37 replies to this topic

[chukk]

As BVRBandit once stated, the introduction of PvP in Alganon will require this games classes to be balanced.

They might be balanced for PvE (which i honestly don't think so), but PvP wise it's even alot worse. There's Champions running wild, hitting for 500+ elemental damage auto-attacking with their bows (30m - 36m range) or critting for 3k's in melee combat, while maintaining a 50%ish physical damage reduction.

There's mages out there, level 50 which barely have 1k hp (due to having hard times obtaining those sweet, purple pieces).

There's healers, who might survive the first hit ... but then they rot on their 300hp/3sec HoT that's one of their only options to get back their health, because even the slightest attempt to stand still for 2.5 seconds to cast the actual heal skill will end in an instant death ...

And last but not least, my favorits ... the Ranger. Those guys are this games MacGyvers. They've got tons of hp, tons of dmg, tons of ranged skills, speed boosts, snares, heals, HoT's, stealths ... name it, they got it.
Their major advantige over all the other classes (at 50 they have 427 base stats, compared to the reavers/champions 335 and magus/cabalist/mystic's 274) is definitely their stat boost, but aside of that, they only have 10% less physical resistance than Warrior Type of Classes but twice their Magical resistances.

And to make things worse, their gear completely supports this trend, compare for yourself:

Heavy Chest - Heavy Pants - Heavy Gloves - Heavy Helmet - Heavy Pauldrons
Total gain: 220 stats, +1100 HP, +440 ATK-Power
Medium Chest - Medium Pants - Medium Gloves - Medium Helmet - Medium Pauldrons
Total gain: 246 stats, +820HP, +164 ATK-Power, +82 Agi(crit/dodge etc)
Light Chest - Light Pants - Light Gloves - Light Helmet - Light Pauldrons
Total gain: 164 stats, +820HP, +146 Spellpower, +1230Focus

So, leaving aside the Reaver/Champions for now, we can see that even tho Rangers/Caster recieve about the same amount of additional HP, they gain almost 20 points more Atk Power than what the casters get Spellpower and they gain additional Agility which helps out with their crit rating and evasion (survivability!), wherease the casters get Focus, which doesnt really help out when you get hit by a 3k crit.

And if the ranger would really opt to heal, with his HoT for example which heals for a measly 60hp per tick without an spellpower bonus, they could also wear the caster gear, giving them +146 Spellpower, or simply go ahead and dualwield purple level 50 daggers with +188 spellpower each (which already pumps the heal to 250hp/tick) and gain more Spellpower than you find on any 2-hand staff, wand combo out there.
And that's completely without the use of lifeblood abilities, considering those, they'd get additional 100% of their Int to spellpower, +10% int, +35% of their spellpower to their spells effect and +25% increase periodic heal on their HoT ...

So with 2 daggers, those light epics and lifeblood abilities your ranger will get approximately:
370ish spellpower from daggers +140 from gear.
they'll have almost 200 (+20) int which adds up to spellpower => ~720 spellpower,
Their spell gain additional 35% of that to their effect => ~970 spellpower for their HoT's

and then, to round things up, their periodic effect gets increase by 25% ... I can only guess
but would that be a 850hp/tick heal which last 15 or more seconds without cooldown and also adds +20% speed?

Maybe i'm wrong here, actually please tell me that this is wrong, because that's more heal a Cabalist can ever dream of dishing out.

Edited by chukk, 08 February 2011 - 10:33 AM.

[zerof]

I am just wondering why the did you use the Dawning set as the basis of the comparison. Isn't it an older gear set designed prior to the class rework and skill change?

The other comment is on the LB rangers. If they are geared and specced to pull that much heals, I am not sure they will be able to kill anyone in PVP. Based on my own experience with a LB ranger in pve, my attack power is pretty low. Kills pretty much rely on heart toxin. You can't kill anyone in pvp with heart toxin or the occasional power shots.

I guess somebody with more pvp experience with LB rangers can pitch in.

