Changes

[Kainzo]

@Balance Team

With my move to Herocraft full time, there will be changes around (on all teams)
I have not been very active in the balancing of the classes and for that I do apologize.
I would like to bring more balancing and testing to the test server and push the things that we think are ready to go live.

----------
Current changes
These are the changes being made now.

Increase magic resist per constitution by 0.001

Lostsoul

• All starting Lostsouls will gain +3 to attributes (up from +0)

Ninja:

• Reduce Smoke CD from base 45s to 35s
• Reduce duration from 5.5s to 3.5s
• Change hp from 640 base to 560
• Removed Blackjack in favor of Garrote (not coded yet)
• Reduce blind range from 12 to 8 blocks

Ranger
Change base hp to 630
Bard
Change base hp to 650
Runeblade
Change base hp to 600
Wizard
Increase base hp to 520 | increase blink distance to 8, increase cooldown to 15s base | Decrease cost of Entangle to 75m, increase cd to 20s
Pyromancer
Change base hp to 640
Necromancer
Change base hp to 600
Beguiler
Change base hp to 590

Paladin - 630
Dreadknight - 610
Berzerker - 600
Dragoon - 590 | reduce spear range to 6 blocks | reduce impale range to 6 blocks | increase jump cd to 7.5s base

• Wood_Spade: 0.25
• Stone_Spade: 0.33
• Iron_Spade: 0.35
• Diamond_Spade: 0.38
• Gold_Spade: 0.40

Cleric - 635
Disciple - 650
Bloodmage - 625
Druid - 625

 

[malikdanab]

Good to hear. Hopefully we can fix the problems the player base have been yelling about quickly.

 

[Sirdemonic3]

yay lets do stuff

 

[Kainzo]

Good to hear. Hopefully we can fix the problems the player base have been yelling about quickly.

Please gather me a list of concerns - Malikdan - it will help to have it concise.

 

[malikdanab]

It's mainly classes current state. I hate to use the term "OP," but there are some pretty compelling cases.

Ninja-

This is the current go to rogue class and for good reason. Currently they have a base HP @65 of 902 making it have more hp than all warriors besides paladin (Bard has more HP than paladin). There's a lowered amount on test and I think it's adequate.

Peoples main concern is blackjack. As you know, blackjack was an old remnant of "Thief's" skill and has over time been changed from a percentage chance skill to a guaranteed stun. This has caused a problem where a ninja can run head on to a warrior and come out the victor. What many have agreed to be a good solution is the change blackjack into "Garrote." The difference would be that you can only use the skill when sneaking or in stealth with a small warm-up. This would better fit ninja's stealthy nature. It also makes more sense as an ambush tactic rather than "I hit them with a stick so they are now stunned."

Another change that would benefit the class and make ninjas a less of a headache is changing smoke. Currently the stealth is so long that a ninja is almost guaranteed to get away in that time. Others have suggested that Smoke's CD and Duration to be reduced. This makes the skill less of an escape and provides them more ways to sneak up and use the new garrote.

Changes:

• Reduce Base HP
• Change Blackjack to garrote
• Smoke
  • Reduce CD
  • Reduce Duration

Dragoon-

This is probably the most worrisome class atm. Combined with it's very high damage and insane mobility, it's impossible to escape a goon. On the flip-side, they can also disengage from fight just as easily.

When it comes to base stats they are surprisingly high considering the concept of the class. It has higher hp and armor than Berserker (In my mind, the scale of tankiness on warriors goes Dragoon, Beserker, Dreadknight, Paladin) The real problem is their insanely high base melee damage. Currently they do 60 damage @ 65 with a diamond shovel. This is 12 points higher than Paladin ( the warrior with the second highest base melee damage.)

The next problems are the skills. We know dragoon is supposed to be mobility, but they are currently overwhelmingly so. A simple increase of jumps CD seems adequate to make it more of a decision. If they want to attack they will have to take more risks since they can''t jump away as soon.

There is also the problem of dragoon's "Spear" and "Impale" skills. Dragoon is supposed to be long range, but these 2 skills cause massive problems. In the case of spear, it's 12 block range makes it impossible for a mage to kite them. The same problem in a lesser degree occurs with impale. A simple reduction to their range should be fine.

Lastly there is tremor. To be frank, tremor is a very annoying skill atm. If you so happen to be able to catch up to a goon (They usually perch on a building where you can' reach unless you have a mobility skill) They will just tremor you off. I don't know how tremor got to this. It used to be a skill that you activated up high and would deal damage to where you land based on how far you fell. Now it's just a giant knock back that prevents anyone from ever reaching a goon. If you where to keep the skill, I would increase the CD and warm-up on the skill.

