Balance suggestion

[LightningCape]

Per @Kainzo 's request. Old thread was getting cluttered. @Balance Team

Here's a list of changes that doesn't require completely new skills or coding. This also includes skills that change in function using code that already exists which are marked with ***
@Kainzo
Ranger-

• Reduce base armor number from 42.5 to 30
• Add a regent of 1-2 gunpowder to Explosiveshot
• Aimedshot (several options) ***
  • Fix the fact you can shoot arrows while charging this
  • Make it so the arrow will miss if they're not looking at the target (think I've seen line of sight on other skills so nothing new)

Bard-

• Lower base HP from 675 to 630
• Lower bow dmg
  • Numbers for this seem unavaible but fully charged arrows on a max bard do over 110 dmg easily (no agility points)
• Reduce disk dmg from 56.7 to 50

Runeblade-

• Nothing

Ninja- (le sigh)

• Remove free shuriken on backflip
• remove Garrote
• Possibly "test" new smoke idea (no new coding really required) ***
  • Fade is now a toggle skill. When toggled it make the user invisible. This would allow ninja to constantly go in and out of visability providing a new dynamic to the class.
    • Mana: 25 mana per second.
    • Stamina: 65 Stamina per second ( With this, a ninja wouldn't be able to stealth and regain his stamina mid battle)
    • Cooldown: 5 seconds after you've become visible. You become visible when ever you: Take damage, deal damage, or use any skill (This includes fade which will simply reveal you.)

Pyromancer-

• Nothing

Wizard- (finally)

• Lower fireball damage (initial) from 95 to 70
• Lower blink initial range from 8 to 5 and keep scaling at 0.1 per INT
• Remove range scaling on Arcaneblast and reduce range to 6 blocks (from 12+scaling)
• Reduce dmg on Arcaneblast from 215 to 180
• Reduce warm up on arcaneblast from 6-5 to 4
• Increase entangle CD from 20 to 35

Necromancer-

• Fix speed of bonesear (slower)

Beguiler

• Reduce plaguebomb scaling from 2.875 to 1
• Add nausea effect on plaguebomb ***
  • Or better yet the beguile effect but nausea if nothing

Dreadknight-

• Re-add shadowstep

Paladin-

• None

berserker-

• Change Rupture bleeding from 5 damage every block to 10 damage every block (still 8 secs)

Dragoon- (le sigh)

• Jump (le sigh)
  • Decrease CD from 7.5 to 6
  • Increase stam cost from 400 to (550-650)
  • Yes this nerfs running, deal with it.
• Reduce left click base damage on all spades by 6

Druid-

• None

Cleric-

• None

Disciple-

• Forcepull and forcepush scale with intellect and do magic damage
• Flyingkick's range now scales with strength
• Increase slow on Ironfist to slow III but decrease damage
• Remove alacrity (@Kainzo do you still want disciple to have a stat increasing skill? Maybe something that adds strength and intellect?)
• Buff Disciple's base armor weight by 5
• To help compare it to other armor weights
  • Disciple, 29 Endurance: 40 armor weight
  • Wizard, 19 Endurance: 40 armor weight
  • Runeblade, 20 Endurance: 40 armor weight
  • Ranger, 5 Endurance: 40 armor weight
  • Cleric, 5 Endurance: 50 armor weight

Shaman-

• @0xNaomi ideas?
• Possibly reduce firestrike totem damage
  • Does pretty high dmg with no attributes

Bloodmage-

• Fix stealessence
  • Currently steals nothing
• Fix boilblood ***
  • DoT only hits 1 person when it should hit more (initial dmg does hit more than 1 target)

 

[mikehk]

as said in old thread, agree with most, disagree with garrote and half the wizard changes, also a few other changes.

