Server War PvP Feedback

Prometheus

Hi all,

this is the official thread for PvP feedback during the Server War playtest! What's OP? What's UP? What changes would you like to see?

Our aim is to release a patch or two as early as possible the test with updated balancing to be able to perfect it before the end of the test.

Let your voice be heard! Cheers!

azrog

Tbh can't say things are op till the Talent Tree is not complete. Balancing without all factor seems hard.

Control Spells need to be rework/balance or counterable. Something like a immune some second after getting affected by one sound a good option for avoid chain CC.

Pvp data from this test are not huge due to the lack of player. MJ pvp Event with reward are needed at this point.

Mius

Please add a immunity timer/buff after a cc effect is gone so the same effect can't be applied again for like 7-8 seconds.. doesn't feel good to be root-locked and silenced the whole time

Rife

I agree that we do need cc immunity.

Especially when people can chain lock you with different kind of ccs as well. Like stun -> Silence -> Confuse -> Stun ....

Basically make's the combat feel not engaging at all

spoletta

Something is indeed needed, but I believe that we have to act on 2 different points.

First of all, the issue at low orbs does not really exist. The problem is in the scaling of CC duration with orbs. Right now almost all scaling of skills with orbs is set to go from 1 to 2.
This could be ok with damage scaling (pending more data), but we are seeing that with CC duration it is definitely not good. I would prefer a 1 to 1.5.

Secondarily, chain CC is definitely an issue. This is bad in 1v1 but also makes the 1vX miserable.
As such I would propose the following:
The current CC duration is given by the following formula
Duration = Fort/will/eva / (1250 + Accuracy) * base duration

Duration can never be lower than 20% of base duration.

What I would propose it to change this formula as follows:
Duration = Fort/will/eva / (1250 + Accuracy - Stubbornness) * base duration

The stubbornness modifier is given by the "Stubborn" status effect, which is inflicted by many cc skills. The stubborn status effect lasts 10 seconds and applies a modifier of 1000 to Stubbornness, which decreases by 100 every second. This way, another CC inflicted on the target, will get a reduced duration based on how long ago it suffered another CC. The CC will still get at least 20% duration though, since the formula will in any case limit the reduction effect.

The stubbornness effect should be applied on most CC skills, and indicated with a tag in the description "Causes stubborn: Yes/No".

This is a way to limit the amount of CC in a short time span on the same target, without penalizing specific builds.
If we simply give a set amount of immunity duration after a CC, we devalue the contributions of evasion, willpower, fortitude and accuracy to a fight.

OlivePit

@Rife
CC immunity is in with Enrage.
But having it be the only one, and with such high restrictions, is rough.

Battlemage armor might be too good.
Ranger armor feels quite underwhelming in pvp. - not enough defenses to stick around and not enough offense (the slowly stacking crit chance) to play the same game with all the burst going on.

Roccandil

For me, the CC makes PvP uninteresting (anything that stops players from playing lowers the content value). The problem with CC is compounded by no notifications over your toon; so things just stop working, you can't see what happened, and it feels like the game broke.

The most fun I had was a short 1v1v1 engagement where there was minimal CC, and we were all running around shooting at each other.

Anyhow, this test has convinced me I want nothing to do with PvP, and I'm additionally disappointed, because I know that gear balance will be driven by PvP, not PvE.

Kai44

Assassin Set again needs tweaking/changing: You get one-shot in Warlock Armor with 4k health. Literally Shadowstep one-shot.
Relocate should only be usable with Light Armor. It gives the Battlemage Armor users too much mobility.
I second everything above about CC, fights are decided who lands the first cc and then gets bursted. Damage in general is very high, Medium Armor feels like paper. Fights are more fun the longer they are, most are currently decided in 10 Seconds.
More Cleanse/CC Protection Spells and Short-time Damage reduction spells should make pvp more fun, skillful and engaging.

Tor

CC overtuned, confusion and snare is too strong.

Nerf damage of insect swarm, mana burn of shackles, increase cd on epicenter.

Reduce damage of shadowstep/invis dmg bonus.

add cc removal for especially for melee.

tune down pvp damage overall.

just remove confusion its so shit

Roccandil

@Tor said in Server War PvP Feedback:

tune down pvp damage overall.

This is a good point. I remember in Albion, the longer it took to do damage in PvP, the more interesting it was. One-shot mechanics that remove you from the combat also remove the content.

I might add that CC plus huge burst damage may be good for ganking, but are bad for PvP war.

awrysight

This has been a problem for a long time, but if you're asking what's underpowered, that'd be one handed melee weapons without spell channeling. They are so weak that there's no reason to ever use them, besides not having access to a better option.

Snark

these THREE things has to happen before we can progress further in PvP testing;

'shadow step' ability, assasins cannot 1-hit KO people by themselves, hard cap the damage to 60-80% of max hitpoints.
Immunity to root status when one root expires ( also so that people cannot renew the root while its active). duration for this immunity is somewhere inbetween 1 to 5seconds.
'insect swarm' ability, temporary disable it or remove the damage dealing part of it ( leaving it to do confusion for x seconds only).

