Strategy v Firefighting

[DePreach]

I am having some real trouble getting my head around the whole rebalancing discussion. Not just coz I'm pretty vague at the best of times.

It seems to me that the whole rebalancing effort is flawed. I need to see some kind of strategy to fit all the perk changes into context. As it stands we are being asked to comment on perk changes within the framework of existing mechanics.

Is the perk change the rebalancing in its totality? We hear comments and rumours of specials fixes and changes to evades, there is a real need to rebalance not just perks but stat allocation, weapon output and special output, nano effects, armour and just about everything in game.

In my opinion the game breakers had very little to do with perks, perks are the profession specific fine tuning that should occur after we know how well balanced everything is once the bigger changes are implemented.

So after much rambling... Is there any intention to rebalance the current items database? If so entirely from the bottom up or just the items where the whine is large such as GTH, Triples, CH, AS, NR ....

I feel any discussion until we know the remit of the rebalancing is pointless.

Timescales would be good too, too many people are sat on a non optimum setup for fear of spending days twinking only to find a month down the line the goal posts shifted. This uncertainty is half the reason people are going elsewhere until they 'see what happens' and is doing the current subscriber base no favours. If the timescale is a month away people will be happy to wait, if we are talking 6-12 months people will be happy twinking now and waiting for an IPR later.

[ragerayden]

I feel any discussion until we know the remit of the rebalancing is pointless.

Yup.

[lamehorse]

Would be nice to know the FC teams full intentions for sure, I personally find myself reading some topics and wondering if I should voice a particular opinion(would said opinion be relevant or even in the right thread?).Just an example here: heal nerfs, is this just nano heals,perk heals or both+Heal Delta?.WTB an FC post stating the ultimate aims of the balancing changes.

[Xkeeper]

keepers were once a great strategist profession on pvp...

you could pop devotional armor at the start of an alpha chain to halve dmg, you could have a set of perks lined up for every distict combat situations, beeing against a high alpha dmg such as a shade or to prevail against the most enduring prof such as enf... you could make a set of perks to survive during a soldier tms so all you needed to do at the end was alpha to win...

We could tire up an adventurer enough to time a killer alpha kill on a battle that could last up to 15+ minutes....

There was a time even a MA was perkable (atleast by me) if using the correct timming on Insigh + debuffs from HM..

Now... nothing like that works, Soldiers kills faster, have tons of extra reflect from items... they pretty much kill keepers without even using tms...

MA´s/shades/advs reached a point of beeing unperkable (i could perk an adv over dof and limber if i landed HM debuffs first)

Enforcers got way too much HP.. its like a Keeper vs Keeper but one of the keepers have over 50K HP and a few healings... And since they perk us easily... well.. enfs win most of the time, pretty much depends on equip also.

Traders are debuff whores... nothing else, a keeper have no strategy over a good equiped trader, we once had...

agents got CH, our alpha dont kill agents, agents alpha keel keepers...

so on...

strategy is gone.. atleast for keepers

[Ixiaan]

It seems to me that the whole rebalancing effort is flawed. I need to see some kind of strategy to fit all the perk changes into context. As it stands we are being asked to comment on perk changes within the framework of existing mechanics.

Absolutely correct, I have been meaning to comment on that myself.

Commenting on whether or not we agree with perk changes is useless when we do not know what other changes to game mechanics are planned.

[Xtremtech]

I'd agree that without having the complete picture, it's very difficult to say whether a given change is overpowered or not and that comparitive balance without the full story is nigh on impossible. But that doesn't mean that feedback given on the changes that have been published, is useless.

Firstly, there is useful feedback to be given on the concrete changes themselves. For example, the new MP perkline "Trance" has received many comments that, alongside the other perk changes, there is no compelling argument that would make the MPs choose that perk line above other perklines. As it stands at present, it wouldn't make sense to invest the points in that line rather than other lines.

Secondly, there is conditional feedback that can be given. Again using the Trance perkline as an example, the MP community has suggested that the +Nanodamage multipliers would perhaps make a more compelling contribution if they also affected perk damage. At present, this is not the case - leaving the +nanodamage multipliers only concretely affecting the MP's nukes and with the perk action being of a very short duration and MP nukes being low damage, this is unlikely to make the new perks useful ones.