Changes:

• Reduce Base HP
• Reduce Base Armor
• Reduce Base Melee Damage
• Increase CDs On:
  • Jump
  • Tremor
    • Also increase warm-up
• Decrease Range On:
  • Spear
  • Impale

Wizard-

Wizard isn't the biggest worry, but it has problems. Combined with the highest burst, powerful crowd control and surprisingly high mobility, even their counter classes (Rogues) have a hard time killing one (If at all.)

Changes:

• Increase CD On:
  • Blink
  • Entangle
• Shave off some damage from it's skills:
  • Rotation includes Entangle -> Bolt -> Icebolt -> Fireball -> Pulse. This combo does 370 without attributes and with 35 intellect it does 632.5 damage. This is more than half the HP of warriors and 3/4 the hp of squishier classes. It only takes another fireball to kill most classes.

Small note: Ranger's Aimed-shot skill allows the player to still shoot arrows during the effect. (Delf never intended this). This bug allows the skill to be more powerful than it really should be.

These aren't all the changes, but what I believe to be the most important ones atm. There are still cases of supposed "UP" classes and classes that are in need of rework.

 

[look_out]

Looks good Malik.

 

[Kainzo]

See first post

 

[LightningCape]

~Snip

Very thorough. Only thing I would add is the issue of blind on Ninja which I just tested on Test which has a 12 block range. Perhaps lower it?

 

[Kainzo]

It's mainly classes current state. I hate to use the term "OP," but there are some pretty compelling cases.

Ninja-

This is the current go to rogue class and for good reason. Currently they have a base HP @65 of 902 making it have more hp than all warriors besides paladin (Bard has more HP than paladin). There's a lowered amount on test and I think it's adequate.

Peoples main concern is blackjack. As you know, blackjack was an old remnant of "Thief's" skill and has over time been changed from a percentage chance skill to a guaranteed stun. This has caused a problem where a ninja can run head on to a warrior and come out the victor. What many have agreed to be a good solution is the change blackjack into "Garrote." The difference would be that you can only use the skill when sneaking or in stealth with a small warm-up. This would better fit ninja's stealthy nature. It also makes more sense as an ambush tactic rather than "I hit them with a stick so they are now stunned."

Another change that would benefit the class and make ninjas a less of a headache is changing smoke. Currently the stealth is so long that a ninja is almost guaranteed to get away in that time. Others have suggested that Smoke's CD and Duration to be reduced. This makes the skill less of an escape and provides them more ways to sneak up and use the new garrote.

Changes:

• Reduce Base HP
• Change Blackjack to garrote
• Smoke
  • Reduce CD
  • Reduce Duration

Dragoon-

This is probably the most worrisome class atm. Combined with it's very high damage and insane mobility, it's impossible to escape a goon. On the flip-side, they can also disengage from fight just as easily.

When it comes to base stats they are surprisingly high considering the concept of the class. It has higher hp and armor than Berserker (In my mind, the scale of tankiness on warriors goes Dragoon, Beserker, Dreadknight, Paladin) The real problem is their insanely high base melee damage. Currently they do 60 damage @ 65 with a diamond shovel. This is 12 points higher than Paladin ( the warrior with the second highest base melee damage.)

The next problems are the skills. We know dragoon is supposed to be mobility, but they are currently overwhelmingly so. A simple increase of jumps CD seems adequate to make it more of a decision. If they want to attack they will have to take more risks since they can''t jump away as soon.

There is also the problem of dragoon's "Spear" and "Impale" skills. Dragoon is supposed to be long range, but these 2 skills cause massive problems. In the case of spear, it's 12 block range makes it impossible for a mage to kite them. The same problem in a lesser degree occurs with impale. A simple reduction to their range should be fine.

Lastly there is tremor. To be frank, tremor is a very annoying skill atm. If you so happen to be able to catch up to a goon (They usually perch on a building where you can' reach unless you have a mobility skill) They will just tremor you off. I don't know how tremor got to this. It used to be a skill that you activated up high and would deal damage to where you land based on how far you fell. Now it's just a giant knock back that prevents anyone from ever reaching a goon. If you where to keep the skill, I would increase the CD and warm-up on the skill.

Changes:

• Reduce Base HP
• Reduce Base Armor
• Reduce Base Melee Damage
• Increase CDs On:
  • Jump
  • Tremor
    • Also increase warm-up
• Decrease Range On:
  • Spear
  • Impale

Wizard-

Wizard isn't the biggest worry, but it has problems. Combined with the highest burst, powerful crowd control and surprisingly high mobility, even their counter classes (Rogues) have a hard time killing one (If at all.)