Prometheus

Thanks for all the feedback! It's clear that the 2 main generic issues are high CC durations and lack of mitigation and overall excessively high damage. Then there's an issue with a few OP abilities, either in general (like Insect Swarm) or when used in a specific build (like Shadow Step).

That's a good point to start from, but please give us more!

@azrog said in Server War PvP Feedback:

Tbh can't say things are op till the Talent Tree is not complete. Balancing without all factor seems hard.

What's missing from the tree is not so relevant. Alchemy's potions will be relevant but getting the base right won't hurt

rainbowmesa

I agree there is far too much damage going around, not just Shadow Step. I think the game in general needs to differentiate numbers dealt to players and to NPCs. Can't just straight up nerf everything because it's big on PvP. The average PvP player will have about 2.4k health, we could balance spells around that number.
But 2.4k health's nothing in PvE numbers. So you nerf an ability for it being too damaging on PvP and you might just hurt it in PvE.

Also if you really nerf the Crit damage bonus, I think the damage should be redistributed around a little bit. Right now, the 600% crit damage is the only thing going for it, and it only really works because of Shadow Step's stealth bonus - doing a Lethal Strike from stealth, something a LOT more difficult to do and more memory intensive than a single button press teleport, will deal about half of the damage. It doesn't reward the risk.
Were it the other way around, Shadow Dash would have a use for engage and reposition instead of just running away.

Oh and also it replacing Shadow Walk's duration is very annoying. Given how people hate assassins atm I guess it's deserved, but I'd like some words on it.

Junkie

from a discussion i had with @Dark_Praetor.

Dark Praetor
Fractured deleted stealth archers, but didnt return crit to Guided Shot. Still dont have any summoner abilities in it, especially with the totem spacing nerf.
in it, especially with the totem spacing nerf.

Junkie
Bro all of that was busted

Dark Praetor
then nerf the auto crit on stealth or something

Dark Praetor
dont remove the ability completely

Dark Praetor
The gear isnt the issue or max level, i physically cant roam invisible as an archer and shoot people, I can not summon monsters, skeletons, elementals or anything as pets to fight.

Junkie
You can roam invisible and stab people...

Dark Praetor
I dont want to use a dagger, I want to play as a stealthy archer or necro or summoner, those playstyles have been removed or dont exist yet

Junkie
Yeah. Necro needs to happen. There's a good chink pf people that like that. I can agree with that
Stealth archer was broken. I could see it come back in a way, but not the way it was

Dark Praetor
They could even make it that you can only auto attack from stealth or something

Dark Praetor
I've seen the posts and chat about stealth daggers and the teleport ability being longer range than detection range
I really dont think the issue is the weapon used while stealth, its people just dont like any stealth ganking when they are pveing

Junkie
Well everyone started with max school rank or whatever it is as well, so everything is kinda the cracked version of what it would be to progress through it

Dark Praetor
I really dont think the issue is the weapon used while stealth, its people just dont like any stealth ganking when they are pveing

Junkie
As a pve player, i agree
Id rather see you comin and have half a chance

Dark Praetor
if thats the consensus then remove stealth or make detection screen-wide but require investment
I just want build viability back, not lettings archers go invisi was just a super lazy answer. Theres even a work around where I weapon swap and can still sort of do it.

OlivePit

I am putting here a consideration i posted elsewhere.
there are also just too many CC abilities for -spell channeling- users, they can easily pick a whole preset of nothing but CC.
The increased restrictions of abilities with weapon type worked really well for melee and I think something similar could be done with mages.
There would need to be more variations than just 'mage staff' for this to work however. Things like cloth fist wraps, one handed wands, orbs, etc...
Then you could have different schools of magic limited to different mage weapons. That way you would have to swap between mage weapons to get access to more than a few CC abilities from a few schools. This would decrease the cherry picked combos and chains.
By having these extra mage weapons you can further restrict the mage abilities you can pick from when making a skill build and thus avoid the situation where an entire skill build is CC.

Snark

Stuff to change;

skill changes/nerfs; 'insect swarm' - 'mind strike' - 'split earth' - 'crystal shackles(increase cooldown)'
straight up remove possibility to enchant physical or magical reflection into your gear
add some sort of root immunity for god's sake (to battle constant rerooting)
give us more base health (increase skill 'second wind' cooldown)

spoletta

Insect swarm actually requires a fix not a nerf. The damage you are seeing isn't the correct one.

Rife

@Snark said in Server War PvP Feedback:

Stuff to change;

skill changes/nerfs; 'insect swarm' - 'mind strike' - 'split earth' - 'crystal shackles(increase cooldown)'

straight up remove possibility to enchant physical or magical reflection into your gear

add some sort of root immunity for god's sake (to battle constant rerooting)

give us more base health (increase skill 'second wind' cooldown)

I agree with 1 -> 3, but not the second part of 4. Second wind is already borderline OP with how much it can heal for CON users.

Tor

@Rife He asked for a higher cd, therefor nerfing second wind