Development Team Letter - CLASS BALANCING

Then you play with crap 2h dks

 

I see one huge problem with the proposed changes in the latest dev letter.

This is no different than the current situation and only serves to continue this part of the problem. 2h weapons already have a big dmg advantage so why the need for a talent for that.

The difference between a 1h/2h choice needs to go beyond just damage. In other games (as well as IRL) there are passive considerations that need to be accounted for. A 1h user has a greater chance of taking less damage due to things like evade, parry/block, speed. Conversely a 2h has a greater chance of taking damage.

But I won't be one sided just because of my favored build These passive considerations go the other way as well. A 2h build has a greater chance to crit/deadly. There are other things but I'm not sure y'all would want to get into the coding changes for this game. e.g. a 2h has a greater chance to knockback/disarm

What I am saying is that y'all are not just still thinking inside the box (which is basically damage, damage, and more damage) but you're cramming more of the same into the old box.

Another problem I see is all the group buff stuff. While this is all well and good for group play where are the buffs for the soloers? The lone wolf ( @trakilaki , not necessarily McQuade ), stranger, antisocial Hero is a classic archetype that needs love too (despite the fact they would never admit it )

Luck be with ye,
Mikey,
Tegan

 

here are some options for ya my friend)

• Destruction of Laugh. When mage uses destruction, every character in a 20m radius starts Laugh emote, including every mob on the map.
• Lighting Strike of Self Strike. When mage uses Lighting Strike, it generates another lighting strikes at the location of other members of the party, also charging them.
• Singularity of Singularities. When mage places the singularity, it generates 1 more singularity on top of it for every member of the party. Additional singularities to not stack.
• Teleport of Retreat. When mages uses teleport, every party members teleports randomly.
• Frost Wind of Suck. When mage uses frost wind, it sucks.
• Magic Missile of Delusional Magic. When mage uses magic missile, nothing happens.
• Ice missile of Fire. When mage uses ice missile, it changes the elemental damage from fire to ice for every member of the party for 1.17 seconds.
• Fireball of Balls. Using a fireball mage causes every party member to juggle the balls using Red Juggler's Pins emote. Any player without it, is being frozen in shame.
• Chain of Lighting of Luck. When mage uses the chain of lighting, any mob is marked for 5 seconds. Killing such a mob will increase the coin drop by 5% for all members of the party.
• Meteor of Dragon Breath. Using a meteor, mage makes any currently burning member of the party or a mob stop for 3 seconds executing Spectacular Dragon Breath emote. (Meteor of fireworks is another option)
• Frozen Sphere of Frozen Mount. Using frozen sphere, mage causes every team member to mount reindeer Sven from the Disney's frozen movie.

Any of the above instead of that frost nova passive crap would be better. at least more entertaining.

 

No my guild has very good ones, but we don't run low levels. You must be a dk with one of those 'god-like' egos.

 

god-like egos ? nah im just a very old DK that knows what hes talking about

 

Like, like, like, the Frost Nova "bonus" (rofl), is the Dragan's elemental weapons unique effect all over again, allow me to put it in perspective for other class or less experienced players, when you hit an opponent, there's a 5% chance that an elemental nova will spawn at your location, now, you give this kind of melee, or short-ranged bonus to a class that has the least survivability of all classes, which ideally needs to be far away from it's targets at all times, thus making this elemental farts, sorry, novas hit, effectively, nothing, oh, and they also have an explosion delay, which means that you or the mobs will be dead before the explosion matters, I presume something similar happens to other ranged classes, but I'm talking from my class' perspective for the time being.

Now that we have an idea of what a "ridiculous effect" is when you give the same to all classes without putting their core differences into consideration, we can switch to the (hopefully) proposed frost nova bonus: As I said above, for one of our main damaging skills (Frozen sphere) to reach a decent (never max, don't forget FS had a secret nerf and it never reaches its maximum alleged %damage regardless of positioning) damage output we need to be at a certain range away from the boss, the horde, etc..., and ideally spread out from other damage dealers to avoid splash damage in fights from meteors, lasers, etc..., also no SW I know uses the frost nova as a damaging skill, its main use is as a stun breaker, then, if we consider all this factors, in 95% of the scenarios this "bonus" is a pile of manure, no one is going to be in range, and if they are, I'd bet my staff the mobs will be all dead before the slow ice farts explode on the pack of mobs, it's uber useless in boss fights, which coincidentally is the PvE area where we SWs are being left behind by a mile by any other class, now, as Sebastian said, compare this to a pack of 5 2H DKs fighting a boss with continuous healing from MWS and the proposed healing from BWS, sure, I bet they'll be dying and eager to have a SW in their group to use the amazing Frost Nova bonus, or any other class for that matter .

