK (NOT FIRE MAGIC) option. Maybe it is a moot point that almost nobody plays them but I feel like there should always be more of a reason for people to play a class rather than less. Imagine if someone were trying to decide between druid/staff or druid shield. Should the deciding factor be : I can play druid/staff and be a half tank with full damage or I can play druid/shield and be half tank with half damage?


As far as the ease of being able to toggle on/off is concerned it will be a bigger issue when fights are longer. If you are built without much regard to a single epic attack it becomes something you can't really afford to toggle. Even if you could perfectly toggle the ability on/off It will never be "fun" to do so (there is no built in mechanic that reads using an attack after being hit with X number of attacks while in bulwark gives the next attack a % damage boost). I question adding new game elements that add new complication while reduce fun levels; generally they make a bad addition to any game.

I would much rather see Bulwark be a skill you toggle on when you are fighting and not something you fumble with to toggle on/off during a fight. Maybe Bulwark could be changed to be one of those powers you toggle once per hour? Have the movement modifier only activate if you are "flagged" for combat.

He wants shield to have a specific role, specific feel and universally believes people should not feel like they are soloing next to each other. I think the slow+lower damage aspect of bulwark reflects. You should have a bad time in a group of 3 vs elite content.

All of the mentions of unarmed are kind of empty because you are arguing about a skill that you know will change, but you are entirely in the dark about HOW it will change.

When you choose between skills in PG the choices are sometimes very simple; allow me to give you an example of what picking between certain classes can feel like. Which would you rather prefer?

A) Ice cream that comes with a mandatory punch in the face
B) the same ice cream cone at an increased cost of 3 cents

You are right in that it would be very hard to guess how the game will be changed. But at the same time I can look back and compare how some skills have been since before I started playing. There should never be an example of one skill being so much better than the other as the ice cream example - and yet that happens quite often as a reflection of what is in the game right now (which might be skewed as a limited function of low total areas/mob types), how the game has been for some time and how the game is likely to be before things get changed in the next year. On that last note some people have built for current content knowing it was something of a broken loop that might only last a year or less.


You seemed confused about my position but I hope what I meant is now clear. In short the bulwark changes will likely discourage people from playing shield as a single defensive class with respect to other options. Has anyone besides me given feedback about shield as a single defensive class? I think fire/shield will be ok with the changes so this would really be a case of : shield but not another tanking skill and shield not with fire magic (I have a toon that plays that setup too - who actually was using vigorous defense).


As for combat feeling like it isn't three people soloing next to each other - you probably need to completely rethink combat to make that happen. We could have a very long thread about that one sentence.

[Mbaums]

If my napkin math is correct, a modded Mycotoxin Formula drops from ~1,295 to ~1,001 with Bulwark on.
*late edit for accuracy, it appears Bulwarks debuff effects plus damage and percent but not base, so the numbers should be ~1512 to ~905.

[Glythe]

If my napkin math is correct, a modded Mycotoxin Formula drops from ~1,295 to ~1,001 with Bulwark on.

How will resistances play into that?
What if you hit a 4th target?
How does does the damage difference change a battle considering you will be losing front end damage?
What about all the other direct damage skills that hit for less damage?
What if the mobs get double health; will that difference be felt twice against three targets?
How does the total damage chain available change (when you regularly have 3/4 of your AoE powers available - one of which does only armor damage even though acid in other places deals health damage)?


It isn't about my specific build. I question the decision to have largely speaking similar outcomes for single class defense - one of which comes with a damage penalty and the other does not.

The bulwark change makes shield a good choice if you are going to play two defensive classes. For single defensive class play shield is a less attractive option because it has been fixed in this manner.

Is shield not already an unpopular class? I see it used commonly with fire/shield for combat. It gets used for tanking but the main use was running speed (speaking of which shield lost a movement speed power as a result of that change).

[ChompyNibblers]

Oh, one more thought: I think maybe in the next update I'm going to boost Elite and Boss health by 100% for a while. This is not indicative of where the final stats will be, but it may help players explore the new systems and give feedback on where to go next. (And it's easy to implement in a way that can be reverted.)

