Development Team Letter - CLASS BALANCING

can you post a screen of your dmg on red with herold set buff ?

 

The problem is that DKs cannot be nerfed because we need them for killing bosses easily in a stationary spot, they need to be strong and resist all the damage they receive. The true problem is the way PVP is implemented on the game.

They should remove all PVE gear when a character enters the arena and give them standard and equal items to everyone. For example a helmet with two critical value lines with two damage lines, no gems, no glyphs, etc. In other words, measure characters' abilities instead of equipment and money, but that is never going to happen. Why? Because people (including me) pay and work hard to get all the PVE equipment and some will never accept the game takes the items out when entering a fight.

The problem is not the classes, the problem is how PVP works.

 

This thread seems to ebb and flow with tons of posts in short periods of time followed by long periods of inactivity. Glad to see that I am as controversial as ever and sparked something.

They have a purpose in PvE for the crit rate high enough to reach 80% in Infernal III and having an easier time reaching 5x Crit damage, but compared to a 2H RA (in PvP), they don't have a significant enough benefit. You only need 80% crit in T0-T3 to achieve 80% in PvP, so using a quiver would almost certainly result in wasted crit. Along those lines, I intend to eventually build an % damage Bellicose Helmet for PvP and even faster T3 farming when I don't need the % Crit helmet to reach 80% crit rate.

You've again missed the point. All the classes can reach the same damage values on the stats page, but a DK has lower skill damages than every other class. What are a DK's top three highest damage skills? And what are a SW/RA/SM's top three highest damage skill? Do you see any differences there? That is why all the classes can have the same base damage and it still be "Fair."

Now, lets look at Defenses. If we were to follow the same reasoning as damage, all the classes would have the same HP/Resist/Armor potential, but a DK should have defense boosts with almost all their attacks to compensate for their being melee (paralleling the fact that the DPS classes all have higher skill damages). If that were the case, then you'd complain that, even though a DK has the same HP as you, he is harder to kill because he has more defensive buffs. You would complain about the same thing, but for a different reason. As it stands, a DK has only two skills that boost their defense (Rage Jump, with skill selected, or Dragon Hide). Maybe we should all have the same HP, but then they could modify a DK's skills so that Furious Battle Cry should buff armor and resistance too, and Charge could reduce the damage an opponent does, and maybe bleed could have the same amount of slowing as ice or marking. Would that be more "fair" to you?

Amazing! It is almost like you read the section of 2H SWs where I said "Insanely high damage with fireball spam, but awful defenses. It is a game of "Who hits first?" against everything except a 1H DK. 1H DKs will just run and heal." And we've had this conversation before (or at least me and Sebastian). Fireball won't kill a 1H DK. The only viable strategy against a 1H DK (In Dual and TDM) is to avoid the DK until regen is stopped by exhaustion and then hit them with just a couple of fireballs to ensure they go down first. I've never claimed that everything is balanced, especially when it comes to 1H DKs. I only pointed out that your argument that damage is higher for DKs is wrong, the reasoning that Damage should be higher for SWs is flawed, and your claim that defenses should be equal is illogical.

So what? You are arguing about the set bonus effects you want, not the base stats. My point above was that all classes can reach the same offensive stats, if they want. That is the Science of playing this game. The Art of playing this game is understanding what stat sacrifices are worth making in favor of an effect. You want to play with Sigris' set for the effect. That means you need to determine if the reduced damage you get when using this set is worth the steady stream of ice missiles. Incidentally, that skill is mostly only useful in PvP and not PvE. If you are at such a level of PvP where you have to make this a serious consideration, then you should have the necessary experience and judgement to make this call, but if you are playing PvP, then you have better options at your disposal anyway.

 

So I'm a tad confused (not surprising really).