[chukk]

As i said above, i'm not a 100% certain if the numbers go that high on the heals ... was just an estimation, based on what i've seen from my buddys Predation Ranger who's dual-wielding those daggers, and without any abilities or any other gear that'd support his heals, manages to heal just as much with his HoT than my Word of Healing does.

While he's in Predation stance, he gets tons of Focus back just by attacking opponents which makes his Focus management way easier than mine cuz i have to rely on my Divine Favor to actually be able to stay alive against him.

And why i based it on that set ... maybe because it's one of the easiest to obtain ?
Test of Faith instances are def. harder than Warfiend, thus making Token of the Dawn farming way easier then obtaining those other tokens.


On another note, how come Cabalist has 2 PvP Sets available, one with Wrath and one with Essence Spellpower on it, while Magus only has a single one with all 3 different types of Elemental Damage on it ?
Those classes are already pretty gimped in my opinion and that move gimps the healer especially even further -.-

Edited by chukk, 08 February 2011 - 03:43 PM.

[beloit551]

this is what scared me when they said they where adding pvp. Nerfs Nerfs Nerfs. Already people are calling for them. Nerfing for pvp will only weaken pve imo and hope they don't do it.

[chukk]

Well, they could just buff those weaker classes to make up for it.
No need to nerf something, but they do have to balance the classes cause they
can't just leave it as it is, else you'll only see Ranger/Reavers in PvP and
maybe some Cabalist/Mystics on the sideline to rebuff those poor fighters.

[zerof]

...else you'll only see Ranger/Reavers in PvP and
maybe some Cabalist/Mystics on the sideline to rebuff those poor fighters.

I suppose your real concern is for duels (1v1). I wonder how big of an issue is it for grouped pvp like towers (and the keeps in the future)? Anyone else has an opinion?

this is what scared me when they said they where adding pvp. Nerfs Nerfs Nerfs. Already people are calling for them. Nerfing for pvp will only weaken pve imo and hope they don't do it.

I am totally agree. The current call of re-balance is a non-issue to me.

[chukk]

Just wondering, what are you guys so friggin afraid off in first place ?

Some nerfs here n there and at once you'll lose your imbalanced state which allows your class to do everything better than others ?

Took me less than half as much time to get my Reaver to 50 than what it took me
to get my Cabalist to 50 ... where the fairness there (pve wise) ?
Why should once class be bothered twice as long till they're also maxed even tho they're only a supporting role for the faster ones, shouldn't it actually be the other way around ?

I'm not requesting for them to make those other classes as weak as the casters ... that would surely ###### up the PvE Balance, i'm just wondering if there's any plans to equalize the existing classes.

And @ Zerof ... if class A and class B are already completly tearing apart class C and class D in 1v1, than it won't be much of a difference in a Keep Siege either. I'd rather have some Ranger guarding a keep which can heal themselves up and have a x-times higher survivability than Mages and still deal about same damage with auto-attacks than Mages with their casts, than some guys which get one-shotted.

Unless you mean "fair" fights, of for example 3 Rangers, a Champion and a Mystic vs 5 Mages and 3 Cabalists ...
Since the servers don't offer the opportunity to actually observe the outcome of such a battle, all we can do is guess how it'd end and if i had to guess, i'd say team A (3ranger,1champ,1Mystic) would kill team B (5mages, 3cabalists) 9 out of 10 times.

(and just out of interest, what are your mains Zerof/beloit?)
as for me, i've got both at 50, a Cabalist and a Reaver ... leveled the Cabalist first thus why i was so shocked when i saw how friggin easy everything was using the Reaver.

Edited by chukk, 10 February 2011 - 02:36 PM.

[Issy]

Chukk, you just gave the answer away on how you leveld your reaver so fast. You already had been through all the quests once on your Healer. Having resources and knowledge the second time around makes any class you do go much faster.

My champ took way longer to get to 50 than my ranger. My magus was even easier and faster to get to 50 than either my champion or ranger and I even put the mage on a separate server. The truth of the matter is any toon you create after your first will level faster.

Now for the PvP aspect. Some tweaking may need to be done but we need more real environment testing before that becomes appearent. In groups not 1v1.

