[Testserver] Feedback on patch 18.7.0.20(21) changes

[lainbr]

I updated the first post in this thread of a resume of all feedback and sugestion given until end of page 2. Tell me if I got anything wrong (I hope not).

[JustinSane4]

Great work Lainbr!

Ran into Le-Quack on Test Live and he helpfully pointed out/demonstrated a significant imbalance on test live currently. Trox MPs are OP. The problem is that the recharge of Sacrificial Shielding lines up perfectly with Mongo Rage. This works great defensively, but is broken when Trox MPs can use it to completely negate the intended downside of MR. Rather than having greatly reduced defenses, a Kur'Ush/SoZ Trox MP can drop a 20k alpha with MR's +1,500 AO under the safety of 100% DtP. Alternatively, it can be used with a shield/Tigress swap to launch a pretty good alpha there too and switch back to dual SoZ before SS runs out.

Dual SoZ is balanced, but Dual SoZ to Tigress swap or, for Trox MPs, SoZ to 1hb/MR, both under cover of Sacrifical Shielding, is not balanced. My personal suggestion to correct this is to increase the equip time of SoZ to 20 seconds and add Sacrificial Shielding to a new nano-line with Mongo Rage (https://tl.aoitems.com/item/252489/), with MR having the higher stack order. This would balance SoZ swaps in PvP and prevent SS being used to completely avoid the down side to MR.

Thank you to Le-Quack for explaining/demonstrating this.

Also, I think that if in Michizure's judgment SoZ needs to be nerfed for the rest of our offensive and defensive toolset to be brought up to par, I'm increasingly confident that the way to do so is to keep it dual-wieldable, but reduce the AAD. For instance, earlier in this thread it was suggested that SoZ be changed to left hand only and that MPs should get a +500 to all evades buff. That would render Le-Quack's Trox 1hb/SoZ build terribly OP while nerfing dual SoZ builds, which are actually balanced.

[Le-Quack]

Great work Lainbr!

Ran into Le-Quack on Test Live and he helpfully pointed out/demonstrated a significant imbalance on test live currently. Trox MPs are OP. The problem is that the recharge of Sacrificial Shielding lines up perfectly with Mongo Rage. This works great defensively, but is broken when Trox MPs can use it to completely negate the intended downside of MR. Rather than having greatly reduced defenses, a Kur'Ush/SoZ Trox MP can drop a 20k alpha with MR's +1,500 AO under the safety of 100% DtP. Alternatively, it can be used with a shield/Tigress swap to launch a pretty good alpha there too and switch back to dual SoZ before SS runs out.

Dual SoZ is balanced, but Dual SoZ to Tigress swap or, for Trox MPs, SoZ to 1hb/MR, both under cover of Sacrifical Shielding, is not balanced. My personal suggestion to correct this is to increase the equip time of SoZ to 20 seconds and add Sacrificial Shielding to a new nano-line with Mongo Rage (https://tl.aoitems.com/item/252489/), with MR having the higher stack order. This would balance SoZ swaps in PvP and prevent SS being used to completely avoid the down side to MR.

Thank you to Le-Quack for explaining/demonstrating this.

Also, I think that if in Michizure's judgment SoZ needs to be nerfed for the rest of our offensive and defensive toolset to be brought up to par, I'm increasingly confident that the way to do so is to keep it dual-wieldable, but reduce the AAD. For instance, earlier in this thread it was suggested that SoZ be changed to left hand only and that MPs should get a +500 to all evades buff. That would render Le-Quack's Trox 1hb/SoZ build terribly OP while nerfing dual SoZ builds, which are actually balanced.

TRAITOR. :P
But should dmg to pet also block nm absorb then, if we gonna start block specific advantages to a single tool like mr?
You cant turn dual wield zset into your advantage, 2x shield of szet cant die on test, you cant even die with 1x shield.
The trade i have suggested by nerf it to right or left hand only and let you use a creation wep or whatever on the other and
get 500 evades still let a shield user get good defence 4500+ and let bow/pistol mp whatever land on 3300-3400 evades wich still makes em perkable by 90% of the professions.
A non shield mp has no defence, go all out on us for 10 seconds and force dmg to pet.. wait 20 seconds and BAM!! We DEAD!!!
I think the suggestion i have benefits all wich is right, you focus 100% on shield, i dont, i focus on shield and wep setups.
I simply wont suggest something that only benefit just bow/pistol or only shield.
Since i started discuss i came up with a solution wich benefits both in the best way i could think off.

