58 replies to this topic

[Neon]

During the past few weeks myself and a few others have noticed and followed up many imbalances throughout pvp and attributes. We have kept any biased opinions away from the changes that we've seen the best for the following talents, abilities and attributes.

 

Any posts in this thread are advised to be constructive and justified, we're trying to suggest the best possible fixes that will balance pvp fairly. This thread is not based on level, this is purely based on class, attributes and talents.

 

What will be addressed in this thread?

 

- Class balance (melee is not a viable choice for pvp)

- Talent balances

- Ability balances

- Attribute balances to make some attributes a more viable choice (for both pvp and pve situations)

 

Class balance

 

As of now melee is not a viable choice in a pvp game. Despite the only class we've had time to asses, which is assassin this also applies to warriors and templars when looking at their talent trees.

 

This screenshot shows a team that includes Jack (40 mage), Blue (40 Ranger) and Elaes (40 Ranger) against myself (40 assassin), Dan (40 assassin) and Popa (40 Hybrid build, assassin tree)

 

There is no way for melee to approach a ranged class without getting 1-2 shot or perma silenced (which I will go into).

 

Class balance in pvp fix

 

Add a -30% global damage reduction while in the pvp battlegrounds and trappers atoll (if possible make this a pvp only debuff, meaning if you want to attack creatures on trappers this doesn't effect the pve side of combat). This damage reduction should allow melee classes to reach their targets without being 1-2 shot in the process. 

 

Talent balance

 

Jolt

 

Jolt, this ability is the only ranged ability melee classes have whilst being a global ability with talents for each melee class.

 

Warrior - 

Assassin - 

Templar - 

 

As you can see with all 3 screenshots the warriors talent is hugely buffed up compared to the assassin and templar, not only does it require 1 point but the assassin which requires 2 points even lacks an extra second and the extra damage that the warrior has. 

 

Jolt is a very useful and required ability for any melee class in pvp, this is either used for silencing the target when despair isn't available or used as a kill finisher for any class that tries to make a runner.

 

Jolt balances (fix)

 

There are a few different approaches that could be taken here, the ones we/I thought up are either:

 

- Change the assassin and Templar trees to match the warriors talent, so basically have this as a "shared talent". However if this is chosen a player must only be allowed to have 1 jolt talent, otherwise this would be very OP if a player decided to play a hybrid build with 1 point in each jolt.

 

The more versatile and "better" suggestion.

 

- Remove the extra silence duration for assassin and add 50% damage and snares for 1 second (1 point). 100% extra damage and snares for 2 seconds (2 points).

 

Change the templar talent to 5% damage reduction for 5 seconds (1 point) and 10% damage reduction for 10 seconds (2 points), while keeping the current max ranged on it.

 

Change the warrior talent so there is no silence duration increase. Instead add 15% armor reduction for 5 seconds, keep the current extra damage that is applied when the talent is taken.

 

Soulfire (End-tree talent)

 

 

Soulfire's lifesteal would be slightly more useful for an assassin rather than just an "ability" reset if the life steal healed of bleed damage.

Right now in a pve situation an assassin will heal maybe near 1k hp tops when going full out dps with damage modifiers. In a pvp situation you'll pop this ability and get maybe a 100-300hp heal.

Rangers and mages have their distance and heals, warriors and templar have their defense and modifiers, allow assassin their lifesteal.

 

Bleeds take up so much of the assassins damage and assassins rely allot on bleeds to get the Job done, while this would be a little change it would be noticeable.

 

This wouldn't make a significant difference in pve situations. It's not like healing 10% life off a bleeds doing 25-45 damage per second for a limited amount of time will make assassin invisible. 

 

Soulfire fix

 

Allow lifesteal to heal off bleed damage.

 

Ability balance

 

Despair (AOE Silence)

 

 

This ability is an "all-class" 100 gold level 25 ability that will be affordable, easily obtained and used by every class. 

As of now I'd say this is the most overpowered ability with all of the advantages that come with it to different classes and builds.

 

Jack (40 mage) is able to perma silence players with his current build, his mix of haste, the abilities cooldown and limited restrictions makes this possible.

 

This ability needs to be tuned down.

 

Despair (Silence) fix

 

To fix silence and the abuse of despair which can also be used in tandem with jolt the following should be added/changed:

 

- Add a global "silence immunity" much like stun immunity, infact copy stun immunity here. This is a top priority add (in our opinion). 

 

Ignite (Single target burst)

 

Ignite is currently the most powerful ability in the game.

With the current 2 talents added this ability has a huge instant 300% spell dps on the target, with a 15 second base cooldown this is extremely OP. Mages will already have high haste, and with the assassin buff they could decide to (but it may not be the most effective method) hit this ability, kite for a few seconds repeat.