I know that my mage a healer and a reaver had a great battle with a champ, healer, one other I forget. It was a good time for all.

You also have to consider what abilities and studies were chosen. I do know that a spellsword can chew up casters in pvp, but can't tank word bosses. It is all a trade off depending on what route is taken and abilities chosen.

I know class tweaks will come at some point. It has to be done the right way though or it will cause even more problems. They do a good job in this respect, IE when champ/reaver was changed to use energy instead of rage, still took some relearning and tweaking of char's after the change went in but for the most part was a good change. I'm sure it will be the same when they get around to tweaking classes.

[zerof]

Took me less than half as much time to get my Reaver to 50 than what it took me
to get my Cabalist to 50 ... where the fairness there (pve wise) ?
Why should once class be bothered twice as long till they're also maxed even tho they're only a supporting role for the faster ones, shouldn't it actually be the other way around ?
....
(and just out of interest, what are your mains Zerof/beloit?)
as for me, i've got both at 50, a Cabalist and a Reaver ... leveled the Cabalist first thus why i was so shocked when i saw how friggin easy everything was using the Reaver.

I am part of the New Dawning player base. All my 50s (Ranger, Champion, Mystic) were leveled at around all the skill changes. So my experience with leveling can't really apply to the current state of the game. I do feel that spirit drain has an impact on leveling if one is to mob grind instead of questing.

However, I have to agree with Issy. My second and third character leveled easier (not necessarily faster) since I know what to expect, where I should chain the quests, etc. Champion took the longest for me due to the lack of healing ability. Hence I was killing foe one at a time. Leveling was faster on ranger and mystic because of the AOE and healing, which enabled me to take on more at a time.

[BestAwesome]

I can't understand why there needs to be balancing in PvP or even be PvP for that matter. PvP is more of like a test between people with what gear they picked up along their journey, but shouldn't have become the focus of the entire game. To even make PvP gear makes it even less fun because then you won't have people with a diverse range of gear but everyone wearing the same exact PvP gear and lot of our PvE abilities get replaced with PvP abilities or they get nerfed or dumbed down.

Balancing for PvP is a waste of energy and time, don't do it.

[chukk]

So what are you suggesting is the whole point of this game ?
Running Warfiend and ToF instances 24/7, pimping your char up so u can do everything in less than 30 minutes and then what ?

What are you doing once you hit level 50 and got all the gear u want ?
Don't tell me it's fun for you, to run instances for a gazillionth time (who knows ... maybe the gazillionth +1th time it might be different).

Sry but i completely lack that PvE mindset, even after 10 runs through the currently available ToF instances i'm already sick and tired of them. World bosses are a friggin boring waste of time as well and even Warfiend isn't as fun anymore as it used to be during the first few runs.

I've played this game for one and a half month now and i feel like i've seen everything available out there. I've killed pretty much everything there is worth killing (effort/reward ratio). So ... tell me, what next ?

I've got a 200+ Blacksmith, 250 Miner, 250 Herbalist, 250 Alchemist, 250 Tailor, 250 Salvager, and i had a 250 Skinner which i now moved to another toon which will get Leatherworking as well then ... If it wasn't for the possibility to PvP (which mostly exists in theory only since you barely find anyone who's actually willing to PvP), this game completely lacks the content to hold it's players for more than two months.

[Kinslayer]

So what are you suggesting is the whole point of this game ?
Running Warfiend and ToF instances 24/7, pimping your char up so u can do everything in less than 30 minutes and then what ?

What are you doing once you hit level 50 and got all the gear u want ?
Don't tell me it's fun for you, to run instances for a gazillionth time (who knows ... maybe the gazillionth +1th time it might be different).

Sry but i completely lack that PvE mindset, even after 10 runs through the currently available ToF instances i'm already sick and tired of them. World bosses are a friggin boring waste of time as well and even Warfiend isn't as fun anymore as it used to be during the first few runs.

I've played this game for one and a half month everything available out there. I've killed pretty much everything there is worth killing (effort/reward ratio). So ... tell me, what nIf it wasn't for the possibility to PvP (which mostly exists in theory only since you barely find anyone who's actually willing to PvP), this game completely lacks the content to hold it's players for more than two months.

