huhbum

Often times in group battles or large-scale battles(WB's in particular) there are multiple effects of the same type being applied by different players. Rupture, Boiling Blood, Envenom, are examples of debuffs and/or over-time effects applied to enemies. Some of these effects are auto-refreshed and don't need any kind of special system(Crushing Blow, Vicious Poison, Eagle Eye etc) but many do need to be refreshed and it's difficult at times to tell when to.

It gets quite confusing at times as to which debuff belongs to which player and that can affect skill rotation performance. Is there a way to apply an outline or border to debuff icons that YOU apply, or perhaps make debuffs applied by YOU appear at the front of the enemy debuff window?

Had some time to sit down and type for a bit this evening, so I thought I'd tackle one of the more interesting game mechanics issues from the past few months.

The topic for this post is attribute diversity and how it can be improved in Eldevin!

Currently, there is very little incentive to invest attribute points in certain attributes, depending on class:

-Only Tank builds invest any significant points in Vitality

-Only Rangers(and some Mage builds) have any reason to invest any points in Focus

At level 45 (with 2 points in wild instincts, 3 in marksman, 3 in sleight of hand, 10% attack power buff, 10% attack potion)

 

pure 6/0 ranged -> +207.24 dps, 5.544% ranged haste, 6.16% ranged dodge -> more than 0/6 pure focus

pure 0/6 focus -> +31.944% crit chance, +59.268% accuracy -> more than 6/0 pure ranged

 

 

I found that the damage is almost the same, just either higher base damage, or more reliable crit. With full items, end game crit gear, talent bonuses to crit, crit buff, and 2 points into torrent talent, can get over 85% crit rate 50% of the time.

-Almost all DPS builds are forced to go 5/1 or 6/0 in their primary damage attribute to remain competitive

-Energy is almost never invested in, for any build, for any class

HCS has acknowledged the issue about stat allocation diversity in previous patches, including the haste/dodge nerf and the attack power scaling nerf in previous updates. Additional nerfs, however, would be most unwelcome. The general sentiment in previous months of the developers would suggest that making stats like Vitality and Energy more attractive, would be preferable:

PvE Balance

We're working towards a big game balance patch. This will be aimed at leveling the playing field between a number of classes. We're also looking to seriously reduce the amount of haste and dodge you gain from your primary attribute (melee / ranged / sorcery). We're also looking at mana costs and cooldowns for all high level abilities (15+) with a view to improving balance of these before we release the new content. We are currently looking at ways of making energy and vitality more valuable. We will be aiming to do this patch sometime next week and everyone's respec cooldown will be reset. 

 

The question is, what can be done to buff Vitality, Focus and Energy in a balanced way to make them more attractive to invest in, rather than seeing only one viable stat allocation for each class?

A few major points to consider:

Enrage Timers / Rumble-style DPS race mechanics are extremely limiting, in that they punish lower DPS builds to the point where only glass-cannon builds are viable for the content. HCS staff have mentioned before that they disliked players investing no points in vitality; however, implementing DPS race mechanics on boss fights and in dungeons reinforces the need to min-max DPS and reinforces a desire to make glass-cannon builds. I have always been against the notion of enrage timers for this reason; players are already punished for playing slowly(since it takes more time to complete things). They should not be double-punished.

Additional nerfs to Melee/Ranged/Sorcery are not a viable option because the primary damage attributes have already been severely watered-down from their original incarnation, and will continue to scale poorly to level 50(with attack power scaling less well with each character level). Rather than nerf the damage attributes more, I highly suggest buffing the other attributes to make them more competitive.

Synergies with talents and builds should be considered in that buffing Focus or Vitality too much without considering game balance could end up making Templars and Rangers too powerful. Rangers already get a competitive DPS build by using a Focus-oriented build, so tweaks to Focus should bear that in mind. Vitality, as the bread-and-butter survivability stat, is used almost exclusively by Templars, so any additional defensive power bonuses to Vitality may make Templars too tanky(as well as still not being attractive for DPS classes to invest in).

Energy needs a significant buff. This cannot be stressed enough. Even with the severe nerf to Enlighten in a previous patch, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to invest in Energy(in fact, the nerf to Enlighten made it even less viable to invest in Energy, as Enlighten is the only max mana percentage-based regeneration talent that requires no combat action).

Attribute allocation and itemization go hand in hand. It cannot be stressed enough that a large part of attribute allocation is tied to the stats players receive on gears. Having more diverse gear options opens up the possibility for more diverse stat allocation builds(for example, if I had a custom chestpiece with +Melee, +Vitality, +Vitality, it might make me consider investing in Focus or Energy to compensate). Equipment creativity is something that Eldevin has great potential for, and the opportunities to improve itemization are endless! This has already been discussed in several other threads, but it is essential to mention it again, as the two issues are very closely related.

So, what now?

Fortunately, the developers are receptive to suggestions and ideas, and there are certainly a few avenues for improvement. Some possibilities:

-Giving the non-damage stats damage. This is the simplest and possibly most useful fix. Give a certain amount of attack power(less than the primary stat, but enough to be useful) for investing in Vitality, Energy, or Focus. This gives more incentive for DPS classes to actually invest some points in something other than their primary stat, buffs Templar DPS(since they almost always must invest in Vitality for survivability) and makes Focus Ranger builds even more attractive(borderline overpowered). The downside to this is that it's difficult to determine how much attack power(and which attack power) to allocate to each stat.