Changes:

• Increase CD On:
  • Blink
  • Entangle
• Shave off some damage from it's skills:
  • Rotation includes Entangle -> Bolt -> Icebolt -> Fireball -> Pulse. This combo does 370 without attributes and with 35 intellect it does 632.5 damage. This is more than half the HP of warriors and 3/4 the hp of squishier classes. It only takes another fireball to kill most classes.

Small note: Ranger's Aimed-shot skill allows the player to still shoot arrows during the effect. (Delf never intended this). This bug allows the skill to be more powerful than it really should be.

These aren't all the changes, but what I believe to be the most important ones atm. There are still cases of supposed "UP" classes and classes that are in need of rework.

I'm making the changes above. I will point out that the tankiness of Dragoon is above Berzerker but below DK.

Here's how it should play out.

DEFENSE -> MAX
BER / DRG / DK / PAL
OFFENSE -> MAX
PAL / DK / DRG / BER

I will post more as I can.

 

[LightningCape]

I'll be making a post about healers which I feel are in need of work later here.

 

[Sirdemonic3]

I'll be making a post about healers which I feel are in need of work later here.

for sure healers need a lil bit of love but its realy hard to make a healer good without making it op

 

[malikdanab]

Forgot add this in the "ye 'ole list of changes." They are already on the test server, so it would be easy to implement. The change is that Replenish and Energize: regen less mana/stamina respectively, have a lower cooldown, have a small warm-up, and scale with wisdom.

The though process behind the change is that it allows for better use in PVE (Since you can use it more often), but less of a insta-win button in PVP. The biggest problem is Wizard's Replenish since wizards are able to build pure INT and still not have to worry about wisdom.

 

[LightningCape]

My main opinion on healers' current state. Having mastered and played Mystic and Bloodmage for the majority of Bastion I can easily say that the popularity of healers is at an all time low and this is due to many reasons:

• Result of a handful of classes dominating PvP (Which is being worked on obviously)
• PvE for healers is painful and slow (Not much can be done about that)
• People who like PvP (Solo) don't play most healer classes

As @Sirdemonic3 said, balancing healers, is somewhat difficult. As I've seen during all of Bastion they're either absolutely godly (Cleric) or just "bad" without more skills or changing of current skills (Mid-Bastion Mystic). No real "in-between" state.
Cleric**This class had a fun rein of terror in Bastion and was arguably the reason why self healing was nerfed. You could solo 4-5 people because as long as you're dealing some amount of dmg and healing you can go all day. Now, IMO, I don't think there's anything wrong with Cleric as it is it's just disgustingly underplayed. Don't think I've seen more than 2-3 Clerics online at a single time. High heals, Invuls, and good armor I think Cleric is just fine.

**- If you really wanted to go after anything it could be the strengths of the heals, but imo I think it's decent.
Druid Personalty I love this class and it's concept. Decent heals (HoTs) with very good support. @Kainzo said something about adding "Illusion" skills that I'm guessing would add more support skills or replace and add new ones which I think would work just great. Overall seems good to me.
Bloodmage
Bloodmage. Where do I start? Before attributes this class has had its fair share of raises and falls in terms of balance.

Atm I feel the class focuses too much on damage. Since Bastion it's been more like a caster with a few heals than an actual healer. I'd love to see this class more about redistributing hp than just strong lifesteals and DoTs.
Suggestions

• More heals involving the caster giving it party members
• Less pure dmg and DoTs and more lifesteals (With low healing on caster)

Disciple
Disciple I feel is the main healer that needs some fixes. It's just in a very awkward place atm. Its attributes for scaling skills are all over the place and the dmg and heals (Minus balance) make it almost unnoticeable in a group fight (AKA purpose of healers).

Fun fact-

• At max strength (49) Forcepush does 84 dmg and Forcepush does Forcepull does a whopping 39 dmg each has 14 sec CDs

Suggestions

• Increase dmg slightly
• Lower some CDs
• Remove FistofJin

 

[malikdanab]

I can't say much for disciple, but I definitely agree that attributes screwed it over. What I think is that scaling should increase on the skills. This means that specializing in a certain path is more viable. Currently you have to spread you stats very thin and you still do very poorly. While I know that we aren't here to suggest skills, I have a couple ideas that would make disciple better.

First it would be by changing Fist of Jin from a passive to an active skill. To be honest, the passive isn't that great for a solo disciple. This is why i suggest that it's changed to "Mark of Jin." The disciple would mark a target and the user (And anyone in his party) gain health back. While it's less team oriented since not all classes melee, it will be more useful for the user.

The second suggestion is to add a passive called "Ki Strike." What this would do is that a percentage of the users melee damage is converted into magic damage. This would scale with INT and would counter give it a better chance against more armored classes (Currently can't win due to it's high reliance on physical damage and low durability) .