 

Comparing this to an assassin talent which can be used roughly around the same level of this ability with the talents "Lobotomize". Lobotomize has a base damage of 150% and with 6 blood-stacks is raised to 270% weapon damage, the stacks are not easy to raise in pvp. Especially on moving targets.

 

Ignite fix

 

To balance ignite I suggest lowering the base Damage to 150%, that was the mage will still have a 200% burst with 2 talent points.

Increasing the cooldown to 30 seconds would also be good.

 

Cauterize

 

 

There is no doubt that cauterize is a must have ability for any mage/prophet, even other classes may take this as it can heal a nice small chunk of health.

 

The ability is basically like having an extra huge HP pot for mages/prophets in pvp. 

There is no need for such an overpowered ability in pvp/pve.

 

Cauterize fix

 

Make cauterize a PvE only ability (best option if possible).

 

or

 

Nerf Cauterize to a global 300% spell healing

 

Envenom

 

 

This was bought to my attention by "Blue" (level 40 ranger who has done more pvp than any of us during release).

 

This bleed is almost tripled in damage compared to any other target bleed in the game.

With the talent Envenom is raised to 84% damage and 5 seconds, leaving a 5 second gap (not factoring in haste) when Envenom will be down on a target.

 

Because ranger can easily evade targets, popping an Envenom and running off can take some targets to 50% hp.

 

Enveom fix

 

Nerf Enveom to a base 40% damage per second, without the talent this will still be a 120% damage bleed with a short cooldown.

Edited by Neon, 06 January 2014 - 19:44.

[Malthrus]

Below I will post my thoughts on the mage class abilities, there are some other issues with the game in general that I will highlight that makes my character build (and several others) overpowered, but for now I will focus on the mage skills abilities and skill tree exclusively.

 

I decided to add some of the prophet skills that we have access to also, since mages can heal decently in this game I feel they are relevent also.

 

Mage Balance

 

Ignite - Reduce the damage to 150% instant and add 'deals 25% of the total damage dealt over 5 seconds'. This makes the ability with the mage talent a 200% instant nuke that deals an additional 50% over 5 seconds for a total of 250%. The debuff MUST be stackable on the target from multiple players, as this will suck having more than 1 mage in the group otherwise.

 

Reason: This ability is overpowered as hell, the single best damaging ability in the game. In Pvp if you follow up a mid-air incinerate with this you can easily 1 shot players on a crit before they even know you are there. My fix keeps it still an extremely powerful ability but cuts the instant burst down by 33%. This ability may need further changes but for now I think what I suggested is fine, keep the cooldown at 15 seconds please, it makes the class more fun to play having a very active ability and also ties in to one of my other changes that i'll talk about another time. *cough haste nerf*

 

Overload - Increase the range from 10yd to 12yd.

 

Reason: All our other abilities are 12yd range basically, it is annoying when your character has to run in to cast this because you usually open with incinerate since it has a travel time and does not aggro the mob immediantly so your character runs to the maximum range of incinerate of 12yd. More of a quality of life fix than anything else, the ability is in a good spot and fun to use.

 

Blazing Embers (Incinerate's DoT) & Static Discharge (Overload crit debuff) - Make these abilities stack with other mages, or make the 8% spell crit for Overload work for players other than just the mage that casted it.

 

Boiling Blood - Remove the cast time and cooldown.
Boiling Point - Reduce to 10/20% per tick.

Scald - Change to increases the duration by 2/4 seconds, increase duration of the stun to 2 seconds or remove it entirely.

 

Reason: Nobody uses this ability because the cast time is too long. My change makes the ability worth using and allows multidotting. With all the talents the ability will do 40% spell damage per second for 10 seconds, for a total of 400% over 10 seconds.

 

Chilling (Blizzard talent) - Remove the stun passive, add slows targets in the area by 30/60%. Slow does not stack with Static Discharge.

 

Reason: Mainly quality of life change, it's annoying that mini-stun abilities like these are bad in this game because they put other stuns on diminishing returns and since it's a random chance not all the monsters get stunned, which means when you are AoE grinding the monsters unstack themselves. You can chain root with frostbite talent but you need to have the talent to make this work. The slow change is more of a suggestion to replace the stun with more than anything else.

 

Plasma Shield - Change it to absorb 1.5 damage for every 1 point of mana, 25% of your maximum mana, 20 second cooldown. So for me at lvl 40 with 3.5k mana it would absorb roughly 1300 damage out of my 6.3k life.