I'm not a big PvP player. I only do it for the clovers. I play a Spellweaver. Typically, when I'm pitted against a 1H Draganknight, unless they are a really high level PvP player, they don't hit very hard...but they do hit fast. Since they tend to not run around either, I can stand there while they whale on me, and spam lightning strike or fireball on them, and they die.

So is it that I'm just not a good enough PvP player to get the really good 1H Draganknights that can kill me quickly? What am I missing?

And for what it is worth, I get killed by all classes, and can kill all classes, so the whole "this class is overpowered" thing is just befuddling. I think the imbalance is not in the class differences but more in who is pitted against me and what the opposition's damage/armor/speed ratings are compared with mine.

 

Not trying to be rude, but Pretty much. The top DKs wouldn't sit around for lightning strikes, and even if they did, it wouldn't kill them. The top 1H DKs also have enough damage that in a toe to toe fight, they win against almost anyone.

I'd say that for no rank up to the low centurion ranks, it is mostly balanced (except when a high end PvE player decides to start Pvping for the first time) because it is mostly the people who don't have the crazy stats and strategy is basic at best.

As a 2H DK in the mid ranks of PvP with nice stats (not "insane" stats), I can kill most others, if I can get close. There are a lot of opponents out there that make the whole "getting close" part really annoying (either with super high damage that can OHKO me, or insane run-speed that I can't catch). That said, there are many 1H DKs that can go toe to toe with me and it becomes a DPS race. They have to take out 60k HP/High Regen, and I have to take out 120k+HP/Low Regen with lots of blocked hits in there. It is even more annoying when they have insanely high attack speed and interrupt a bunch of my attacks with stuns. Usually, if I get an unblocked crit against them, they'll lose. Otherwise, they will likely win.

 

Few clarifications.
1. Tank also has another defense boosting skill, rageful swing. 20% for 3 sec makes quite a difference. Not that everyone uses it as oppose to attack, but anyway.
2. The fact that pretty much everyone can reach the same stats in character info screen is meaningless, guess you agree. It's all about what you can do with those stats given your class skills.
3. You just cannot ignore the sets and unique bonuses, they add a lot to equation.
4. You cannot simply compare pure damage % on skills, it is again, about how often you can use them. The fact that ice sphere has slightly more dmg than smash doesn't make it better.

Now the claim. At the end game, equally gemed/glyphed/skilled tank will out class mage at a boss fight despite having less damage % on his skills. Why? Because of what you call the Art and the Science combined. And another claim, it is opposite at newbie level.

We should analyze everything together. Stats, items and itemssets, constraints, skills etc. What is the sustainable effective damage output given all of the above.

1. On paper, mage can do witch seeker, and have the same character info damage. In reality, mage cannot. Mage reaches his highest sustainable damage output with Q4 set, and mana focused setup. More LS in a teleport cycle, the better. So mage is pretty much limited to the following setup. Q4 2/2, Q1 Torso, Q5 Pauldrons, Dragan Gloves with periods, Dragan Boots, Dragan Ring, White Spider Cloak and (option1 adornment, mortis ring, amulet of choice) or (option 2, premium adornment, premium ring, premium amulet). DK on the other side can combine witchseeker, q7 and dragan. Bottom line, mage has lower damage but higher mana.
2. Mage has to be a master of LS, MC, Teleport, Singu and most importantly Vienna Waltz to be able to keep the boss in place, dance around, hit and sustain charge with LS, and reset cooldowns. Since its hard to sustain with a number of bosses, and in case of any mistake the cycle is broken and mage is off the fast kill competition.
3. DK, on the other side, again, at the end game, can dodge the boss earning rage at the same time, maintaining volcano and hitting with smash, and healing as required. All standing, but avoiding high dmg hits like grimmag laser. Add dragon hide to the soup, so it's 8 seconds of unlimited smash and no risk to die.

(I'm not at the end game lvl with my DK, but I can kill Teddy standing at Painful, something I wouldnt be able to do with similarly equipped mage).