[JustinSane4]

I sincerely apologize if that was meant to be confidential - didn't know we were "off the record", especially as there were other players in range of vicinity chat.

However, I think you're a bit confused as to what I'm saying. In my perfect MP world, if I were game director, our attack pet would be a lot better, we'd have more healing, we'd have a good evade buff (probably +250 duck/dodge/evade), and SoZ would get nerfed. Depending on how good the pet is and how much healing we got, SoZ would end up with anywhere from 350 to 815 AAD rather than the 910 it has now. Those changes would help every single MP without overpowering any one build. But SoZ would still be dual-wieldable. Having an all-defense option weapon option is a cool, unique feature of the profession. Trade offs like that are good, they lead to build diversity and make the game more interesting. Your suggestion of making the current SoZ right hand only and giving MPs a 500 duck/dodge/evade buff would make some builds too strong if we also got the improvements we need to our pets.

In other words, you think SoZ MPs should have excellent defense with one shield and not be able to use two. I think they should have excellent defense with two and only good defense with one.

I completely agree with you that non-shield builds need help with the whole "not dying" thing. Personally I'd like to see it in the form of better healing, as that is more versatile, but a big evade buff could work too. All we're really arguing about there is HOW to nerf SoZ if we were to get such an evade buff - not whether to nerf it.

All MPs, whether 1 SoZ, 2 SoZ or 0 SoZ need better damage output, but that's a different topic .

[Le-Quack]

I sincerely apologize if that was meant to be confidential - didn't know we were "off the record", especially as there were other players in range of vicinity chat.

However, I think you're a bit confused as to what I'm saying. In my perfect MP world, if I were game director, our attack pet would be a lot better, we'd have more healing, we'd have a good evade buff (probably +250 duck/dodge/evade), and SoZ would get nerfed. Depending on how good the pet is and how much healing we got, SoZ would end up with anywhere from 350 to 815 AAD rather than the 910 it has now. Those changes would help every single MP without overpowering any one build. But SoZ would still be dual-wieldable. Having an all-defense option weapon option is a cool, unique feature of the profession. Trade offs like that are good, they lead to build diversity and make the game more interesting. Your suggestion of making the current SoZ right hand only and giving MPs a 500 duck/dodge/evade buff would make some builds too strong if we also got the improvements we need to our pets.

In other words, you think SoZ MPs should have excellent defense with one shield and not be able to use two. I think they should have excellent defense with two and only good defense with one.

I completely agree with you that non-shield builds need help with the whole "not dying" thing. Personally I'd like to see it in the form of better healing, as that is more versatile, but a big evade buff could work too. All we're really arguing about there is HOW to nerf SoZ if we were to get such an evade buff - not whether to nerf it.

All MPs, whether 1 SoZ, 2 SoZ or 0 SoZ need better damage output, but that's a different topic .

Was just a joke when i caled you traitor
Anyways even on live server now with 250 aad on ss we are perked and norm hit and capped to much when blockers runs off.

You know the julian staff that you mentiond last night? like the 300 aao buff if you have a shield/staff equiped you can have the buff running on pet, if you take off shield or staff it goes away.
What if we had a 500 ish evade buff given to mps? but shield has a code like the aao buff on pet that turns off the evade buff if you equip a shield?
As faar as i know the code for this option already excist, so this could be implemented?

This possible solution if can work wont touch your shield or let you gain more while non shield gains better defence at the same time.

[Cratertina]

Good, reading these proposals It seems perfectlly alligned with my wishes for MP, so good job Professional representative.

[JustinSane4]

Thanks Cratertina.