• Garrote is quite useful, people simply look at numbers, it's a skill that silences for 3 seconds. 3 seconds is a long fricken time especially when combined with kick/blind. however, to gain this advantage and to retain ninja's ninjaness, make it require sneak/invis and behind the target. retain the string thing, we dont want win buttons, even though scrolling one or two slots over takes less than .2 seconds...
• agrees with wizard:
  • fireball damage
• semi-agree
  • entangle's cooldown from 20-->35 is a bit much, go with 27~
  • arcaneblast range reduced, only down to 8-9 blocks, we dont want a wizard sitting that close to the target for 4.5 seconds, yet we want the target able to run away/bash in time if they want.
  • the warmup on arcaneblast is already 4.5 seconds, no need to change.
• disagree
  • blink range, it needs to stay the same. wizard is squishy as all hell, and needs some form of defense. kiting is this defense, blink should stay the same, medium cooldown, good range.
  • arcaneblast damage should NOT be lowered. almost every class has some counter to this. all warriors have bash, all rogues have a form of silence, casters can run with mobility skills (everyone can run, but casters have roots/stuns/escape skills). druid has root to run, cleric has invuln/guardianangel, bloodmage has thickenblood to assist escape, disciple is loaded down with interupts, and shaman has windgale/shockingstrike.
• druid
  • give ire a .5-1 second warmup, will reduce mass kiting.
• dragoon
  • ew, that stamina cost is insane. its a jumping class, not a class that uses jump once. however much I would like to see goons nerfed to the ground, I don't want them completely useless.
  • keep jump stam cost at 400, if possible, make it so that you take 20% more damage for 3 seconds after using jump.
  • make superjump like enderpearl, long cd in combat, normal out of combat.
• disciple
  • alacrity should not give str and int. as a support class, it excells in group fights, and it's buffs should not be used only for itself.

my opinion on the original post.

 

[0xNaomi]

Shaman-

• @0xNaomi ideas?
• Possibly reduce firestrike totem damage
  • Does pretty high dmg with no attributes

My ideas are the same as usual:

• Think the community is ready to un-nerf it yet? (If you don't remember what I wanted Shaman to do, you haven't read my posts enough)
• Change to mage
• Readd shock once we get soundless lightning working

 

[Egorh]

Well, Druid does need some changes. It's kiting is too strong and it's healing is too 'easy'. I haven't been looking at their #s or anything so this is just a rough idea of what needs to happen

Ire

• Reduce range to be the same as a cleric's smite (maybe a block or two more)
• Reduce damage

Bolt

• Reduce range by one or two blocks
• Increase damage

Rejuvenate

• I've been hearing people say that this skill is just 'meh' and that it heals less than Healing Bloom-an AOE
• An idea that has popped up in the past it a skill similar to bonespear but that heals. I know that we are supposed to have no code changes but would this be doable with minimal code change @0xNaomi ?

 

[Egorh]

My ideas are the same as usual:

• Think the community is ready to un-nerf it yet? (If you don't remember what I wanted Shaman to do, you haven't read my posts enough)
• Change to mage
• Readd shock once we get soundless lightning working

Well, if we do bring back down the totem CDs I really think that Firestrike totem needs a pretty decent damage nerf. Atm it can deal about 2-4 hearts to most people

Edit: I know that people can just run out of the range to avoid a lot of the damage, but if the CD is lowered you will be able to risk placing a bad Firestrike totem

@mikehk I threw that Str/Int idea in just as a option. Personally with the buffs we have to Disciple right now a stat buff will not be needed

 

[Kainzo]

My primary concern here... we're making a lot of huge debuffs across the board... very few actual increases... I believe this will impact most people negatively... I'm going through these to see where we should go with them.

 

[Kainzo]

Below are the marks in green that have been changed on test, the red means it wont be changed, yellow means it require coding.

=========================================================================


Ranger-

• Reduce base armor number from 42.5 to 30
• Add a regent of 1-2 gunpowder to Explosiveshot
• Aimedshot (several options) ***
  • Fix the fact you can shoot arrows while charging this
  • Make it so the arrow will miss if they're not looking at the target (think I've seen line of sight on other skills so nothing new)

Bard-

• Lower base HP from 675 to 630
• Lower bow dmg
  • Numbers for this seem unavaible but fully charged arrows on a max bard do over 110 dmg easily (no agility points)
• Reduce disk dmg from 56.7 to 50

Runeblade-

• Nothing

Ninja- (le sigh)

• Remove free shuriken on backflip
• remove Garrote
• Possibly "test" new smoke idea (no new coding really required) ***
  • Fade is now a toggle skill. When toggled it make the user invisible. This would allow ninja to constantly go in and out of visability providing a new dynamic to the class.
    • Mana: 25 mana per second.
    • Stamina: 65 Stamina per second ( With this, a ninja wouldn't be able to stealth and regain his stamina mid battle)
    • Cooldown: 5 seconds after you've become visible. You become visible when ever you: Take damage, deal damage, or use any skill (This includes fade which will simply reveal you.)