 

Reason: Too weak currently, it barely absorbs a single attack and has a moderate cooldown. There are many other better mage talents taking currently and even in a pure Pvp build this is a waste of a point. In other games the way it's balanced now would be fine, if mana pools were not half of our hp pool. In other games generally your mana is more than your health as a caster. If this were not the case I would suggest it burns 1.5/2 mana per 1 damage, but that would be rediculous with the low mana pools.

 

Replenishment - Change to 6% of your health over 6 seconds.

 

Reason: Too weak, waste of a point especially when cauterize instantly heals you to full.

 

Engulf - Reduce cast time by 1 second.

 

Reason: Like Boiling Blood, too long cast time and annoying to use. Will be a decent AoE skill with cast time reduction and maybe worth a point in a PvE build.

 

Void Portal & Call of the Wild (Ranger) - Reduce the cast time to 3 seconds. 8 Seconds is way too long to summon a pet, never used the pet before but I believe you have to resummon it every time you die?

 

Resurrect - Should no longer be useable in combat.

 

Reason: When anybody in your party dies, this ability above any other prevents wiping because any dps can simply stop doing damage; having no other responsibility and resurrect the dead player and continue on like nothing ever happened. As stated in my post in the world boss thread, this should be a talent in the prophet tree that allows you to ressurect in combat, so the healer at least has to commit to doing so. Should probably give it a cooldown too, or the mage can just heal the tank and prophet res the dead mid-fight and the issue is left reletively unsolved.

 

Rejuvenate - Reduce the duration per tick to 1s and reduce the healing by 10% per tick. So now it heals 20% of spell healing every second for 12 seconds, for a total of 240%.

 

Reason: I think everyone will agree that this heal is very weak compared to the other heals. In its current state, rejuvenate is as weak as a single revitalize over 12 seconds, which makes it incredibly useless. In the state of the game where everything is super burst oriented this ability simply doesn't do enough. With my change the heal may even be used by prophets now, since with the talent it would last an additional 6 seconds, for a total of 360% healing over 18 seconds. Now this may sound overpowered on paper but it really isn't, being a heal over time makes a huge difference and they should always be better than direct healing since you have to wait for it to tick in real time, a HoT should be a damage buffer. Compared to cauterize and dogma this ability is still a joke, but at least this will balance things out a little.

 

Cauterize - Cut in half the healing done by this ability, 200% spell healing instant. Add in the deep prophet talent 'Healing Touch', increases the healing done by 50/100% spell healing, for a total of 300%.

 

Reason: Not much to say about this, just way too strong and should have never made it through beta in its current state. 400% instant cast, seriously? The only thing that even comes close to this in pure value is ignite, and guess what the same class (mage) can abuse both of these broken spells.

 

Prophet side talk

 

Dogma should be toned down also since its basically another cauterize and outclasses Revitalize by miles, yeah it's a cooldown but if you ever watch a prophet use this skill the tank goes to full instantly. Prophet mana regen needs a nerf somewhere too, it's silly watching the dps and tank mana bars go down and watch the prophets stay at full, increase the cost of some of their heals perhaps. Oh I also suspect benediction is broken also, I have not tested myself but I believe it's doing 210% spell healing per second instead of 210% spell healing over 6 seconds, which is a huge difference. Please clarify if this is intended and just a tooltip error, if so needs to be nerfed because with the talent 'Lasting Supplication' this ability can solo heal TR apparently, lets not mention the rediculous 30% damage reduction in the deeper talent. *cough*

Edited by Malthrus, 06 January 2014 - 21:31.

[gomaki]

Reserve.

[HuMoR]

Reserved.

[hussey]

Melee classes are so underpowered in pvp . these are my suggestions -

 

http://forums.hunted...showtopic=61078

[ComradeLewis]

People that do nothing should get nothing. Being 1 man down the whole time should be cause for punishment, not a reward for the AFKer. Also, Prophets need to have their damage prevention and healing taken into account with regards to scoring and rewards.

 

I agree that melee is a joke in PvP. Rather than making every melee class into a ranged class - by giving them instant movement skills - they should simply have a lot more resistance to ranged and magic attacks.

[lester]

I would rather like that everyone that joins PvP has a NEW fully customize-able talent tree and attribute page with the skill points of that of the max level cap, and has all of the skills unlocked to put on their skill bar which solves pay 2 win aspects of pvp and with this new setup you can make different builds for PvP and trying out what works best.I would also like the ability to have free re-specs for these PvP builds in order for teams to adjust their builds in different ways without affecting PvE.

[hussey]

I would rather like that everyone that joins PvP has a NEW fully customize-able talent tree and attribute page with the skill points of that of the max level cap, and has all of the skills unlocked to put on their skill bar which solves pay 2 win aspects of pvp and with this new setup you can make different builds for PvP and trying out what works best.I would also like the ability to have free re-specs for these PvP builds in order for teams to adjust their builds in different ways without affecting PvE.