As far as how much healing we should have, IMHO non-Zazen MAs are a good benchmark. On test live, they're at 34,356 healing per minute, assuming no healing efficiency modifier from gear (I'd initially miscalculated this, as I did not notice that their team heals were on a separate line cool down from their single target heals, so I had dramatically under-rated their healing). That's a bit more than double our 16,732.8 healing per minute. So, more concretely, I'd like to see our healing exactly double - halve the recharge time on spirit of blessing (or double the heal), give our heal pets a 127% healing efficiency buff (in addition to the 15% Michi gave us in 18.7.0.20 and the 12% from construct empowerment). That'd put us just slightly behind non-Zazen MAs in healing and at roughly 1/2 the healing/minute of Advs and Agents in FP Doc, 3/4 the healing of traders using health drain nukes, and 4/5 the healing of Enforcers. That feels about right.

With double the healing, SoZ should probably be around 500 AAD rather than 910.

Add a good attack pet to that, nerf MR/SS alphas and SoZ to Tigress swaps, and we're in pretty good shape. (Though being able to more effectively heal our pets would be nice. Even if our heal pet's healing doubled, engineers would still be more than 3x better at healing their pets. Chicken Bot is gonna be close to immortal).

Anyway, that's just one idea .

[nanoforcer]

Sounds like something we could try, lobby that to michi so he patches that to test and we can... test

[drakio]

I have a bad feeling, 18.7 was deisgned to be the patch that resurrects mps, and instead wont change much :/

[JustinSane4]

I have a bad feeling, 18.7 was deisgned to be the patch that resurrects mps, and instead wont change much :/

I'm a lot less defeatist on that. 18.7.0.20-18.7.0.22 have sort of been Michizure's rough draft I'm guessing. I'm optimistic that by the time 18.7 comes to Live, we'll be in better shape, closer to balanced than we've been historically.

[JustinSane4]

From Psikie:

"
***I have no issue with the pvp crowd wanting better bow for pvp. The problem I have is that you want better bow at the expense of the pvm crowd by nerfing SoZ. Which I would honestly bet there are less than 25 active end game MP's in all of AO of that 25 maybe 5 are seriously active in pvp. Dual SoZ is a pvm setup as noted earlier it' still not as good as fix/advy defensively. I'd also say sol/eng/crat are also better defensively between ams/coon-blinds/init debuffs. So please leave SoZ alone it is mutually exclusive of bow setups. MP's are not a combat class, please stop trying to get them on equal footing with combat classes. There are probably 100's of MP's that will never do any pvp, or are just buff monkeys anyway. Those of us that are dedicated MP mains we all know our limitations as MP's we never have been uber killing machines we debuff and find ways to kill over time.

I would seriously recommend moving toward pet buffs instead of weapon support. The problem with weapon support for pvp is our abysmal AR. That will never change with blue weapon skills. No matter that we get full access to 1hb perks/ranger perks or any other perks. Other than brief trox-MR we can not seriously ever hope to perk any evade prof, that my friends is a fact that will never change imo. Pvm awesome extra DD to help move us up the DD charts, for pvp you just got a few more buttons that grey out with no effect and a lot of spam, "Target resisted such and such" LOL.

Here are some brain stormed ideas seperately or all together these help ALL MP's regardless of weapon setup.

Idea 1:
I seriously request our efforts should be focused on small incremental pet buffing ideas that would help ALL mp's no matter setup. The pet MR buff is a great end game pvp idea. It could be a channel rage end perk or scaling nano. Channel rage could get an additional 2-3 actions, with 2min cool downs?

focused rage lvl 4 action pet cleanse- remove all hostile debuffs (roots/snare/calms/init)
harnessed rage lvl 5 action like +800 AR +500 dmg type
explosive rage lvl 10 action +1500 AR +800 dmg type

Idea 2:
I think at very worse our attack pet should be 80% as effective as the 2 attack pets of the engi/crat as base, with buffs/perks to take it to 90%, 100%, 110%, 120%, and finally 150%!!!

This could come from flat AR boosts and dmg boosts from channel rage perkline to pets or as a scaling nano based on pet lvl.

Idea 3:
I am not a number cruncher but for comparison I would suggest, fully perked soothing spirit heal pet = 75% doc heals at comparable lvl. Example a level 50 heal pet should be comparable to lvl 50 doc. That could be from heal reactivity buff on pet, heal % buff on pet, or flat out double healing amount on pet.

Or, and this might not be possible but with pet scaling, use MP's nano skills to determine what doc heal could be cast and chop it to 75% viola.


Idea 4:
The attack pet MA buff being changed to AAO was a perfect example, although I think that number should be closer to 500 at end game instead of 120.