I'm a fan of this, although it might have an unintended effect of pushing people away from elite & dungeon content if the loot tables don't change.

Also I'm especially curious to see what happens in the damage reflect fights, I bet players will need to be a lot more cautious about how much damage they're dealing to enemies with reflect.

Regarding elites/dungeons - I would much rather prefer daily dungeon content be not easily solo-able by higher level players but the daily rewards increased and there being some more flexibility in the daily (e.g., your party can pick which dungeon daily they do out of a pool or the party could choose a random one).

I don't like that the Qatik's dailies are solo-able because it promotes solo play since it's faster to just go solo the dungeon instead of waiting for a group. While it may not be bad for some players at all times now, if the game population grows, especially in a specific timezone (Say U.S.) we could see population density issues. In most regions there's probably a 3-4 hour window of prime time during the week day that most players would play in the late afternoons (basing this on my experience in US lifestyle and culture). Even with 10 minutes between boss spawns, a dungeon in a single server game would be able to handle 24 dungeon runs in 4 hours. 24*5 = ~120 players at most. While 120 sounds like a lot, boss spawn congestion (or player congestion in the dungeon even) would become a problem sooner than this and create a disincentive to do this content. If players can solo dungeons, the congestion problem can become a lot worse - the disincentive issue would exponentiated by there being fewer groups of people forming who can clear the dungeon content (since strong players would be the ones soloing) thus increasing wait times and increasing likelihoods that groups fail or have a difficult dungeon experience.

[Glythe]

I'm not sure exactly how it works but someone told me that they played a game where you can do daily missions for lower tier content that temporarily de-levels you. If you are max level but go back to level 10 or 30 content then the game scales you back to limit your power.

Another way to approach the issue would be for the mission giver to give you a debuff. If you have this mission and you are in that zone then your mods and power levels are reduced in effectiveness to be equal to the content. You would likely be more powerful than the guy next to you but the content immediately becomes relevant.

Is it a common issue that level 80 characters are monopolizing spawns in lower tier zones? Or is the issue more of : it is abusive for someone to finish a casino mission much faster than they should be able to because they outleveled the content.

If higher level characters find it more profitable to just shred lower tier areas then maybe: as level content increases drop quality and/or quantity increase.

I don't like that the Qatik's dailies are solo-able because it promotes solo play since it's faster to just go solo the dungeon instead of waiting for a group.

The Casino missions overall were a huge boon to the game as it brought people together to do dungeon missions. But there is a disconnect with the amount of wealth that the daily mission gives you compared to regular adventuring (this was more relevant before the treasure bug got fixed because elites were giving more loot than they were supposed to). In part this is what makes it appealing to do the mission in the first place.

When you compare Dark Chapel to Wolf Cave you can see the opposite side of the spectrum as everyone benefits by the fact that high level players effectively solo the content for lower level players. Sometimes you can see people desperately trying to get DC going for 6 hours while a WC group can get filled in 6 seconds. Just about anyone with a strong build at level 60 with good but not perfect gear can solo WC. It is my experience that people who solo DC tend to be very powerful level 70-80 builds with almost entirely crafted gear sets. I had two characters able to solo DC but I stopped bothering with it for the most part after the loot fix. The only time I would go was with people I knew in a guild group (with a character that could use an xp boost, or I was boosting them).

I make the suggestion that rewards for some of the other content is not yet tuned appropriately. When the WC is mostly empty you can finish the mission in about 6-8 minutes and get most of the chests. You get the direct pay out, 6-8k in items to sell and 5 coins. Imagine for a moment if there were a level 70 team mission that a level 80 character could solo.

All things being equal the higher tier mission needs to be worth more in order for me to want to do that instead of doing WC first. Why? Because I have 4 characters that can solo the WC. If someone could solo a level 70 mission it would require really good food, flowers and who knows what else in terms of expendable items (which cuts into profit). There is also the risk that you die and lose time - not something that would happen in the WC. If I can get say 20k for 20 minutes of work with level 50 content then I would hope that a level 70 mission would jump up in value as a function of scale relative to level 70 unlocks.