So to sum up, as new levels are introduced and DK cannot yet handle the 'standing' playstyle, Mage will, perhaps, be faster. As soon as DK adjusts to new levels of resist/armor/hp, mage will lose.

Just in case, by no means do I say mage needs higher damage. Mage needs rework of his sets. Unconstrained Emilia Weapon would do the trick, but it has been nerfed to a crap level. Ability to use Sigi on bosses would do the trick, but that's not happening. Bigger hit area for the LS would be useful, also not happening.

 

A good chance will be tgo make destruction weaker like -200 percent dmg but without cd or just to be cast twice as fast because now its unhealthy design.. 2 frozen spheres deal more dmg than 1 destruction and since im binded for 4 sec im pretty much asking to get killed.Foe 4sec i can do any other skill and deal more dmg so why use destruction ???.This is a good change interms of pvp and pve balance

 

I see...then tell me how do you plan on fixing the current status of the mage class please.How are you going to compensate the fact that the mages have to run for almost the entire boss run and that they have to always position themselves first before attacking (and if the boss moves his main dmg attacks miss a lot). Also you agreed that mages are crap in PvP, how would you change that? If at 30k dmg they are crap in pvp, then doesnt that mean that 30k dmg is too low? Either way it will be buff the dmg of the skills or the dmg to fix it.

Also same with the bosses.Despite the fact that the mages can reach same dmg as the warrior, they spend much more time per kill.If they warriors had lower % dmg enchantments on weapons and mages same as now or received more dmg with 2hand or 1 hand (for pvp) they could match the DKs on boss kills.Is it that hard to see this? I mean u are oke when warriors do it in 30 seconds but u are not ok if they do it in 1-2 minutes if BP would lower the % enchantments for warriors weapons? Why should we mages be ok with that then if u arent?

So my claim is illogical, but having tanks reach top dmg is logical? Man, its a tank class..we all refer to it as TANK...BP made better defense gems for them to pinpoint the fact that they are TANKS...It is illogical for a TANK to beat a SW in dmg.None of the classes have the survivability that DK has ingame.. Why should a DK also have the best dmg or matched dmg as the other classes when no other classes can compare with him in terms of defense and survivability?Does this make sense to u?

Tell me more about these sacrifices and this science of playing the game.No matter what u chose, no matter how you play, as a mage u are by far the worst of all 4.What should i sacrifice to be better? Will any set ingame allow me to kill a 1hand dk? Will any set ingame allow me to be as good as a DK at bosses? NO...Then what are we talking about here? I dare u to make a top mage, royal all over, 30-35k dmg, then when a 1hand dk makes fun of you in arena you can come here and we talk about this science of playing the game.When you will have the best gems, runes, all of the above and u will see that it will take u 2 minutes longer to kill a boss and a warrior without having maxed runes and gems does it in 30 s, then we can talk even more about this art of playing.

Man i get it, u play a warrior, your opinions are subjective because u dont want to agree that the difference between these 2 classes are that big because u are afraid that BP might do some changes.

Exactly!!! And this is not right.Ofc the only ones who dont see this are warriors.If BP will turn the tables overnight and allow mages to 1hit the bosses when u guys will do it in 30 sec, this topic will be full of rage posts comming from warriors.If BP will decide to make the mages "immortal" in pvp and not warriors, the rage..omg the rage...

The buff should be also in PvE for the reasons ive mentioned above.Anyways..For the PvP part, the thing is that no matter which class fights vs a good 1hand DK, the dk will win in most cases.So instead of fixing 3 classes my suggestion would be to fix just the DK in the PvP part.Tweaking those regeneration skills by adding a cooldown to the Battle frenzy skill and seriously nerfing that Superhuman regeneration from the Wisdom tree will give all 3 classes a better chance when fightning a DK.This is like a must.If they buff the other classes, the matches will be even more unbalanced when mages will fight mages or rangers for instance.

