Race Balance: Skeleton

[Davion Fuxa]

A thread for balancing Skeletons was likely to pop up soon, but personally I wouldn't mind talking about the Skeletons now. For those who haven't, you may want to read the thread started by bpat in relation to balancing Ghouls as there may be some thoughts that may be shared between these threads: Race balance: Ghoul

Alright, first, I like to go in depth when I'm in the Idea Board so hope people can indulge me for a bit while I lay out a bit about Skeletons:

Intrinsics:

Life Rating of 12
Starts with +4 Strength and +3 Dexterity
No Starting Stats in the Negative
Two Good Racial Talents - Bone Armor and Resemble
Immunities to Fear, Poison, and Bleeding
Do not Suffocate

Experience Penalty of 40%
Unable to use Infusion Inscriptions
Cannot eat the Heart of the Sandworm Queen to gain the Harmony Tree
Unable to choose the Wilder Meta-classes
The First Skeleton Racial Talent feels useless

Gameplay:

Playing with Skeletons is quite interesting. A lot of the playstyle employed for Skeletons varies around how their Racial Talents interact with the class picked by the player - for example, the classic Skeleton Archmage build with an emphasis on never-ending Damage Shields, or playing a Skeleton Sun Paladin with a never-ending array of protection or self-healing. Playing classes the emphasis the Dexterity Stat are also good since Bone Armor scales with it - thus a class like Archer or Skirmisher can do decently as well.

Without a doubt, the Racial Talents for Skeletons are one of the biggest draws for playing them. However, due lacking the ability to use Infusion Inscriptions, they are also must-have investments as well. Skeletons are very heavily dependent on investing in their Racials to help them survive - and/or investing in Generic Talents from Escort Categories they may pick up from Escorts they save. This tends to make Skeletons very tight in Generic Point expenditure which can hurt them on certain Generic Talent heavy classes.

Another key element of lacking Infusion Inscriptions is the need to look for other means to negate detrimental effects. While one of their Racial Talents, Resilient Bones, helps out players a lot in mitigating the duration of detrimental effects, it doesn't necessarily help in removing them. This lends to Skeletons being heavily reliant on acquiring Offensive Runes - Heat Beam, Biting Gales, and Acid Wave to give them options in removal detrimental effects; which lends to Skeletons being extremely vulnerable to the Silence effect.

Looking into experience of playing Skeletons, the general theme that seems to be commonly employed with Skeletons is burst gameplay - by this I mean playing the Skeleton in a manner for which enemies are defeated quickly and not drawing fights out over the long term. The lack of Infusions and cooldown on Racial Talents necessitate this due to Skeletons not have a lot of staying power once all their Shielding Runes and Racial Talents are on cooldown.

Suggested Improvements:

So, coming down to it, here is some ideas to improving Skeletons:

Change 1: Drop The Experience Penalty from 40% to 25%, same as Ghouls.

Change 2: Merge Resilient Bones into Skeleton, both improving the first Racial Talent for Skeletons, and opening up another Racial Talent slot for something else.

Change 3: Make a new Racial Talent which is dedicated towards helping Skeletons against Detrimental Effects - specifically those that the player really can't afford to just mitigate.

In regards to Change 3, some ideas to throw out might be for a new Talent:

Runic Cleansing: Idea 1
When using Heat Beam, Biting Gale, Acid Wave, and Lightening Runes you remove an Talent Level number of any detrimental effects. At Talent Level 5 you gain the ability to use Offensive Runes even when Silenced.

Runic Cleansing: Idea 2
When using an Heat Beam, Biting Gale, and Acid Wave Runes you gain temporary immunity to the associated Physical, Mental, or Magical detrimental effects associated with the Rune used for Talent Level turns.

Effects: The general idea of this type of Talent would be to give players the ability to deal with detrimental effects. The first idea is sort of a reactive type of idea while the second idea is more of a pre-planning idea. Of the two ideas, the second Idea is probably a better fit since it goes along well with Bone Armor which is another pre-panning type of Talent.

[StarKeep]

Potential Idea;

Brittle Bones, Passive

Once per (10-5) turns, when you're hit by a debuff lasting longer than 2 turns, the part of your body damaged by the blast shoots off.

The attack has no effect on you, and you instead take 20-5% of your Current Life in damage.

[Atarlost]

I find that preemptive abilities just don't work. They're basically an "experts only" limit that renders entire classes or races unplayable for, well, basically everyone who uses autoexplore or doesn't use detection obsessively. The game shouldn't be balanced towards that kind of play. Not if DG wants people who haven't already been playing for years to pick it up and not put it right back down from frustration.

My solution would be to give them silence immunity, but then I don't think effects that completely screw over some classes while not effecting others should exist at all.