Maybe a str/endu debuff on tanks/rangers to scale their health down. Possibly a nearsight/blindness ability to hinder the archers range. They could also put in a spec line nuke debuff so that pesy 4k tank/ranger has a 50% elec debuff on him or a de-haste/accuracy debuff for the tanks. This might equalize things without a nerf and set it up so that its abilities that work in pvp only ? This would make both groups of people happy.

I also dont think every class should be able to cure debuffs. Maybe a light tank/support hybrid (cough.. warden) could do this.

No one wants to get 1 shot in pvp is the whole point here, not screaming nerf at everything.

A no timer pbaoe attack in the fire/cold line for keep D would be good as well or pissibly a range enhancement in the cold/elec lines rather than just in fire with magus.

Edited by Kinslayer, 16 February 2011 - 08:02 PM.

[Kinslayer]

I can't understand why there needs to be balancing in PvP or even be PvP for that matter. PvP is more of like a test between people with what gear they picked up along their journey, but shouldn't have become the focus of the entire game.

Balancing for PvP is a waste of energy and time, don't do it.

PvP is what will keep people addicted- not dungeon crawling.
The gear for renown smokes the token gear, thus pvp having a need.
The rivalry between factions can be a fun thing.

[zerof]

The gear for renown smokes the token gear, thus pvp having a need.

Is the above true in context of PVP, PVE, or both?

[Kinslayer]

Is the above true in context of PVP, PVE, or both?

Look at the token pve gear- figure in how many successful dungeon runs u have to do to get those items and how fun it would be...
Then go look at the pvp gear (that scales with you) and at what each rank is needed to aquire it.
token gear has 3 stats, pvp gear has 4-6 stats
I feel they could have added more resists to either gear thus making people want to farm something for a template so they dont take as much damage.
It would be a win for them and for us. They just need to refigure how much to earn for kills on renown ranks to make people hooked and want the harder gear.

Edited by Kinslayer, 17 February 2011 - 01:33 AM.

[BestAwesome]

So what are you suggesting is the whole point of this game ?
Running Warfiend and ToF instances 24/7, pimping your char up so u can do everything in less than 30 minutes and then what ?

What are you doing once you hit level 50 and got all the gear u want ?
Don't tell me it's fun for you, to run instances for a gazillionth time (who knows ... maybe the gazillionth +1th time it might be different).

Sry but i completely lack that PvE mindset, even after 10 runs through the currently available ToF instances i'm already sick and tired of them. World bosses are a friggin boring waste of time as well and even Warfiend isn't as fun anymore as it used to be during the first few runs.

I've played this game for one and a half month now and i feel like i've seen everything available out there. I've killed pretty much everything there is worth killing (effort/reward ratio). So ... tell me, what next ?

I've got a 200+ Blacksmith, 250 Miner, 250 Herbalist, 250 Alchemist, 250 Tailor, 250 Salvager, and i had a 250 Skinner which i now moved to another toon which will get Leatherworking as well then ... If it wasn't for the possibility to PvP (which mostly exists in theory only since you barely find anyone who's actually willing to PvP), this game completely lacks the content to hold it's players for more than two months.

The time and energy they could be using to balance PvP and add a new set of PvP armor sets every 3 months or so they could have been used to add more content and expand the world. Heck putting special secrets to uncover would actually be a cool idea some kind of randomly generating secrets you uncover, a special item that can only be found by one person per server, a secret dungeon to uncover that isn't known among other players. You know stuff that makes the game... an adventure not just a bunch of people sitting around a ring hopping in to fight than logging off. If I wanted to play PvP I would pick up a FPS or something where it's more focused on cooperative and hand/eye coordination not who got the PvP gear and who doesn't.