For the PvP part, all classes should receive a nerf instead of a buff.Hp regeneration skills, q8 spam, EAs double dmg..dunno if SMs need any nerf in pvp..they already are bad as it is xD

 

The assumption that the only benefit of a quiver is it's easier to max CD is , well, just wrong. If CD can be maxed easier then what else happens?

What does a shield basically do? It increases EHP. But my actual HP is already much higher than the typical RA in PvP. The #1 question I got from opponents in PvP is, "How much HP do you have anyway?" That is when I used to play PvP like I actually cared and switched to my PvP build. But I really don't care about PvP anymore and when I do play for a clover I just join with whatever PvE build I was last using. After all I can only have one Bear in my CB and being a Teganite the mounts from the other formats are only a pipe dream now.

Also it's not just that a quiver makes it easier to max CD but it becomes much harder with a buckler. CD lines on jewelry are not enough. Other gear choices get locked in for CD bonuses. For a long time player that has a lot of runes that will help somewhat.

Been there, done that (hence no "wasted crit".) Even in Inf I my CHR is near max with this helm. Although I am building a new one for Khalys hat. I aslo wear more than one hat. Inf II hat uses some CHR enchantment. Interestingly enough I rarely switch over (because I have an easier way to bump my crit without losing much on another stat.) The myth that a player needs 80% to effectively run in higher tier PvE is just that... a myth. The introduction of Inf III is the first time I have considered making my first 4/4 CHR hat for Inf IV; maybe not until V. I already have the 3/4 legend ingredients for this since at one time I did buy into using my buckler would be better.

The are really only two downsides of a 1h/quiver build. First the devs refuse to give RAs a decent unique longbow. Even a standalone would be nice but one as part of a useful set would be awesome. Second is that it takes a lot of thought and grind for the right gear to make it work. This is, ofc the bane of the majority of players that want easy cookie cutter builds.

So while I agree with your points about the classes/builds for PVP I am just a bit that you have been corrupted by the devs in thinking the 1h/quiver RA is dead or at least not viable for PvP.

Luck be with ye,
Mikey,
Tegan

 

I really like the fact that farming it’s so dynamic due to the high dmg of players, but I do think that Pve and pvp should be separated, especially q7 sets are to powerful for pvp, there is always some problems with pvp, being a 2h warrior in pvp was really bad, 85k hp 76% armor and 68% resistance was still not enough, mages could kill me with only 2 fireballs,
Rangers with just one explosive arrow,
Now that makes me have to build 1h build for pvp, and the only problem I’ve notice are dwarfs, rocket and q7 set they kill us to easy. This is my point of view playing as dragon knight

 

ummm...... you go for 2 h glass cannon build you die fast mate what is the unnormal here i have 77 percent armor as a mage and tanks deal 50k per smash , i dont think thats unnormal, i think you just have too high expectations of your stats

 

They are enough ... even if you are using 3 of them you get 18.2x12=218.4 ... you only need to get 81.6 more from bonuses/unique enchantments/runes which is quite easy (even if you are using 18.0% lines instead of 18.2%). On top of it you have one piece of jewelry left to use it for crit or hp.
I was never using quiver until R155 and Lor'Tac ... I was always using a shield both in PvE and PvP.
Nowadays I am making 2 builds with quiver for PvE and shield for PvP.
One of the reasons why the game is broken ... besides the ridiculous bonuses and buffs ... is the fact that 2H builds are being given unfair advantage on all fields. 2H shoudn't reach beyond 2.00 attack speed (even in the most $$$ and utopian build) ... they should never reach 80% crit in infernal (after all that is the benefit of playing 1h + quiver ... having less base damage but having a high crit rate) ... etc.
But what we know about games right? We have been playing games only for 3-5 decades ... there are Game Designers who just turned 18 ... they are the ones who know everything about games. They don't know much about gaming but they are experts in clicking Ctrl+C - Ctrl+V sequences .. where C=other games and V=DSO . We should listen to them ... NOT!