Totally agree . 

[Neon]

I would rather like that everyone that joins PvP has a NEW fully customize-able talent tree and attribute page with the skill points of that of the max level cap

 

Totally agree . 

This isn't needed, balances need to be made to make pvp more fair however and there are quite a few abilities/talents that stand out, we will form this with evidence in the next few days.

Edited by Neon, 29 December 2013 - 11:24.

[Struyk]

Totally agree . 

Would love to see a system like Lord of the Rings Online

[Mongo]

Warrior is kinda like playing a kamikaze in PvP. Run in, try to throw some damage at someone, more often than not... dying before you reach them 

 

I want to try some more PvP now I have frenzy and adrenaline rush, but due to the long cooldowns they will probably not make much difference.

[lester]

This isn't needed, balances need to be made to make pvp more fair however and there are quite a few abilities/talents that stand out, we will form this with evidence in the next few days.

I don't understand how it isn't needed, level 10's having the same level,skills, and talents as the max level cap seems really fair to me.Yea sure skills need to be fixed in PvP but with this suggestion most of the problems(Most of what everyone is arguing about) will be fixed.

Edited by lester, 29 December 2013 - 15:37.

[ComradeLewis]

Again, ranged/magic resistance needs to be upped. It's a simple solution really.

Edited by ComradeLewis, 29 December 2013 - 15:39.

[Neon]

I don't understand how it isn't needed, level 10's having the same level,skills, and talents as the max level cap seems really fair to me.Yea sure skills need to be fixed in PvP but with this suggestion most of the problems(Most of what everyone is arguing about) will be fixed.

 

Again, ranged/magic resistance needs to be upped. It's a simple solution really.

Again HCS simply won't have the time to create brand new talent trees and then balance them, it's much easier and simple to improve and fix the current problems rather than potentially create a new one.

 

This thread has to factor in the likeliness of HCS acting upon the decision suggested as-well.

 

The problem with these two things is justifying the changes, the time it would take to implement and how they would be implemented.

 

Believe me Lewis, I've thought that too but there's no easy way to break down resistances and change every piece of gear or the global resistance without allot of time and thought needed.. and for such a time consuming idea there are much simpler alternative.

 

The flat -30% damage reduction would allow melee to reach their targets while classes being matched as even opponents rather than one taking the advantage simply due to being ranged.

[lester]

-30% makes everyone live longer thats cool and all but higher levels will still have a advantage over lower levels and if this continues you can expect that lower levels wont being queued up for PvP."Everyone is scared of higher levels" you remove that fear and you got people signing up.

Edited by lester, 29 December 2013 - 17:05.

[Neon]

-30% makes everyone live longer thats cool and all but higher levels will still have a advantage over lower levels and if this continues you can expect that lower levels wont being queued up for PvP."Everyone is scared of higher levels" you remove that fear and you got people signing up.

Higher levels will have an advantage over lower levels, you have to accept that....

It's easy enough to level up.

 

We never ruled out suggesting the pvp brackets in this post, but that would require time and a playerbase we don't have.

[lester]

I never said it was going to be easy..With my method we will have a great balance which fits into our player base , and yea its probably going to take a long time but with well spent time comes with a well spent reward.

[Neon]

I never said it was going to be easy..With my method we will have a great balance which fits into our player base , and yea its probably going to take a long time but with well spent time comes with a well spent reward.

Obviously I understand it won't be easy and the whole "time well spent thing". But here we're trying to amend current abilities, talents etc without creating new problems and tasks for HCS to go into.

 

With your idea it could take beyond a year to be implemented into the game, and even then fixes would probably need to be made. However small fixes and tweaks which will change so much would take considerably less amounts of time.

 

This thread is about fixing the current abilities, talents, balance and attributes. Please don't go off topic.

Edited by Neon, 29 December 2013 - 18:11.

[Neon]

There are still balances that need to be added to this thread but the ones that have been added are complete balances that have been well-thought. 

Edited by Neon, 05 January 2014 - 22:17.

[Shylark57]

My thoughts on the PvP such as arenas / battlefields.. There needs to be a level tiered system.. Where players are grouped by level. Sort of like how the PvP ladder on FS is but with a 5 level range.. Say maybe level 10-14,15-19, and so on.. To me this would take out a lot of mess with higher levels over powering the lower levels. I play another  game that breaks it down to 2 levels per group.. But they also start at level 3 Groups are 3-4, 5-6, and on up to the max level which is 16... There is open PvP also with no level restrictions... This maybe easier to implement then changes to how Talents work... Just my thoughts as always...