[bpat]

You beat me to making thread . Your ideas are similar to mine though, and in some regards they're better (I didn't even think of merging Skeleton and Resilient Bones). Since you haven't done so, I'll address Bone Armor and Re-Assemble, both of which are not as good as they should be. I feel both have too long cooldowns and cast times for what they do. Here are my proposed changes.

Bone Armor
Current: Creates a shield of bones, absorbing X (scales with Dex and max life) damage. Lasts for 10 turns. Cooldown: 30.
New: Creates a shield of bones, absorbing X (scales with Mag or Dex (whichever is higher) and max life) damage. Lasts for 10 turns. Your shielding techniques make use of your skeletal armor, passively increasing your armor and armor hardiness by 20% of their current values whenever you are affected by any damage shield. Cooldown: 20.
Added a passive component to boost physical defense (because Skeletons are not great at taking melee hits), reduced cooldown, and made it scale with Magic if higher than Dex because Dex only is pretty awkward (same changes as Grace of the Eternals had long ago). Not sure if this is the right way to go about giving Skeletons and answer to melee foes but I couldn't think of anything better. These changes will hopefully distinguish it more from regular Shielding Runes.

Re-Assemble
Current: Re-position some of your bones, healing yourself for X (scales with max life). At level 5, you will gain the ability to completely re-assemble your body should it be destroyed (can only be used once). Cooldown: 41-25.
New: Re-position some of your bones, healing yourself for X (scales with max life). At level 5, you will gain the ability to completely re-assemble your body should it be destroyed (can only be used once). Cooldown: 12. Usage time: instant.
I don't really like the extra life thing but some people do and there's no reason it can't stay. The cooldown's too long and Skeleton really needs burst healing since its Bone Armor isn't instant.

I really like your Runic Cleansing idea and I think it is exactly what Skeleton needs. We need to make this very strong because its the only reliable cleanse the race has, so I think idea 1 is the way to go. Removing five extra effects may seem on the strong side, but to fix that we can give the talent an internal cooldown of 1 per effect removed.

[HousePet]

There seems to be a lot of focus on patching up weaknesses, how about looking at strengths?

[Davion Fuxa]

Potential Idea;

Brittle Bones, Passive

Once per (10-5) turns, when you're hit by a debuff lasting longer than 2 turns, the part of your body damaged by the blast shoots off.

The attack has no effect on you, and you instead take 20-5% of your Current Life in damage.

This would result in the player taking lots and lots of damage. Whenever Sun Infusions would go off, you'd lose 40%-10% of your health for example, and in the case where multiple instances went off at once you'd just get destroyed. You'd need to have some sort of Immunity thrown in this make this work so that after the first instance you don't lose anymore health.

I find that preemptive abilities just don't work. They're basically an "experts only" limit that renders entire classes or races unplayable for, well, basically everyone who uses autoexplore or doesn't use detection obsessively. The game shouldn't be balanced towards that kind of play. Not if DG wants people who haven't already been playing for years to pick it up and not put it right back down from frustration.

My solution would be to give them silence immunity, but then I don't think effects that completely screw over some classes while not effecting others should exist at all.

The Skeleton does start locked, and the unlock is beating the Master. The player is going to have to have some knowledge of thinking about detrimental effects and how to account for them - especially with confusion against the Master. However, a bigger benefit to looking at it is how the player will have to deal with the likes of Armored Skeletons. If all of a sudden Armored Skeletons begin to become to immune to debuffs - say Physical should an Armored Skeleton use Heat Beam, that will likely change how players have to deal with some enemies.

You beat me to making thread . Your ideas are similar to mine though, and in some regards they're better (I didn't even think of merging Skeleton and Resilient Bones). Since you haven't done so, I'll address Bone Armor and Re-Assemble, both of which are not as good as they should be. I feel both have too long cooldowns and cast times for what they do. Here are my proposed changes.

I kind of didn't address the Bone Armor and Re-Assemble talents because technically they are quite powerful when you look at it from the point of view of the player - fighting enemy Undead that make use of those Racial Talents. Bone Giants for example would become incredible durable as the player is forced to deal with an enemy that can both shield itself very well while healing itself somewhat too; and then certain Bone Giants can come back to life once when you kill them. Any changes to Bone Armor or Re-Assemble would need to take this into account.

Also, don't forget how powerful Skeletons in High Peak might be with such a change.

I really like your Runic Cleansing idea and I think it is exactly what Skeleton needs. We need to make this very strong because its the only reliable cleanse the race has, so I think idea 1 is the way to go. Removing five extra effects may seem on the strong side, but to fix that we can give the talent an internal cooldown of 1 per effect removed.