Also, until we see how the bonuses for the other classes work, I won't hold my breath, "Bird of Prey regenerating the resource pool of other classes", how exactly?, will it be an aura around the casting RA?, in which case we'd need to be clumped together in a fight risking to get caught in an area of effect attack, some of us can survive getting hit by, let's say one or two Arachna's poison meteors, but if you force us to be all clumped together I don't see myself surviving 4 meteors if they catch me, or us, off-guard, if it's not an aura around the casting RA, then the other option will be an area around the target that was hit by the Bird of Prey, if this happens in a boss fight, the only one who will benefit from this is *drumroll*, the tank or DPS DK, and if we apply the same reasoning to the Rocket bonus from the SM, all I said earlier applies as well. As for the DKs BWS healing effect, if one needs to be in actual range of the skill to receive the benefit, well, for all the reasons I exposed above about effective ranges, etc., it benefits no one, the only way you could prove me wrong here is if you made those effects have an effective area as big as the Banner of War, and even then the SW's effect from the Frost Nova would still be manure.

I'm going to ask you a sincere question, did you run the latest Dragan boss fight without god mode on?, in a group of 5?, spreading out of a group is actually a tactic you need to survive, it is affordable to lose one player to a ground breaker from Dragan and have the closest person to revive it, but it's not affordable to lose the other 4 members of the group and have the tank struggle to avoid 15 frost explosions, 2-3 lasers, and Dragan's onslaught of attacks to go revive the full group because they were all clumped together in hopes of making the most out of the group bonuses, and that's considering they'd spawn from the players location, in which case, the DKs will see no benefit whatsoever because Dragan's attacks are area ones, not single target, and we can't risk the full group obstructing the tank and the DPS DKs by being all around the enemy, it spells death for everyone. I used Dragan's boss fight as a prime example, but I could go on and on about each and every boss fight and the implications they'd have under these new mechanics, and this is important because it is precisely the boss fights where the PvE existing imbalance is having the biggest impact, not to say that the maps themselves don't have any issues, but oh well...

Aside from the passive bonuses for each class, and that's only considering they don't require you to be holding hands, ehrm, I mean, in close range with the other members of the group, the proposed "group skill bonuses" look like they're designed to perpetuate the existing PvE imbalance instead of making it better, Sebastian made a brilliant point on what we want and need:

Do not forget that most of the complaints come precisely from these points, I'm a SW capable of soloing each and every existing boss in this game on infernal 3, except Mortis, where undergeared DKs and RAs (when compared to mine) are making my SW look like a joke in comparison, undergeared DKs, RAs, and SMs are surpassing my completion times on solo maps and beating my damage output on boss fights, and just a heads up, I'm not saying that the other classes being that strong is not okay, risking being iterative, what isn't okay is that a better developed SW is being outperformed by average or just above average toons of every other class on PvE.

However, let's not forget that a lot of other issues regarding PvE are imbalanced, a few months ago you arbitrarily increased the LB point requirements for almost all of the PW dungeons, hence turning some maps to a boring grinding hell to classify on, we need them to be adressed either on the scoring system, like Sigris' map, or a reduced point requirement like Mortis' map. We still have inventory issues, that are just mildly being scratched by the proposed "sell and craft everywhere" system, but it isn't quite what we need.

The liberation on wisdom points, aka them being able to go way beyond your experience level is fine, but some of the proposed talents are plain sad, like the "more coins from monsters, yay!" one, unless you prove me wrong and we start seeing the monsters drop stacks on gold and not silver units, but until then, I stick to my statement of it being plain sad.

And I'm out of time, for now, but not done, I'll come back later to elaborate a bit more on other flaws I see, thanks for reading my parchment up to this point, whoever does.

 

Group bonuses need to affect all members of the group, regardless of distance from the group member casting the skill. This way, the ranged classes don't have to stand in the way of the melee classes. However I do think all affected members should be on the same map as the one using the skill.

And for heaven's sake, pick a better skill than a Frost Nova for the Spellweaver benefit. I am not OP like EhtovK but even I only use it as a stun break or when bothered by minions on a map I'm just traveling through (say going to see Balor for a daily).

 

These dev team letters are funny as hell xD.