 

I am not deviating from what I have said earlier about tanks ... and the things are getting worse not better.

 

You (in general anyone that thinks like this) should severly reconsider the importance you give the map farming.
Bosses in this game are extremly overstimated, what really gives you ANYTHING you need is the maps clearing:
- andermants
- gold
- gems
- gliphs
- materi fragments
- crafting mats

With materi you'll be able to buy:
- uniques
- cores
- gliphs
- TPs

There's no real reason for pushing higher G Rif... err higher mods other than the personal challenge.
Even the elemental cores you could need are WAY better to be farmed in painful and if you pretend to farm those in higher mods than painful you're just shooting yourself in a foot (in painful you spend 83,3 materi per core, in inf 2 you spend 85,7 per core and it takes more than five times the time for the kill only to get twice the cores).
So, definatly fast runs are the bread and butter of this game as it has always been in basically any H&S (PoE, D2, D3, Sacred, MU Legends, etc.).

The only exception are few bosses like Dragan that come every once in a while and will never pretend to set the rules of the game.

The class that performs better in the map clearing and is decent enough in the boss fight is the one that will have the faster progress in the game and that's not the DK.

 

I'm actually fascinated how you managed to get everything wrong.

 

Newbie detected, indeed)

 

I actually just pressed the quote button to discuss this very statement
If you ask me, the gnob bow is exactly this: a viable, strong standalone unique bow that enforces a new and fun playstyle. I myself enjoy playing pvp and pve a lot with it (farming inf3 with bouncing blades with ease, probably even faster than most 2h players (faster than poor mages anyway).
However, it is true, that bouncing blades is extremely costly (purchase price, upgrading price to t6...) but at the other hand I'm saving a lot of gold which I had to spend to switch from 2h to 1h (pve/pvp setup).


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For the rest of the ongoing discussion - when reading some of the comments, I don't feel like most of the participants here can give serious input to balance highend pvp / pve situation (I am saying highend, because I dont think it makes sense to find a balancing for chars that are far away from their potential). But since we are all spreading our "opinions" I'll just leave my "opinion" here

• 2h mages are far behind all other classes in terms of farming at the moment. The nerf of the emilia weapon was not necessary and could have changed the situation
• 2h dks are - once again, like they used to be in lvl 45 times - by far the best solo farm class and also in group play probably the most beneficial group members
• 1h dks are - repeating myself, once again like lvl 40/45/50 - the best pvp class. 1h Rangers can come close. Both classes need rebalancing

 

I'm fascinated how you've never seen how H&S work

 

I dont know if im blind or smt but has anyone seen that in this thread everybody except DKs agree that mages are weak? Idk is this fear or pure stupidity?

To @Slabutul9 . Good that you observe things but if you have a tank making the boss stay in 1 place proves NOTHING. you Never and ill repeat Never get the boss to stay in 1 place when fighting solo... your whole wall of text became irrelevant the moment you said that you tanked the boss......because you just prove that the mages are weak because their skills are not good designed in terms of bossfighting.

@Saved_81 You get pristine cores from bosses(And you save your frags to buy high tier stuff so 2things with 1 shot= efficinecy). crafting materials since bosses give 4 legs in inf1 ( which is VERY important for weapon crafting especially) Gold you can sell the legs too so here is your gold. Materi frags well the chest near the boss.... every seen that thing buddy ?Gems ummmmm every boss gives atleast 2 stones on death or you have missed that too ???. And unless you are braindead you will NOT buy glyphs because they are too expensive for the amount you get..

Im gonna repeat think before you write or just dont write.

 

They drove themselves in a minefield in regards to balance and every time someone tried to suggest a safe way out of the minefield they refused and didn't listen. Not onyl that, they got deeper into the minefield and now they have no safe way out

They are lazy, not as lazy as steam asset flippers though,but they manage to do wrong while copying successful games