[Feedback] Rock, paper, stack evasion... and a list of other things

maze

This is such a mixture of thoughts and balance is so hard to do. I've tested and pvp'ed with nearly every possible build even tried early game builds and late game builds fully enchanted, none enchanted, types of points progression in the talent tree (30,40,60).
These are some of my conclusions to how things should be balanced a bit, but I welcome people to poke holes into why or why not things to be change or add onto ideas of how to possibly balance something.

One problem with balancing in this game is~ it's by no means 1 v 1 game. Balance should be around group pvp, and I sadly did not find much group pvp this test; BUT without a doubt there is things that need balance still.

Currently I find Archer beats mage, mage beats Warrior and warrior beats Archers with 100% correct builds.
Assassin's, MeleeDPS and unarmed beat nobody.
when I say 100% correct builds, I mean currently there is a few builds that are king.
Evasion stacking is always needed and unlocking the talent to dodge projectiles.
Evasion is not the problem, lack of enchants and lack of skills are.

Melee (light weapons + medium weapons) ~~~
Melee Feels bad mainly for the fact that most melee attacks miss the enemy when they just walking away.
Either telegraphs need to be better used for combat or click combat needs to hit when the attack is click on the enemy and your guy goes to hit them. (telegraphs seem more in line with the play style)
Larger hit boxes need to be given to most melee attacks.

Evasion and damage ~~~
the current trend for armors is to stack evasion; This is not a bad thing. Enchanting your gear with full evasion + fox necklace you can hit 1000 evasion. 90ACC vs 1000EVA is 75% dodge rate.
What ends up happening is Warriors can't hit each other and Archers have a MUCH harder time fighting tanks.
Anyone not stacking evasion gets blasted away by high damage.
I don't see any proper balance for this currently.....
BUT I DO see a balance for enchanting to make heavy armors unable to stack so much evasion.
https://forum.fracturedmmo.com/topic/13207/enchanting-system-changes-for-balance

ARCHERS ~~~
For archers are currently a little OP, it's mainly because anything other then a tank gets blasted away by them.
They do much more damage then Melee DPS. It would be better to dial the damage down a little + give them more of a supporting role. Ideally (to me) archers should be quicker movespeed, low damage but able attack the backline putting pressure on healers and casters while also being the primary player who can kill people who are trying to run away.

Nerfs they could use.

-Do less damage the closer they are to the target.
Archer would have to have a bit of distance to get full damage. if an archer hits an enemy at less then 3m it will deal that much less damage. (1.5m = 50%, 1m = 25%, 1cm=1%, ect)

-Friendlyfire - This seems like a pain in the ass to deal with but would help with a few fights, also there should be more archer type skills that would allow for rain arrow type of shooting, fire arrow's and other hazard type skills.

-Add arrow damage to arrows and lower bow damage (wood, stone, bone, metal); this will reduce no effort archers and give them more of a cost to use them at full build. (Stone = 50% less damage, bone 40%, metal 0%)

Melee light ~~~
Unarmed and light weapon users have a full list of skills they can use, but the damage from those skills are so low compared to heavy 2h great sword using concussion strike and archers.
Melee light users using strike skills need their effects/wounds to last longer.
Strike skills use up a lot of skills slots, for the little damage they do & miss a heck of a lot.

Unarmed ~~~
Unarmed needs to have a better clear defined use. Their talent is very useless (5% chance to bash). it would be better if unarmed had 5% chance to bash & 30% chance to cripple. atm Unarmed skills are most light armor skills, they do very little damage. I would like to see Unarmed develop into different paths.

Ostaff

@maze

Good summary there. I think it's fine for unarmed to deal less damage but I think they should have better movement speed than an archer, and be able to "cripple" their opponent when up close with skills such as "slow", "disarm", "trip" and "tackle" that are tied into their actual skills.

I totally agree with your archer statement... they should deal less damage when up close with a bow and have faster movement than a warrior.

Assassin's would be useful if their stealth actually had better impact on PvP. I think their stealth and detection skills are just crippled at the moment. To me assassin's should be the one shot killers and not the current archers... though if they do not kill.. they are pretty much at a heavy disadvantage.

PeachMcD

Thanks so much for taking the time to explore all these possibilities AND articulate your experiences regarding them. Huge service to the devs and the community. KUDOS @maze
Nominating you for the @Nekrage constructive contribution award.

Razvan

@maze said in [Feedback] Rock, paper, stack evasion... and a list of other things:

One problem with balancing in this game is~ it's by no means 1 v 1 game. Balance should be around group pvp,

Disagree. Balance should be done around all kinds of pvp that exist in the game (1v1, 5v5, small scale pvp, zvz). We have hundreds of planned abilities, so there should be viable builds for everything.

All in all, it's too early to talk about balance at this point, but as long as bandages are not removed from pvp, playing an assassin (stealth+burst damage on long cooldowns) is pointless as long as they can't one-combo people.

maze

@Razvan
The problem was not that there should or should not be 1 v 1. The Game is meant to be a group pvp game. fixing the current skills to be 1 v 1 (melee's not doing any damage or mages doing less damage) could be problematic.

It's not early to talk about balance. We've been balancing for the last 2 test.
We saw problems with a few builds. We saw that heavy weapons could be super DPS for a bit,
Assassins' were able to infinitely stun, and bandages were insane that they could outheal anything.

I do think to balance some classes, the game will require other skills to help balance skills out.
But we don't want to get into a "it's required to use this skill in all fights" sorta deal.
IE: a skill that drops a bubble down that reduces damage by 50%.

.

spoletta

Archers do feel quite powerful at the moment. Probably too much.

They are not even countered by warriors. It's just that in this test warriors were equipped with extremely advanced equipment which stops physical damage almost completely AND archers had their damage halved by wrong collisions AND the archer talent for bypassing armors isn't working AND mark of death isn't working.

I shudder to think what archers could do without all those handicaps.

Acid arrows is surely too good at the moment. It should be more tied to the Int/Dex build. The corrosion effect shouldn't go on every arrow, but should be a probability based on INT. Right now the difference between a DEX build and an INT build using that skill is minimal.

Other concerns I have for PvP:

Silence is too strong of an effect. It shouldn't shut down all schools of skills, and the power word silence lasts too long.
As I said in another thread, poison is too binary. You are immune or you are death.
Not enough effects have friendly fire. Friendly fire is the counter to zergs, and no one likes those. More effects should have friendly fire. Including arrows, yes.
Minor heal on high INT heals really too much. The cooldown should be less dependent on INT.
Consumables are fine if they occupy a slot in the skill bar. If you can use them from the inventory, it makes it a game of have/have not.