Previous letter was "blablabla bla bla bla bla blabla bla...we are working on a new skill tree, its not finished, we also work on pvp but its still not finished...blah blah blah" .... this new letter is kinda like "blablabla bla bla bla bla blabla bla...we are working on a new skill tree, its not finished, we also work on pvp but its still not finished...blah blah blah..heres some pics of the skills" .These letters were posted like 1 year apart 1 from the other.During this period, BP managed to give us some pics with the skills xD

One thing im afraid of is that once they bring these new skills ingame and give us the possibility to have 1000+ skill points, the current ones that we have wont be enough to even max the most important ones.We will lose a lot of dmg/hp because of this and we will have only 55 points to assign (where some skills require 200 points lol).We will need a lot of $ to get back to the stats that we had before this new skilltree to buy knowledge or we will have to spend years farming for it.

Also assigning them 1 by 1 will be a pain in the ....mouse lol, especially those that require 200 points to max.

So, ready your wallets, or most likely u will barely be able to solo painfull and fatal after this patch xD

 

whoever fought the sw skill is a good idea must be joking, it can't be serious

 

That's why they should not shaft veteran players here with 55 level of wisdom. Since they said that they will increase possibility of getting it per day they should give us some for free depending on our wisdom lvl. For example: We're able to get 100 wisdom per day ; after this patch we will be able to get 1000 per day.
Widsom required for lvl 55 now let's say is: 10000. Give us the 90000 Wisdom with the new update. In this way we won't be shafted compare to the new players who will obtain lvl 55 in week or so.

 

I love this one

IMHO they ahould rework skills to be balanced at the very beginning, and then chenge set so that one is not the best and the others are crap (like q7 for a ranger)... This way anybody would use the set he likes withiut having less performaces than another.

I would be happy if they just change time points based on the lenght of the map... Like, Q1 is a lot shorter than q7

----------------------------------------------

... Tbh, the only class that would be invited the most will still be the SM and it doesn't even need an explaination...
The aura bonus (or whatever it is) for RAs is useless... You should be looking all the time at the resources of every team member, also Bird of Pray has a "long" cooldown (not very high, but not even low) so it would be useless, as it is now.
As for SW, I think they should change their group bonus to Singoularity, to have 5pts talent work with other group members too...


Anyway, I hope the change to Wisdom Points won't destroy my character

 

They need to redesign the point needed to get gold for q6 q7 q8
They need to be at least at the level of q9, that leatherboard is reasonable, since the maps are long and boring

Also, i don't know if it's true or not, but the time bonus points are awarded only when you kill the boss at the end of each quest, when you drop out after filling the monster bar you get the same amounts of points regardless of the time taken to do it

 

I doubt they will reward players based on how many years they've been around.The way i see it once the update comes we will lose all the points from knowledge/pvp ..we have 55 now and pretty much everyone is using 35 points on dmg + behemoth (the 10 point skill that gives 50% dmg).Our current dmg will go down by a lot, will most likely be split in half and we will have only 55 points to get it back up to what it was.After looking at the skill tree, the 2hand dmg skill requires like 200 points and will most likely give the same amount of dmg when maxed as the behemoth skill.The difference is that behemoth skill requires 10 points to max it and the 2hand dmg skill from the new skill tree will require 200.So we will have to pay again or pay more for exactly the same things that we have now.

Imagine how easy it will be to farm infernal modes after the new skill tree when everything that we have now will be nerfed...

Now we can get the max dmg from 1hand/2hand builds just by using 25-35 points on knowledge and after the skill tree we will need 400 (200 for 1hand and 200 for 2hand) to get the same effect lol..no more crystal of mana to increase your max amount of mana and mana reg...im not sure how these changes are supposed to help with the balance...having this much dmg from the skill tree and the mana crystal skill is not helping the mages much now and playing without them will?

 

These dev team letters are funny as hell xD.

Previous letter was "blablabla bla bla bla bla blabla bla...we are working on a new skill tree, its not finished, we also work on pvp but its still not finished...blah blah blah" .... this new letter is kinda like "blablabla bla bla bla bla blabla bla...we are working on a new skill tree, its not finished, we also work on pvp but its still not finished...blah blah blah..heres some pics of the skills" .These letters were posted like 1 year apart 1 from the other.During this period, BP managed to give us some pics with the skills xD

This is true story, many promises, but nothing changed in game.

 

Agreed. I don't know many mages that actually use Frost Nova, if they do good for those, but it is not a primary skill so I don't understand why this effect wasn't put on something like perhaps fireball or frozen sphere, or even better-both. Fire effect to those members that are in range of a enemy that is hit by a fireball, and frozen effect for those members in range of an enemy hit by one. Just an idea, but I think a little more useful since those are primary attack skills for mages.