Thirdly, on a general level it's possible to look at the overall changes as published for a profession and see a certain design line that is being taken and comment upon that. So for MPs, there seems to be a clear line to try to make nanoskills a more important attacking statistic than weapon AR. This is something that many players find to be a good direction in which to go... but there are also worries that this may lead to Shield of Zset MPs becoming the de facto best MP setup. A situation that many MPs aren't entirely happy with.

What is most difficult at present is to be able to assess the comparitive strength of one profession against another. Comparitive profession balance is something that is extremely difficult when the entire package is as yet unknown. But even there, there are some elements upon which we know we can comment.

For example, for any pet profession, we know that the issues of kiting and the ease with which pets are debuffed must be addressed if pet user's toolsets are to be balanced. Attack pets should be the primary source of damage for pet professions in order to keep them on a par with weapon specialist professions. The ability of pet professions to cast and enhance their pets is directly balanced against the ability of weapon specialists to equip and enhance their weapon damage.

Key to achieving that kind of balance will be the reduction of the ability for opponents to kite away from pet damage - and improvements to the defences of pets to ensure that they are not so easily debuffed into mediocrity. Some changes, such as the AS and runspeed changes show some promise in this area - but certainly the defences of pets have not been addressed much if at all in the so far published changes, so we can give the feedback that something must come from any further changes to address such a key balance issue.

All in all, yes it's difficult to gain a full understanding of how comparitive balance across professions will be until more information has been released and until we can test the actual impact of some of the already announced changes... but there is a great deal of constructive and beneficial feedback that can be given at this time, that moves the whole balance process forward.

X

[TheMekon]

I am afraid that I have to take issue with "Attack pets should be the primary source of damage for pet professions in order to keep them on a par with weapon specialist professions"

I was always taught, and I'm sure it can be found on many of the profession forums, that with few exceptions, the pets are expected to be about 40% of the overall damage of a profession (when you take into account weapon choice/nukes etc). Not to mention, that in one way or another, pet professions have some of the best defences in-game (and yes I know there are issues with defense, but there are many other profs that would love to have the defence of the shield of zset, or engie blockers, or crats bueracratic shuffle.)

[Xtremtech]

It has been a fact of life for many years now, particularly at higher levels, that the proportion of damage that pets do has been 50% or less. But this is not how it should be. What we've seen happen in PvP over the years, has been that weapon damage (particularly AS and AR based perks) has represented most of pet professions PvP damage due to the limitations of pets.

That leads to a situation, where pet professions are left trying to keep up with weapon specialists, which of course they never can because their skills, buffs etc don't allow them to. They've been forced into this, largely because of the failings of the pets. While the pets actually have the AR to work well against players, the owners usually don't and they must sacrifice in other areas to even keep up a low-end AR to try to offset what they lose through their pets being ineffective.

With the limitations on AS that have been put forward and the rebalancing from big specials toward normal hits, pet professions will be even worse off in offence compared to weapon specialists and it will be even more important that the historical weaknesses of pets in PvP are addressed.

X

[Moonbolt]

errr ur looking at it completly wrong.. with the nerfing of AS and specials and perks pets are actually gaining in standing as the main dmg tpe of pet professions and thus are strnghtening the position of the pet profs.

[Xtremtech]

Pets could be much more important in terms of damage for pet professions... but first they need to reach and stay in range of their target - despite pathing issues, synch problems etc and every single crowd control nano and perk landing on them without problem due to their sketchy defences, then they need to not have USB and other debuffs running on them and every trader drain because they're so easy to land them on etc etc. and when they do become a target of another player, their defences vs weaponry need to stand up better.

The AS changes and balancing back toward normal hits could very well be changes that help put pets more in the fore of pet prof toolsets... but unless the core issues of kiting, defences and debuff resistance are sorted, attack pets won't take on the role that they should have in PvP and pet professions will find themselves even weaker on the weapon side (with AS gone and other AR alterations) but without efficient pets available to take the place of specials.

That's a major worry for most pet profs.

X

[DePreach]

From todays post by Kintaii it looks like the rebalancing will look at nanos and such.

Which means there is no point crying about any changes until we see the final specification document and everything can be judged against everything else. The biggest change I think will be with the nanos.

Lets try and approach every change we see, no matter how stupid it appears at this stage, with an open mind. Only the devs have some idea of the context at this stage and we need to trust they have some idea of what they are doing, but also they will be malleable enough to change what won't work.