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.



User Tag List

Page 1 of 5 123 ... LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 43
  1. #1
    Senior Member Yaffy's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2018
    Posts
    237
    Mentioned
    18 Post(s)
    Tagged
    1 Thread(s)

    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.

  2. #2
    Senior Member Aionlasting's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2017
    Posts
    199
    Mentioned
    2 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    Great post. I love your suggestions.

    I had some suggestions also.

    1.Give shields and staffs mods that reduce crit damage by a % (this would be predictable).
    2.Give shields and staffs a % chance to block incoming crit damage entirely (this would be more random).
    3. Remove crit damage from non elite and non boss monsters. So non tank players can actually solo, solo content.

    These changes make crit mechanic something that requires a tank and makes tanks mandatory for elite/monster content because tank equipment (whether in staff or shield form) would have inate abilities to reduce or negate entirely the crit damage while leaving solo mobs and therefor non group content unaffected so that non group content doesn't require a tank.

  3. #3
    Senior Member Yaffy's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2018
    Posts
    237
    Mentioned
    18 Post(s)
    Tagged
    1 Thread(s)
    Quote Originally Posted by Aionlasting View Post
    Great post. I love your suggestions.

    I had some suggestions also.

    1.Give shields and staffs mods that reduce crit damage by a % (this would be predictable).
    2.Give shields and staffs a % chance to block incoming crit damage entirely (this would be more random).
    3. Remove crit damage from non elite and non boss monsters. So non tank players can actually solo, solo content.

    These changes make crit mechanic something that requires a tank and makes tanks mandatory for elite/monster content because tank equipment (whether in staff or shield form) would have inate abilities to reduce or negate entirely the crit damage while leaving solo mobs and therefor non group content unaffected so that non group content doesn't require a tank.
    Although your idea of creating bonuses to reduce critical damage is neat, it shouldn't just be limited to shields and staves since other tank skills need some love too! Unless if you just mean a bonus from holding the equipment, which I think would be a good way to create some diversity between different staves/shields. Just keep in mind that reducing crit damage is significantly less helpful early game than late game because crit rate is based on enemy level, so something dedicated to reducing crit should only be for high level content.
    Last edited by Yaffy; 12-13-2018 at 09:21 PM.

  4. #4
    Banned spider91301's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2017
    Posts
    571
    Mentioned
    7 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    Quote Originally Posted by Yaffy View Post
    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.
    Nice ideas I hope to be implemented one day in the next 1-5 years but at this point not holding my breath its probably at the end of the priority list if they cared about it majorly they would have done something by now.

    Lol 1k armor 700 health will not save you from crit spam your essentially screwed if your rng/luck sucks when taking damage

  5. #5
    Senior Member Niph's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2016
    Posts
    433
    Mentioned
    16 Post(s)
    Tagged
    1 Thread(s)
    I suspect that, in the case of % mitigation, the intent is to start low and cap early, for example start at 1%, reach 10% at mid level and stay at 10% throughout. The fixed mitigation can be adjusted later in the development stage, when the exact percentage is set in stone and they can be compared. It would be a waste of time to tune it before.

    So your post makes sense, but it might be way too early to balance this particular feature of the game.

  6. #6
    Banned spider91301's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2017
    Posts
    571
    Mentioned
    7 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    Quote Originally Posted by Niph View Post
    I suspect that, in the case of % mitigation, the intent is to start low and cap early, for example start at 1%, reach 10% at mid level and stay at 10% throughout. The fixed mitigation can be adjusted later in the development stage, when the exact percentage is set in stone and they can be compared. It would be a waste of time to tune it before.

    So your post makes sense, but it might be way too early to balance this particular feature of the game.
    Exactly why I said 1-5 years coding is hard and they've got other stuff on their plate

  7. #7
    Senior Member Yaffy's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2018
    Posts
    237
    Mentioned
    18 Post(s)
    Tagged
    1 Thread(s)
    Quote Originally Posted by Niph View Post
    I suspect that, in the case of % mitigation, the intent is to start low and cap early, for example start at 1%, reach 10% at mid level and stay at 10% throughout. The fixed mitigation can be adjusted later in the development stage, when the exact percentage is set in stone and they can be compared. It would be a waste of time to tune it before.

    So your post makes sense, but it might be way too early to balance this particular feature of the game.
    The issue is that it shouldn't start low, it needs to start higher. A 1% damage decrease does so little early game that it might as well not exist since enemies are hitting for so little damage anyways. If anything a better idea would be to start at 10% and cap at 10%. Also it's important to consider passive bonuses versus active bonuses as well. Some great examples of % based mitigation are much stronger, like Staff's deflective spin giving 40% reduction to all attacks and Cow's front kick going up to 72%, but being limited by cool downs.

    Also, while I understand trying to balance flat damage reduction with % based, I think the flat damage reduction given at end game is so blatantly low that I can't see even doubling its values being bad. I could understand an issue with changing the flat mitigation given from armor since that's universal to all players, but mods or abilities dedicated to lowering flat damage are so bad I don't even think tanks should waste slots on them unless they have no other choice. The only exception is thick skin just because it's an hour long buff that can be given to a whole party. Unless if the devs decide to lower the scaling of enemy damage then I don't see anything wrong with increasing the current amount and then fine tuning it later.