 

or they just make teams to be either 4 or 6 so you must have 1 of each class ( for 4 and 6 ) but in 6 you will need to have 1 pf each class plus 2 for any other... about mages how about 5 % inc dmg. I mean it will be great dwarfs get more dmg, rangers get more dmg. and a group of 1 tank and 4 mages woth be that good because dwarfs and rangers are better boss killers so yeah it will smt like , hey why dont we take a mage for more dmg .About the skill tree ll im saying is farm anders and prepare to buy wisdom ..... gg another fall of dso is coming 155 , 185 and with this say bb devs. I just managedc to get 2.000 atack speed with my dmg not going down and now im gonna be punished for that by being taken away from me because you cant implement smt to back up your expansions( we know you want the cash just admit it and let it be over....).

The only thing im seeing now is bye mages dwarf meta again rangers solo players or maybe 1 in the group and tanks pretty much the same cuz why not abuse tanks and dwarfs again for 2 MORE YEARS why NOT

 

Because i think they dont have money for development so the move slow very slow very slow..........So where is the money?

I"m so happy that they will make us sell the items and craft everywhere, now the bots cant be seen in city selling so BP does not need to make police work to catch the bots anymore - now that is a nice solution for bots problem well done BP.

 

Yep, you can see this one coming. The ones who are just getting by on painful are in store for a very rude awakening.

I'm hoping that they learned the lessons of 155 and 185, even though I know better.

Now if they grant all of us with the appropriate amount of wisdom when this new system is released, it could end up being a good thing.

 

Very unlikely altough it would be great indeed.The problem is that once this patch is released we will lose the current dmg /hp from knowledge so we wont be able to farm that well on infernal modes so BP will have to adjust them infernals too.It su_cks that after this much farming, crafting and so on we will have to get back to playing lower difficulties only because BP thought it was easier to nerf everyone and force them to play few more years to get back to where they are now, instead of buffing a class and nerfing another (mage/warrior).

Changing the values of some skills ( % skill dmg) couldve been done within minutes yet they decided to create a brand new skilltree and waste months with that.All this mess couldve been fixed so easy and so fast but then BP couldnt monetize knowledge/skills.This shows how eager they were to help.I wonder how many more will quit once they realise that BP will nerf them badly overnight and in the morning they will have to pay few thousand $ to get their stats back lol.

We will get a new skill tree and in a few years when a class will become too OP, instead of adressing the issue and nerf that particular class, BP will most likely implement lvl 60.Then few years after that, when the history will repeat itself, boom, another skilltree lol. We've been at this since this game made it on the market.In like 6 years of DSO we had 3 different skill trees (this new one included) and like 3 lvl caps increase but never a balance.


Do you guys remember these items?^^ Everyone used them and killed bosses just as fast as any of the other classes.It terms of PvE (boss kills) it was a perfect balance lol.

 

OK, everybody needs to calm down about the information about the group skills. You are all freaking out about the SW's Frost Nova skill like it will be the only group skill. Read the announcement again and let me point out a couple things.

"That’s why we will add a completely new tree of talents and perks that you can use depending on the class you play. These useful new effects that you can be triggered by using certain skills."
"If you invest group talent points (working title) into this group skill talent,"
"With this addition,"
"Using this additional effect,"
"With this group talent each,"

There is going to be an entirely new skill tree centered around groups. They were simply giving a single example from each class.
Now, explain to me why you are upset that a rarely used skill (because it is mostly useful in PvP) has a useless group skill. If it is anything like our current skills systems, there could very well be more than one option for each attack. Tell me, when was the last time you spent skill points on the 5 point skill "Ice Age" for your Frost Nova? Do you even know what it does without checking first? Probably not, and the reason is because it is useless and certainly not worth five points that could be better spent elsewhere.

The existing talent trees are already full of useful and useless things for you to spend your points on. It is on the player to exercise common sense and analyze where you will fit the skills into your build and play style. If anything, be glad that a useless skill is attached to a useless attack. Imagine if the skill had been something really nice and now you need to fit Frost Nova into your build and then waste regular skill points on it to make it a little less useless as an attack.

In all likelihood, this is how the thought process will look. You already have your preferred skills and playstyle, so you will look at the group skills attached to the attacks you already use. You'll pick the best of those. Then, you will look at the attacks you don't use for any skills that are game changing/meta defining and will have to make a decision about adapting vs staying with the familiar. For example, the sample DK skill was based on Bloody Wild Swing. While healing my team with every crit I land is nice, I'll have to weigh it against the other DK group skills to decide if it is worth changing my play style to integrate this attack or if other group skills would be a better fit for me, or more beneficial to the team.

All this to say "Calm Down!" This was a preview, not the one and only SW skill in the upcoming system. Instead of freaking out over the smallest morsel of information, wait until it shows up on the test server and we can offer constructive feedback on the system as a whole instead of crying about how the sky is falling.