-Giving the non-damage stats additional defensive ability(defense, dodge, status resistance). These would certainly help tanks out, and make investment more attractive. The obvious downside is that there's no damage(which is currently priority 1-A in the current game world) so all DPS classes will still give the stats little to no consideration.

-Adding talents that synergize with non-damage stats. This already exists to a minor extent with the Ranger talent Wild Instincts(and is a big reason why heavy Focus investment is only really viable with Ranger builds) and seeing more talents like this could make some builds opt for a different stat setup.

-Buff the heck out of Energy. Seriously this stat needs some love: you could honestly double or triple the mana increase from each point in Energy and it still might not be worth the points(although it could potentially open up some very interesting max mana builds).

Anyway, food for thought! Improving stat allocation diversity could really add an additional level of intrigue and customization to the current game system.

Disclaimer: Feedback from one test run(2+ hours). I'd like to do additional testing, but this is my initial feedback on the changes to Rumble's Grotto.

Really quick, as I have to go to bed soon for work tomorrow! Here are my major concerns with the revamped Rumble's Grotto(non-Ascended version, the Ascended version can be plenty hard and extra frustrating if you like):
 
-The 'totem' daily only gives the party member that destroyed the Kaur Totem credit for destroying the totem. This is a very party-unfriendly mechanic, and will definitely lead to ninja-toteming. I suggest changing this to a party-wide totem counter or adjusting it in another way.
 
-Granite boss: Purple koolaid AoE cloud damage is very strong, and has an enormous radius(despite the awesome name, Purple koolaid AoE clouds appear to work exactly like rocks....except there are three of them, with a large radius. This fight is very troublesome for undergeared or laggy characters, especially considering the tight confines of the fight allowing little to no dodging room from the splashes. Our healer pretty much had to go back to town, get a shield, and spend most of the fight keeping himself alive instead of the tank(wasn't too bad, would hate to be a pure tank in that fight though).

Edit: Reading around, it may seem that the splash damage is a reverse-rock; that is, it does less damage at the center than it does at the edge. I'll have to test this further. I'm still concerned about how the cloud damage areas overlap with one another, though.
 
-Trash packs and enemies in general: I haven't run RG much pre-patch in the last week, but the trash packs seem extremely, extremely slow to kill compared to before. I don't think their HP has been increased much, but perhaps a significant defense or damage reduction buff occurred to the monsters. It extended the dungeon time greatly(even with wipes to bosses while testing mechanics, it should never take almost as long to clear trash in non-ascended RG as it does to clear trash in ASV).
 
-Rumble: The new mechanics are interesting but do not actually fix the issues with the old Rumble.
 
The issues with the old Rumble:
- tedious, boring fight
- healing mechanic.
 
The issues with the new Rumble:
- first 50% of the fight is a tedious, boring fight
- healing mechanic not only still exists(he will auto-heal twice, although for less hp than previous) but is now made significantly worse with the healing crystal that heals for 50,000 per tick, and cannot be killed quickly by DPS unless they have exceptional gear (this is the real big one, and I am kinda sad that you guys took the mechanic that was the worst part of the Rumble fight and made it worse). I HIGHLY suggest limiting this mechanic to Ascended Rumble's Grotto.
- prison crystal and healing crystal spawn at the same time in 3rd phase
- Rumble can chain-CC the tank in 3rd phase with his stun followed by crystal prison, or in the 2nd and 3rd phase if the tank crystal is not killed immediately, because the cooldown on crystal prison is very low
- no crystal prison immunity(not an isolated problem to just Rumble).
 
-Bugs:
 
- The repeatable quest that requires the Kaur Bows(forgot the exact name) gives both the remnant and the flake reward instead of the option to choose one.
- Kaur Archers(and archer mobs in general) bug out heavily if you let them attack you and then run out of line of sight.
 
First attempt, went for 2+ hours, I had to go to sleep for work, healer had to log as well. It's kind of cool, but I feel the non-Ascended version needs tweaking, as casual parties are going to get absolutely murdered in there.
 
The dailies are cool! However, I do not want to do the dailies in lieu of running the actual dungeon(which can be accomplished by killing the trash, one spider, blowing up totems, and never actually bothering to kill Rumble ever, and then running BT in 25-35 minutes instead of RG in 1-3 hours).
 
I think what I've seen so far in the new RG will make for a very cool and challenging Ascended version, though, and I look forward to trying that out when I have time! For the non-Ascended version, though, I think that the dungeon is much less attractive to run as it was previously as it currently stands(and is now significantly worse than BT, whereas before it was equally fine, minus Rumble). I think it can certainly be adjusted properly to be fun again, though!

It's been a bit of a nagging concern to players that patch notes are not as thorough as they could be. With each update, a few changes always seem to slip through without being documented.

Recent example:

I just noticed today that Crimson HQ mobs were changed so that they all shoot you with ranged attacks now.

This is actually something I mentioned in my very first post ever on the Eldevin forums, too:

Edit: I forgot to mention one nitpicky thing. Please, when releasing patch notes, make sure to include all of the changes! In the 1.01 patch, the HP and damage of Wild Shigra monsters was changed. While I am absolutely okay with this and other balance changes, please do not make stealth changes! Documenting and displaying all changes is the best way to avoid angry players talking about stealth nerfs.

Please, for future patches, include the full changelog of fixes and changes in each update, no matter how mundane or small the change might be. Also, if you could archive all patch and update notes in a sub-section of the forums, so players can quickly get up to speed with what's changed over the months/years, that would be fantastic!