Pyromancer-

• Nothing

Wizard- (finally)

• Lower fireball damage (initial) from 95 to 70
• Lower blink initial range from 8 to 5 and keep scaling at 0.1 per INT
• Remove range scaling on Arcaneblast and reduce range to 6 blocks (from 12+scaling)
• Reduce dmg on Arcaneblast from 215 to 180
• Reduce warm up on arcaneblast from 6-5 to 4
• Increase entangle CD from 20 to 35

Necromancer-

• Fix speed of bonesear (slower)

Beguiler

• Reduce plaguebomb scaling from 2.875 to 1
• Add nausea effect on plaguebomb ***
  • Or better yet the beguile effect but nausea if nothing

Dreadknight-

• Re-add shadowstep

Paladin-

• None

berserker-

• Change Rupture bleeding from 5 damage every block to 10 damage every block (still 8 secs)

Dragoon- (le sigh)

• Jump (le sigh)
  • Decrease CD from 7.5 to 6
  • Increase stam cost from 400 to (550-650)
  • Yes this nerfs running, deal with it.
• Reduce left click base damage on all spades by 6

Druid-

• None

Cleric-

• None

Disciple-

• Forcepull and forcepush scale with intellect and do magic damage
• Flyingkick's range now scales with strength
• Increase slow on Ironfist to slow III but decrease damage
• Remove alacrity (@Kainzo do you still want disciple to have a stat increasing skill? Maybe something that adds strength and intellect?)
• Buff Disciple's base armor weight by 5
• To help compare it to other armor weights
  • Disciple, 29 Endurance: 40 armor weight
  • Wizard, 19 Endurance: 40 armor weight
  • Runeblade, 20 Endurance: 40 armor weight
  • Ranger, 5 Endurance: 40 armor weight
  • Cleric, 5 Endurance: 50 armor weight

Shaman-

• @0xNaomi ideas?
• Possibly reduce firestrike totem damage
  • Does pretty high dmg with no attributes

Bloodmage-

• Fix stealessence
  • Currently steals nothing
• Fix boilblood ***
  • DoT only hits 1 person when it should hit more (initial dmg does hit more than 1 target)

 

[Dsawemd]

My primary concern here... we're making a lot of huge debuffs across the board... very few actual increases... I believe this will impact most people negatively... I'm going through these to see where we should go with them.

Idk I see the following as positive and exciting:
Ninja Fade Mechanic
DreadKnight ShadowStep
Disciple Rework
BloodMage Fixes/A bit of love
Shaman Fix the Hot Fix of 60 sec Totem CD


More Positive Suggestions for Exciting Stuff.
Beguiler: could use some better Charisma scaling on skills to go along with that decreased INT scaling on Plaguebomb, or a unique bread and butter Fireball like Necro and Pyromancer have.
Druid: Lower Healing Numbers a bit, but importantly: smooth out the rotation to make all skills feel impactful. The previous thread and @JupiterRome had some ideas, and Mike/True has already commented here^ on their offensive capabilities.
Pyromancer: Wizard is losing a bit of it's mobility, but Pyromancer is a class that could become more mobile and take over part of the mobile caster role. With the current implementations, could a Pyro speed buff be justifiable?
Paladin: If you want to add something new, consider using Paladin to test out some of the newer blocking mechanics I have heard Kainzo mention may be coming in regards to a possible Samurai (or whatever grand scheme involves those mysterious terms "Custom Items" and "Swing Energy"). With the increased presence of a DreadKnight with ShadowStep, the Pally is hopefully embracing more of a wall role now and a re-imagining of the Shield Passive could turn into an Active full Physical mitigation (not an Invuln, perhaps Magic does a %increased during this time?) for a short duration while holding the door. This in conjunction with possible reduction to their melee damage Attribute Scaling with STR (not the base melee damage, just the increase from STR).

 

[0xNaomi]

Well, if we do bring back down the totem CDs I really think that Firestrike totem needs a pretty decent damage nerf. Atm it can deal about 2-4 hearts to most people

If we get it back to having something else for real dmg, then yes, yes, yes.
Firestrike was made with the idea of being a long range snipe, not burst.