Some more thoughts then perhaps in relation to Runic Cleansing on Skeletons then:

Thought 1 -

Investing in Runic Cleansing might result in enemy Offensive Rune usage removing your debuffs. Maybe investing 1 or 2 Generic Points into the talent would cause you to remove more detrimental effects with your Offensive Rune usage, but investing 3 Generic Points would instead allow you to benefit from enemies removing a debuff effect from you when they use Offensive Runes on you. Then the 4 Generic Point might give you the ability to use Runes even when Silenced and the 5 Generic Point might do something.

Thought 2 -

Instead of solely just removing more detrimental effects, the talent might be reorganized around also improving Offensive Runes. Maybe you could 'cleanse' beneficial effects from enemies with your Offensive Runes. This would need to be balanced against enemy Skeleton usage of Offensive Runes, but its another idea regardless to think about.

There seems to be a lot of focus on patching up weaknesses, how about looking at strengths?

To be honest, I don't think the strengths of Skeletons are really an issue - er, ignoring enemy Skeletons and their strengths from improperly patching up weaknesses. Skeletons have nice strengths already in the form of synergy with a lot of classes and having really good Racials. Their crippling weaknesses are more of an issue, which is why the focus is on patching up those weaknesses.

[HousePet]

That's true, but nobody tries to give Yeeks more life. Yeek is interesting because it is a squishy ball of fur with super speed!
Compensating for everything that it misses out on because it can't use infusions makes the racial difference pretty much cosmetic.

[Davion Fuxa]

No one argues that Yeeks should get more life because the lack of life isn't so crippling to playing them. All four of their Racials are powerful and worth taking in some circumstance, and being the furry ball of speed can do a lot to make up the difference. There is nothing really to hate about Yeeks - other then their challenging play brought on from having less health; but there are other races to play if that is why you hate Yeeks.

Skeletons (and to the same degree Ghouls) however are fairly crippled because of the lack of Infusions. Unlike Yeeks, Skeletons (and Ghouls) don't fully make up the difference for not being able to use Infusions. In regards to Skeletons, while they can protect and restore their health quite well due to Bone Armor and Re-Assemble, detrimental effects hurt them an extreme amount - to the point that Resilient Bones doesn't fully make up enough of a difference.

Keep in mind that even with all the suggested changes posted here, Skeletons still won't benefit from Heroism Infusion or Movement Infusions. Offensive Runes (ignoring Heat Beam Runes) also have longer cooldowns then Wild Infusions; even if the Offensive Rune clears multiple effects at once, it will still be on cooldown for a noticeable amount of time. Ignoring bpats suggestions for lowering the cooldown for Bone Armor and Re-Assemble, the current talent cooldowns are also quite long.

[HousePet]

I put some stats together using the character vault.

Ghoul winners in the past 10 weeks: 32
Ghoul characters in the past 10 weeks: 172 pages.
Win ratio: 0.74%

Skeleton winners in the past 10 weeks: 133
Skeleton characters in the past 10 weeks: 372 pages.
Win ratio: 1.4%

Cornac winners in the past 10 weeks: 10.5 pages.
Cornac characters in the past 10 weeks: about 1850 pages.
Win ratio: 0.57%

Shalore winners in the past 10 weeks: 11.5 pages
Shalore characters in the past 10 weeks: about 1150 pages.
Win ratio: 1%

Thalore winners in the past 10 weeks: 5.5 pages
Thalore characters in the past 10 weeks: about 650 pages.
Win ratio: 0.85%

Yeek winners in the past 10 weeks: 67
Yeek characters in the past 10 weeks: about 350 pages.
Win ratio: 0.77%

Halfling winners in the past 10 weeks: 86
Halfling characters in the past 10 weeks: about 470 pages.
Win ratio: 0.73%

Higher winners in the past 10 weeks: 93
Higher characters in the past 10 weeks: about 600 pages.
Win ratio: 0.62%

Dwarf winners in the past 10 weeks: 125
Dwarf characters in the past 10 weeks: about 800 pages.
Win ratio: 0.63%

Doomelf winners in the past 10 weeks: 20
Doomelf characters in the past 10 weeks: about 75 pages.
Win ratio: 1.01%

Ogre winners in the past 10 weeks: 155
Ogre characters in the past 10 weeks: about 550 pages.
Win ratio: 1.1%

Lich winners in the past 10 weeks: 17
Lich characters in the past 10 weeks: 7 pages.
Win ratio: 9.7%

Mardrop winners: 6
Mardrop characters: 100 pages.
Win ratio: 0.24%

Star Elf winners: 4
Star Elf characters: 67 pages.
Win ratio: 0.24%


From these figures I conclude that Skeleton is OP, all the noobs play Cornac, Lichdom is awesome and my two addon races are both played by noobs and in need of a buff.

[Davion Fuxa]

Stats are biased - Since Skeletons and Ghouls are Unlockable Races, only those who have been to the halfway point of the game have played them. In any case, it isn't about win percentage that you should be looking at, but rather people starting and playing Skeletons; and playing them again in the future.