Idea 5:
Give MP's access to Kyudo buff line is no different than advy/keep/enf all sharing that fast attack buff line imo. (I think it was fast attack)

Idea 6:
Please for the love of all that is holy find a way to match MP dmg types to poison or give us some poison nuke line.

Idea 7:
Increase the creation proc dmg to at least equal an additional hit.

Idea 8:
Along with the snare proc on attack pet, why not give it a poison DoT proc also?

Idea 9:
To put at ease the idea of hot swap tigress/Zset just increase the equip time on tigress by 5s or 10s and viola no more trox-MR concern.

Idea 10:
The customary request to make Rhiwen 215 pet and release new 220 Herk pet...

Although I would not be opposed to adding upgraded Urn pet either. Could be Xan urn purchased from Yuttos like turn-spirit pouches or dropped from Arid Rift or Neretva Canyons 201 lvl req nodrop unique. So players would have to return to one of those rarely used Xan play fields to get this uber battle station pet with unholy NR 10 lol. "

JustinSane again: As fun as some of that sounds, if our heal pet healed for 1000% of what it does now, we still wouldn't be at 75% of endgame doc healing. Also, I'm not sure it'd be balanced and I'm completely sure it's not realistic for us to have an attack pet that's 3x as powerful as Engie or Crat pets. On the other hand, wtb: Nano Crystal: (Summon Anansi's Right Hand). Man, even if they nerfed it a month later, how cool would a pet like that be?

[lufa1982]

Er, yeah. You can tell that someone has never PvPed on a pet profession in this game, if they think "pet MR" is a "great endgame PvP idea". Or in fact, never PvPed at all, anywhere ever.

MR is so effective, because it provides a mean of delivering huge amount of burst damage. As opposed to pet MR, which will provide huge amount of nothing when the target presses 'W' on the keyboard.

And that's setting aside the fact that both Crats and Engineers have literally spend years raging about how much of a nightmare it is having to deal with massive amount short term buffs, and yet apparently it would be just amazing for MPs.

I didn't really read the rest of it because I facepalmed so hard I can no longer see the screen.

[jooo]

"Idea 5:
Give MP's access to Kyudo buff line is no different than advy/keep/enf all sharing that fast attack buff line imo. (I think it was fast attack)"

-Yes!

"Idea 8:
Along with the snare proc on attack pet, why not give it a poison DoT proc also?"

-Makes very much sense, especially with Touch of Poison. The pet has poison fists, Touch of Poison nano should have some nasty poison dot proc included in it, that works both in pvp and pvm. Seems very obvious and wondering why its not implemented already?!

Cool ideas.

[Baby]

I didn't really read the rest of it because I facepalmed so hard I can no longer see the screen.

Well, you made me read it.
But I mostly agree.
_____________________

It's over the top. Short dmg buffs/perkbuffs are something we're trying to get away from and you're bringing it back. Seriously, no. Being infight, busy with maybe debuffing, I most certainly do not want to keep a constant eye on my pets/perks to use all those actions on top. Too much of a hassle. Pets should be buffed every ~2hrs with maybe one single action to temporary rage. That's it.

75% of a doc? Could you be any more crazy? That would mean Morti (as compared to a 220 Doc) would heal 8000-10000 (approx.). Only off BI, nothing else included.

No the buff should not be changed to 500 AAO. The pet should get a base increase of 500 AAO. And the 120 come on top.

Idea 6:
Please for the love of all that is holy find a way to match MP dmg types to poison or give us some poison nuke line.

Please for the love of all that is holy, stop stealing ideas.

Also, Psikie, please stop using words you can't spell. It's "voilà", not a violin.

"Idea 8:
Along with the snare proc on attack pet, why not give it a poison DoT proc also?"

-Makes very much sense, especially with Touch of Poison. The pet has poison fists, Touch of Poison nano should have some nasty poison dot proc included in it, that works both in pvp and pvm. Seems very obvious and wondering why its not implemented already?!

I like this. ToP should indeed get a Dmg Proc on top.