(As for CDs, the whole mess my idea made was juggling mana replaces it and lets the user ignore it if they feel they can get away with it... that can also lead to being screwed over and dying, though, so there's that)

 

[Egorh]

Dragoon-

• Jump (le sigh)
  • Decrease CD from 7.5 to 6
  • Increase stam cost from 400 to (550-650)
  • Yes this nerfs running, deal with it.
• Reduce left click base damage on all spades by 6

Ok, after hearing more of the community's opinion on Dragoon it would be ignorant (right word?) of us not to address some issues. Spear and impale are barely used.
Spear

• Make range scale with agility
• Reduce damage (I can't go on test to look at the numbers because test is down-and heroes is not implemented on it atm)

Impale

• Reduce warmup to 0.5s (like ironfist)
• Range scales with agility (worst scaling than what spear would be)
• Reduce damage

 

[LightningCape]

Ok, after hearing more of the community's opinion on Dragoon it would be ignorant (right word?) of us not to address some issues. Spear and impale are barely used.
Spear

• Make range scale with agility
• Reduce damage (I can't go on test to look at the numbers because test is down-and heroes is not implemented on it atm)

Impale

• Reduce warmup to 0.5s (like ironfist)
• Range scales with agility (worst scaling than what spear would be)
• Reduce damage

The impale changes seem fine but we should be careful on the range of spear. It was 12 blocks before the nerf awhile ago and I don't want to see it go back to that.

 

[Kainzo]

Changes going in now.

Impale
Increased range to 7 (was 6)
Reduce damage to base 40 (from 50)
Spear
Reduce damage to 35 from 55
Increase range to 8 (was 6)

AGI based scaling for distance would take more coding/copying - I dont have the time to scale it at the moment.

 

[Egorh]

Changes going in now.

Impale
Increased range to 7 (was 6)
Reduce damage to base 40 (from 50)
Spear
Reduce damage to 35 from 55
Increase range to 8 (was 6)

AGI based scaling for distance would take more coding/copying - I dont have the time to scale it at the moment.

I was wondering if there is a way for us to look at all the config files-that way we get the exact numbers without spending an hour or two on test doing math. I know you like to keep the access list short but we wouldn't be able to edit anything (maybe a google doc?) just look

 

[Kainzo]

I was wondering if there is a way for us to lo ok at all the config files-that way we get the exact numbers without spending an hour or two on test doing math. I know you like to keep the access list short but we wouldn't be able to edit anything (maybe a google doc?) just look

Since it is always changes - there's no way to have an "updated" list of configs - nor do we want to give it out to anyone unless they have direct access. Not to mention it can be very confusing to read the files and I'd rather not waste time explaining why something adds up to the value.

Use test. Everything is at your fingertips and you should be spending time testing and double checking info, rather than assuming and trusting possible outdated info.

 

[LightningCape]

@Kainzo
Any ETA yet on when changes will be pushed live?
http://herocraftonline.com/main/threads/patch-5-30-0-balancing.50981/

 

[Dsawemd]

Is there anything we can do besides theory-craft balance implementations in the balance Forum to help with 5.30?

 

[Egorh]

Well, I don't think we have any precise druid changes, and Paladin's left click damage seems a bit too high. It can put out pretty good dps for how tanky it is

 

[Egorh]

Also, I was 1v1ing Wild_Porygon on the test server and we found out that Steal Essence does not work against some of the most used buffs now. The attribute buffs. Alacrity, chaotic strength, etc. Would it be possible to steal these attribute buffs (but with reduced time on them--15 minutes from stealing a buff would be a lot, maybe like 30s for attribute steals). @0xNaomi

 

[0xNaomi]

Also, I was 1v1ing Wild_Porygon on the test server and we found out that Steal Essence does not work against some of the most used buffs now. The attribute buffs. Alacrity, chaotic strength, etc. Would it be possible to steal these attribute buffs (but with reduced time on them--15 minutes from stealing a buff would be a lot, maybe like 30s for attribute steals). @0xNaomi

Without looking at code (need to redo my environment, really don't want to...) the immediate way to detect this would just be any attribute increase effect...
But not sure if there's ever a case something else would want to use that. If there is, though, it'd be troublesome.

 

[LightningCape]

All the bloodmage bugs have been put into a bug post. Hope they get looked at. It could change the current ideas/suggestions we have for the class.