[Kinslayer]

The time and energy they could be using to balance PvP and add a new set of PvP armor sets every 3 months or so they could have been used to add more content and expand the world. Heck putting special secrets to uncover would actually be a cool idea some kind of randomly generating secrets you uncover, a special item that can only be found by one person per server, a secret dungeon to uncover that isn't known among other players. You know stuff that makes the game... an adventure not just a bunch of people sitting around a ring hopping in to fight than logging off. If I wanted to play PvP I would pick up a FPS or something where it's more focused on cooperative and hand/eye coordination not who got the PvP gear and who doesn't.

This kind of game appeals to both types of players. Its been out over a year and if the pve was so good people wouldnt have got bored and left. So the need to push more pve content in my eyes speaks for itself with low populations. You have your interest that didnt keep the population, now maybe its time for something else.

[chukk]

The time and energy they could be using to balance PvP and add a new set of PvP armor sets every 3 months or so they could have been used to add more content and expand the world. Heck putting special secrets to uncover would actually be a cool idea some kind of randomly generating secrets you uncover, a special item that can only be found by one person per server, a secret dungeon to uncover that isn't known among other players. You know stuff that makes the game... an adventure not just a bunch of people sitting around a ring hopping in to fight than logging off. If I wanted to play PvP I would pick up a FPS or something where it's more focused on cooperative and hand/eye coordination not who got the PvP gear and who doesn't.

So you're saying they should spend 3 months on developing content which players get tired off after a week, i mean it's not like those "secrets" are secrets for much longer once someone has spotted them ... if they'd made new instances ... a few runs a week and most of the people are bored of them as well. Not that much won in my opinion and the ratio of invested time to develope and time spend by players till they get bored of it, should be alot worse than on anything that contains PvP, simply because PvE content is usually static ... mobs might patrol through dungeons (which they don't in this games), bosses may or may not use their skill A or skill B at the right time to take down the tank, but in the end most of them follow the same script over and over. Especially on the World Bosses you can notice very well, how they use the exact same stuff every x seconds.

Or compare the PvE MMO to PvP MMO ratio out there and their success ... how come Everquest and its successor couldn't throw WoW from it's throne ? ... most likely because they lacked something ... or simply because PvE alone fails at captivating people for too long.

Edited by chukk, 17 February 2011 - 09:56 AM.

[Kinslayer]

Or compare the PvE MMO to PvP MMO ratio out there and their success ... how come Everquest and its successor couldn't throw WoW from it's throne ?

I figure the parent company got lazy and cashed in, made promises and cut their staff for higher profit margins and the dated engine or a new one that sucked drove people away. Dark Age is a good example that I can speak from experience on.

Edited by Kinslayer, 17 February 2011 - 10:12 PM.

[BestAwesome]

So you're saying they should spend 3 months on developing content which players get tired off after a week, i mean it's not like those "secrets" are secrets for much longer once someone has spotted them ... if they'd made new instances ... a few runs a week and most of the people are bored of them as well. Not that much won in my opinion and the ratio of invested time to develope and time spend by players till they get bored of it, should be alot worse than on anything that contains PvP, simply because PvE content is usually static ... mobs might patrol through dungeons (which they don't in this games), bosses may or may not use their skill A or skill B at the right time to take down the tank, but in the end most of them follow the same script over and over. Especially on the World Bosses you can notice very well, how they use the exact same stuff every x seconds.

Or compare the PvE MMO to PvP MMO ratio out there and their success ... how come Everquest and its successor couldn't throw WoW from it's throne ? ... most likely because they lacked something ... or simply because PvE alone fails at captivating people for too long.

Far as I can tell the secrets will not be found as easily as in a week especially when this game doesn't have it's own wiki or anyone would go the trouble to design a website that give out information in the game. I had to check out some random review on this game by MMOHut I believe it was to find out what the dungeons were in it. As long as these secret bonuses are not put into the ingame library, they would be worth the fun to look for. And heck I'm not talking about stuff you find in the coords 34, 36 but stuff that won't always be found in the same spot, like randomized secrets that could re generate the next week etc.

How it is now is that it's going to be all about reaching max level cap, getting the best pvp gear. Now let's see what other games follow that same model... hmmm I believe that's about 50,000 other games that do that. And some of them are already successful in those models, competing against that?

Edited by BestAwesome, 18 February 2011 - 04:27 AM.