[Burgly]

From Psikie:

"
***I have no issue with the pvp crowd wanting better bow for pvp. The problem I have is that you want better bow at the expense of the pvm crowd by nerfing SoZ. Which I would honestly bet there are less than 25 active end game MP's in all of AO of that 25 maybe 5 are seriously active in pvp. Dual SoZ is a pvm setup as noted earlier it' still not as good as fix/advy defensively. I'd also say sol/eng/crat are also better defensively between ams/coon-blinds/init debuffs. So please leave SoZ alone it is mutually exclusive of bow setups. MP's are not a combat class, please stop trying to get them on equal footing with combat classes. There are probably 100's of MP's that will never do any pvp, or are just buff monkeys anyway. Those of us that are dedicated MP mains we all know our limitations as MP's we never have been uber killing machines we debuff and find ways to kill over time.

I would seriously recommend moving toward pet buffs instead of weapon support.

Very few of us want anymore bow support, what we're asking for is def and what we are afraid of is that if SoZ stays the way it is FC gonna be to scared to buff us anymore because it would be too OP in shield setup and we get another Zset incident where we get an awesome def shield and are forgotten for another 7 years.

[nanoforcer]

I'm going to quote myself for what i feel is fair for us with weapon skills in mind:

One suggestion that comes to mind for mp's right on top of my head is that they should get as good multi.melee support on symbs as they currently have for multi.ranged as it seems like the choices of weapons will be predominant to 1hb/pistols and bow in the future and being forced to wear a full set of ai armor (almost anyhow) just to be able to get 1200 mm to swap shield with weapons is not cool imo

[lainbr]

Fully updated first page with the sugestions untill this post here :3

[JustinSane4]

Ran into an MP on testlive who had a really good suggestion. It's a better way to double our heals. Rather than my suggestion of halving the recharge of Spirit of Blessing to 20 seconds and giving our heal pet a 127% healing efficiency bonus to double our healing (putting it just behind non-Zazen MAs), change only Spirit of Blessing. If Spirit of Blessing had a 20 second recharge and healed for 6,000 rather than 1,300, the math works out to where that increases healing per minute almost exactly as much as my idea does - that is, it would double our healing. The second part of the suggestion is to change Spirit of Blessing to heal all pets as well as to heal team.

This suggestion has a bunch of advantages over mine.

1.

It would mean that our heal pet would account for 45% of our healing rather than 88%, so that even if our heal pet was killed or disabled, we would not be defenseless like we are now.

2.

It balances our healing better. Heal pets function like a HOT. This would function like a heal - that is, it would give us a bit of burst healing. This would be particularly helpful for surviving PvP alphas, especially for Bow MPs (who, due to the need to equip for bow and AS skill, often end up with low health). Since Spirit of Blessing is a team heal, it would make us both more attractive to teams (a 6k team heal is enough to help when the team gets hit with the big AOE damage many boss mobs can do) and make our healing more similar to non-Zazen MAs (who have good team heal nanos).

3.

It would improve our ability to heal our pets, bringing it closer to what Engineers can now do. A 6k heal on all pets every 20 seconds would be a weaker version of Engineers' new 10% of max health heal of all pets every 10 seconds, but would still be very helpful to MPs. We couldn't have 80k pet healing/minute like Engineers or anything, but it'd be closer and would make a difference for us.

4.

It would make heal efficiency a useful stat for us. This could increase set-up diversity. For instance, full E-Jathos, Icy Shoulderpad of the Powerful Mind and 5/5 Cloak of the Reanimated Healer would add a total of 12% healing efficiency. With this idea, that would increase our healing/minute by 2,160/minute - enough to matter - while with my old suggestion to double our healing, it would only increase our healing by 468 minute (not really enough to matter).

5.

Unlike my suggestion this would not devalue healing efficiency buffs for our heal pets. If my old idea were implemented, heal pets would spawn with a +142% healing efficiency bonus. This would really decrease the relative value of other healing efficiency bonuses such as Construct Empowerment, Will of the Reanimated Healer and Ken Fi. This suggestion avoids that problem.

As with my old suggestion to double our healing, SoZ would need to be nerfed for it to be balanced, and I would again suggest reducing the AAD from 910 to 500 while retaining the ability to dual-wield it.

I absolutely love this idea.

[nanoforcer]

Good idea, bump for it

[lainbr]

It is in the "has been asked for aeons" list, I supose. So, obviously a great idea.