  8. #8
    Senior Member INXS's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2017
    Posts
    265
    Mentioned
    9 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    As always thank you Yaffy for you dedication in the mechanics of the games, your findings always an eye opener and much appreciated.

  9. #9
    Senior Member Mbaums's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2017
    Posts
    180
    Mentioned
    5 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    With some skill revamps on the horizon this can be a very influential thread. I think you might be looking at the two mitigation systems factually correctly yet incorrectly in practice. The two mods don’t exist in a vacuum and you should look at everything the skill SET has to offer vs a single mod. The crit change is a challenge that I think players learned to work around. A significant change that I’ve seen is, people don’t pull ~5 mobs to AoE down anymore. The crit change is, I think, a change to the old AoE play style. Anyway, the post is about % reduction vs # mitigation and I think you need to look at it at the skill level.

    The two tank builds I have ran are unarmed and psych: jp0insg9 and I’m working on staff/shield: jpocoj80. It looks like I’ve missed the animal-tanks and necro/ice magic tanks and so I am going to ignore them.
    Overall, I am actually liking staff/shield more. I’ve handled repops on my group and even mis-positioned my group in ridiculously stupid places and lived (non stop hallway agro related). The unarmed build can solo mants, the zone in of GK and I can probably still do Pask. But in groups, I’m picking staff/shield. It works because of the average duration of a fight and blocking stance / elemental ward work out well. When I pull 4 things with my old build, it was an ‘oh shit’ situation. The new build isn’t much of an issue. If every dungeon fight was designed to be 1 mob vs my group and 2 minutes long, I might be saying something else.

    Back to the topic, am I getting much of anything from all the +mitigation? The shield setup has ~860 armor, assuming I use a thick armor potion that’s 43 mitigation vs my unarmed tank with ~620 armor ->31 mitigation. 12 mitigation difference on top of…. Shield team +12, main/off mods+12, we’re looking at +36 mitigation difference. That’s a lot and not much at the same time. But the staff/shield feels so much more comfortable. Is it that I’m mitigating more upfront, so when the spike/crit happens I end up higher in HP?

    I don’t think that’s it. I guess I want to argue that: physical damage is cheap. The most awful mobs in GK are the troopers because they strictly do fire damage and the infiltrators because they just hit so hard + poison. I’m not totally relying on staff to do that. Shield has strong passives and I see ‘you’ve avoided death’ spam all the time. I suspect the avoid death message is actually a hit absorb vs the 1 blow was actually going to kill me. Side note, I hope that isn’t a bug because it’s not easy to get the ability, but it's great.

    Unarmed’s % miti vs physical is strong because it cannot totally negate anything. The # mitigation builds have negate sprinkled in, and that's really the magic right there. UA has holes vs fire and the NPC diversity with damage resistances / dealt makes a dungeon difficult.

    I hope I don’t come off as bias, but I do not like the idea of people pulling like this is an action RPG. But I do like what this thread brings up. As levels increase, the increase in damage bump is not shared by +mitigation (see shield team’s grants all allies mitigation per tier mod, it’s crazy that it’s linear). Additionally, the negate abilities could maybe use a decrease in reuse per rank. But they’re so strong, so I don’t know if you can touch them. I look at this problem and think, well, what’s missing is a place where mitigation matters-- NPCs with a 40 point damage shield, or a rage debuff that make the tank take ~150 damage every attack.

    Another note—before priest was added into the game, Eric talked about restoring the tank role in GK Here
    Whatever happens, I just like the 'situational best' type of systems.

  10. #10
    Senior Member Yaffy's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2018
    Posts
    237
    Mentioned
    18 Post(s)
    Tagged
    1 Thread(s)
    Quote Originally Posted by Mbaums View Post
    With some skill revamps on the horizon this can be a very influential thread. I think you might be looking at the two mitigation systems factually correctly yet incorrectly in practice. The two mods don’t exist in a vacuum and you should look at everything the skill SET has to offer vs a single mod.
    That's definitely true, but I'm not trying to say shield is strictly worse than Unarmed because one mod is worse. In fact my favorite tanking build is actually unarmed/shield because shield offers a lot of utility and covers up unarmed's weaknesses. I'm arguing that things that offer flat damage mitigation such as armor mods are significantly weaker than things that give percentage based mitigation at late game and they should be changed so they can still be helpful.

    If you want to look at the mods in a different way, then you can consider a situation where the +6 flat damage is better than the +18% physical mitigation. If you use the seething citizen as an example, then you would need 150 flat damage reduction before the +6 flat damage reduction becomes better than the +18% physical mitigation, which is an absurdly huge amount and will get even more ridiculous if you consider stronger elite or boss mobs. I think that alone proves that even outside of a vacuum that flat damage mitigation bonuses are too low in comparison to % based ones.

    The skills I'm complaining about mostly are those who rely on flat damage mitigation and have to rely on other skills to give % based in order to be a good tanking skill. Shield is actually one of these skills so even though it can be a good support skill, it relies on something like staff or unarmed in order to fit in an appropriate tanking build because it doesn't have enough good mitigation by itself like a lot of other "Tanking" skills, which limits the amount of good tanking sets that can be made.
    Last edited by Yaffy; 12-14-2018 at 08:04 PM.



Thread Footer

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •