Balance discussion

[darkgod]

For zones I like using the fire talents and chain lightning but that's mostly because I dont usualy survive too long
Thunderstorm is mighty fun too!

[registeringislame]

Yeah, the purpose of this thread isn't to be all "DG WE'RE ALREADY THREE BETA VERSIONS IN AND THIS ISN'T PERFECT YET WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU," it's to help figure out what works and what doesn't so when he does get around to balancing he'll have everyone's feedback ready to go.

I think he was referring to the inevitable cries of "Oh noes! Not an X nerf, Y is so OP and imba!"

[Baker]

Just throwing this out there, because I haven't been able to figure it out yet: Is there any way to position AOE spells independently from enemies? I enjoy using Corrosive Vapour right now, because you can use it strategically to block corridors for a few rounds. However, because I can't seem to place the spell at a location that doesn't have an enemy, the utility is kind of limited.

Am I just missing something, or is this by design?

[Antagonist]

shift+dir to target a tile instead of an enemy.

[greycat]

Shift-Numpad is also vitally important for archers and slingers, as it allows you to adjust the flight path of your shot to hit monsters that are partially obscured.

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If you just hit the hotkey for Shoot, you won't be able to hit the snake in this position, because the flight path will try to pass through the wall.

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But... if you Shift-Numpad-4 to move the target designator a few squares to the west, eventually the flight path will pass through the snake but not through the corner's solid wall tile.

It might take a few tries to find a path that hits the monster without hitting a wall or tree, but there are really very few tiles you can't successfully shoot, if you can actually see them.

The same tricks apply to Archmage spells such as Manathrust, Lightning, etc. Particularly if you want to hit more than one enemy with a beam spell (or an Archer's piercing arrow talent), you want to find a path that runs through all of them, rather than just one. This may entail targeting a square that's quite a way beyond the final monster.

[Antagonist]

Hmm, I wonder if theres some way to automate this. aka a line algorithm that avoids obstacles, but wont go around corners as such.

I'm thinking maybe raycasting each of the 4 corners and center of the source and target till you find a straight line.

Automation will make it easier, and allow the CPU to take advantage of this trick

Also, this allows one to introduce the concept of cover. If not all of the target's 5 points is reachable from any of your 5 points, the target counts as 'obscured' and has a negative to hit.

EDIT: This doesn't have to be two-way. Solong as a corner of you can hit the target, you're not obstructed.
In the image above, the player around the corner is in cover, the mob in the passageway is wide open.

[Baker]

Thanks, that makes things easier.

[Final Master]

I'm finding that overall game balance is very much improved over even the last half dozen betas.

[marvalis]

A few idea's about balance:

Overall, reduce damage and increase hp. Now it is either you stun and one shot the enemy, or the enemy stuns (freeze, w/e) you and you die in one or two turns of action.

About freezing/stuns. Right now, its all about using freeze or stun to win a fight. This can be avoided by reducing any combination of the following:
* A succesfull freeze/stun/w.e. gives resistance for x turns and immunity for y turns (for example, an enemy frozen is immune for duration x2 and 50% resistant for duration x3, a 4 turn freeze results in 8 turns of immunity and 12 turns of resistance after applying). The minimun immunity for every effect should be duration+1, meaning you get at least one turn unfrozen.
* Reduce the overall duration of all stuns
* Give the armor talents resistance to stuns/freeze and increase monsters resistance of those effects.
* Double the players hp (lol).

Most pvp games have some way to prevent chainstun/freeze, just look at WoW for example. Since DG wants to keep monsters and players abilities simular, I think its fair to make game rules simular to pvp games.
Diminishing returns on wow wiki: http://www.wowwiki.com/Diminishing_returns

[edge2054]

I feel the biggest issue with stuns right now are water jet (honestly this reward doesn't fit anyway, everything else is a generic ability and water jet obviously is not, that aside do we need to rebalance every class in the game around a ranged stun?) and that bosses can have multiple stuns (often with short cooldowns).

Ranged classes aside, that later bit makes stun immunity (not resistance) practically mandatory for the player very early in the game. There's at least two early game bosses, one of them mandatory, that can freeze you and then stun you.