[HousePet]

Stats are always biased, so are opinions. It doesn't stop them being useful.
There is a reason I posted more than just the win ratio.

Unless you are suggesting people win the game the first time they play a race and never play it again, I don't see how the win ratio is biased, since I have normalised it with the number of characters created.

What is interesting is how many Cornac characters have been created. Are there a lot of guides around suggesting people play Cornacs?

[Davion Fuxa]

New players likely gravitate to playing Cornacs because Humans tend to be the default race in most games - though I assume plenty of people also create Halfling Rogues or Dwarf Beserker/Bulwarks as well for their initial foray into the game. This is likely a result of there being a 'lack of guides' and thus people are falling back on initial fantasy stereotypes.

Anyhow, in regards to the likes of the Locked Races, I assume the only people playing them have already played through at least enough of the game to get them unlocked. As such, the players starting these races won't be complete novices and will likely be more inclined to win. Certain races like Yeeks and Ghouls might not have a higher win percentage then the starter races, but in the case of Yeeks they require a different mindset and style of play to get them through the game; in the case of Ghouls you simply just have a race that has not one by two major malices associated with playing it - having no access to Infusions but also a Global Speed Penalty.

Going even further, Addon Races are likely played by players with a lot of knowledge of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if those looking into Addon races have likely already beaten the game. If an Addon Race is literally no better or worse then a Cornac, Dwarf, or Halfling for example, then I could see it have 10 to 20 times the win ration of what the starter races might have.

As an aside, I mostly mean in regards to getting statistics on players with decent experience as opposed to those who don't. I don't expect someone who has unlocked and played Skeletons to fail to win as much should they then go play one of the Default Races versus playing the Skeleton - and yes I I realize I didn't mention Default Races in my last post, my error.

[HousePet]

Unfortunately I can't think of any way of obtaining more detailed data (without totally hammering DarkGod's server).

Your theory about addon race being played only by people who have experience with the game and therefore having a higher win ratio is not supported by the data about my addon races.

If we only consider locked races; Ghoul, Skeleton, Yeek, Ogre and Doomelf; Skeleton still has an above average Win ratio. And Ghoul and Yeek are below average.

Assuming numerous noobie players swamping the Cornac stats is reasonable, which will contaminate the Win ratio.

Now ignoring the Win data, this also gives us an index for the popularity of different races:
For unlocked races, Cornac is very popular and Halfling is unpopular. Higher and Thalore are a little less popular than others.
For locked races, I'll dig up some unlock statistics to normalise these better...
~19900 unlocks for Skeleton. ~47% play rate.
~19600 unlocks for Ghoul. ~22% play rate.
~19600 unlocks for Yeek. ~45% play rate.
~6800 unlocks for Ogre. ~200% play rate.
and for some reason Ashes unlocks aren't listed so let's ignore Doomelf...
So Ogre is incredibly popular in the last 10 weeks and Ghoul is unpopular.

Overall, Ghoul the stats say that Ghoul is weak and unpopular (although being unpopular could mean people haven't learnt to play it as well as other races), so it is reasonable to buff it or make it more interesting.
Skeleton has above average wins and average (for locked races) popularity, so it doesn't need any changes at the moment. Yeek would be more deserving, but I think the starting zones might be the issue there, and those are being tweaked. Incidently, the Undead starter zone was tweaked, so those Win ratios could be higher in future.

[Davion Fuxa]

I wasn't expecting you to get detailed data, don't feel you need to either, I don't think statistics should be a reason for improving or not improving something.

In regards to Ogre's being popular, I think that is understandable due to the it being a recent addition and being a powerful race. People are more inclined to play it because they may have not played Ogres yet, the Ogre has interesting racial properties, the Ogre itself is extremely strong and powerful run with, and Ogre doesn't have the sort of malices that the other unlocked races have (Squishy Yeek, Non-Infusion use Undead). Compared to other races available, even I'm more inclined to want to play Ogres - and it isn't just because I helped in their creation.

Yeeks likely might see their win percentage increase by a lot for sure if their initial area is improved. If it is a problem of Yeeks getting off their little island then making it easier will likely mean less Yeeks will need to be re-created. Of course though, it could still be that they are super squishy regardless.

In regards to Ghouls, it may be moreso that the race doesn't synergize as well as Skeleton does with certain classes. For Skeletons it is easy to start an Archmage or an Archer and do quite well with them. Ghouls require a bit more thought as to how to make them work with a class.

This all ignoring though that Ghouls have a second major malice of that speed penalty also hampering them and Racial Intrinsics and Talents that don't make up enough of a difference.

[HousePet]

Using real game statistics is more sensible than using the opinion of a few people about how good they think a race is.

I do expect Ogre is overrepresented due to newness.