However, free action potions make this somewhat of a non-issue now so I honestly don't know that it needs to be fixed. But if it does need to be fixed I'd take freeze away from any boss that already has a stun. One cooldown six melee stun is plenty in my opinion, especially for a boss that has rush, high damage manathrusts, or a weapon that procs freeze

[darkgod]

I have no idea which boss you speak about

As for water jet I have removed it

[Final Master]

Freeze
Flame Shock
Shield Pummel
Stunning Blow
Water Jet
Ice Storm
Duel Hit (the rogue/shadow blade one)
Deadly strike (the long duration rogue/shadow blade one)

And sort of
Pinning Shot

These are, to my best recollection the only stuns that I'm aware of that we have access to in the game.

I'm going to try to categorize them a bit though.

Fighter/Sun Paladin
Shield Pummel

Berserker/Arcane Blade
Stunning Blow

Archer/Slinger
Pinning Shot

Rogue/Shadow Blade
Duel Hit and Deadly Strike

Archmage
Freeze, Flame Shock and Ice Storm

And I have no idea as to what class can normally start with water jet...

So... to me it looks like what *would* be the least resilient classes have more stuns/freezes than the more resilient classes. This kind of makes sense however it's not as bad as you might think. Sure archmages are easy mode right now but everything will really start to balance out soon when more equipment is added, especially some new ego tags. It looks like most utility magic will be available in some form to everyone (if you find it) via equipment that everything will probably be capable of wearing, along with some of the new generic talent trees I have started to see being discussed.

The damage to hp ratio is not nearly as bad as it was in the first four or so betas. Beta3 if I remember correctly if you got hit before level 6-10 (depending on race/class combination) you were probably dead regardless of if you were stunned or frozen because damage was well near or over 2x your likely hp. Hell, anyone remember the 100+ traps of amon sul in the first few betas? You were rather lucky to get to the shade at all if you didn't have trap detection even if you killed all mobs that dared cross your path. That's been reduced drastically and is much much better. The maze was even worse with traps averaging well over 150 damage and many were lined up in succession. You know, burning-poison-stun all next to each other so that even a little rat would wipe you out before you knew it.

Sure, I know that if you are playing a fragile class with no or little detection you are going to die very often when you would otherwise be perfectly fine, but that's kind of the balance point when talking about rogues/shadow blades/arcane blades. You have options that other classes simply don't and won't have, and you have to play very differently. Berserkers are probably the weirdest class to me and I'll simply not get one to the master ever (unless I'm able to play a troll berserker... heh). It's not entirely because the class lacks the necessary survival abilities as most other classes have, but it's because I cannot play a huge melee hitter that can't stay in melee. I play fighters and sun paladins for melee. I love being able to sit there and laugh that the enemy cannot hurt me. I also play shadowblades a lot because I absolutely love being able to decide where I am and where I am going no matter what. I'll never get a wyrmic to go because I simply have no idea how to play them. Doesn't mean that they are bad or unbalanced against the other classes, just that I can't figure them out.

I've started to play my fighters and sun paladins without investing anything into shield pummel (though fighters cannot help it) and only a single mage (out of probably a few hundred) has ever taken freeze, and that wasn't until she was in her 30's. Not because she had to to survive or to be a better character, it was simply because I didn't have anywhere else to put class points into. I hardly used it even though I did get it to level 5. Sure it caused frozen and did a ton of damage but I didn't need it. I was simply capable of doing whatever I wanted and had no need to freeze anything ever. And I haven't ever had a mage put any points into the fire school nor have I ever gotten ice storm. Mages simply do not need stuns. Some classes do such as rogues but that's because they have multiple talents that run off of it. The stun isn't the nice part, the extra crit chance, and what not IS.

[yufra]

The Anorithil also have a stun talent.

[Feanor.81]

Duel Hit (the rogue/shadow blade one)
Deadly strike (the long duration rogue/shadow blade one)

Dual Strike and Dirty Fighting, respectively;
oh, and archers too have access to Dirty Fighting if they want (yes, you can actually stun your foes by hitting then with your bow/sling). Plus, they have Scatter Shot (AoE stun)

[Final Master]

Wow... then I'd say Archers/Slingers have the best end of the stun/freeze part of the game. Melee and ranged stuns, and some of them the really good ones at that. Doesn't mean they are any better or worse than any other class simply because of that.