The last thing would be to change Force Push/Pull into magic damage skills.

The reason by this is that now Disciple would have equal amount of skills in each attribute:

Healing Skills

• Chakra
• Balance
• Renewal
• Mark of Jin

Physical Skills

• Flyingkick (Increase base range, only make it's damage scale with Str. Range no longer scales)
• Ironfist
• Quiveringpalm
• Seikuken (Even though scales with int, deals Phy damage)

Magic Skills

• Smite
• Forcepush (Increase base slightly, damage scales with int. Range no longer scales
• Forcepull (Same as above)
• Ki Strike

With this, a Disciple can focus on a specialty. The idea behind the force/flying kick changes is so that multiple attribute won't have to be added to affect once skill. This allows you to pick a role and now have it be hindered by not adding other stats ( Before you'd have to get AGI/STR for Flying kick and INT/STR for Force skills.) This simplifies the skills and makes them less of a pain when it comes to attribute allocation.

 

[LightningCape]

I can't say much for disciple, but I definitely agree that attributes screwed it over. What I think is that scaling should increase on the skills. This means that specializing in a certain path is more viable. Currently you have to spread you stats very thin and you still do very poorly. While I know that we aren't here to suggest skills, I have a couple ideas that would make disciple better.

First it would be by changing Fist of Jin from a passive to an active skill. To be honest, the passive isn't that great for a solo disciple. This is why i suggest that it's changed to "Mark of Jin." The disciple would mark a target and the user (And anyone in his party) gain health back. While it's less team oriented since not all classes melee, it will be more useful for the user.

The second suggestion is to add a passive called "Ki Strike." What this would do is that a percentage of the users melee damage is converted into magic damage. This would scale with INT and would counter give it a better chance against more armored classes (Currently can't win due to it's high reliance on physical damage and low durability) .

The last thing would be to change Force Push/Pull into magic damage skills.

The reason by this is that now Disciple would have equal amount of skills in each attribute:

Healing Skills

• Chakra
• Balance
• Renewal
• Mark of Jin

Physical Skills

• Flyingkick (Increase base range, only make it's damage scale with Str)
• Ironfist
• Quiveringpalm
• Seikuken (Even though scales with int, deals Phy damage)

Magic Skills

• Smite
• Forcepush
• Forcepull
• Ki Strike

With this, a Disciple can focus on a specialty.

Agree completely. Interested to know what the rest of the team thinks @Balance Team

 

[Delfofthebla]

Most of the stuff in Kainzo's post I think will work out just fine, however, I disagree with a couple of things.

1) Spear range reduction
2) Base Blink distance increase

I disagree with the spear changes on dragoon because the skill will essentially be considered a "melee" ability at 6 blocks, Due to the warmup, this change will cause the skill to no longer be reliably used in combat. If the desire is to reduce their chasing capabilities, it is better to remove the ability altogether, or replace it with something else. If you simply wish to remove the large range on the ability, I suggest also removing the warmup from the skill.

As far as blink goes, Malik was suggesting increasing the cd, not the distance. Not sure if that was something you misread or not, but I'm just checking. With high levels of intellect, their blink can scale from 12 to 15 blocks. Due to diminishing returns, it's unlikely players will get that high, but it is still possible. Adding another block to that is dangerous, especially with ender pearls in their possession. I recommend keeping the blink distance the same, but increasing the cooldown from 12 to 15 seconds.

 

[malikdanab]

Most of the stuff in Kainzo's post I think will work out just fine, however, I disagree with a couple of things.

1) Spear range reduction
2) Base Blink distance increase

I disagree with the spear changes on dragoon because the skill will essentially be considered a "melee" ability at 6 blocks, due to the warmup. This will cause it tol no longer be reliably used in combat. If the desire is to reduce their chasing capabilities, it is better to remove the ability altogether, or replace it with something else. If you simply wish to remove the large range on the ability, I suggest also removing the warmup from the skill.

As far as blink goes, Malik was suggesting increasing the cd, not the distance. Not sure if that was something you misread or not, but I'm just checking. With high levels of intellect, their blink can scale from 12 to 15 blocks. Due to diminishing returns, it's unlikely players will get that high, but it is still possible. Adding another block to that is dangerous, especially with ender pearls in their possession. I recommend keeping the blink distance the same, but increasing the cooldown from 12 to 15 seconds.

Should probably remove that warm-up from spear....

I have no idea what happened with that blink change.

 

[Eldrylars]

TLDR: Cleric is broken and boring. There is nothing for the Cleric to do 90% of each fight. Clerics skills need to adjusted and changed to keep the Cleric moving and casting throughout the entire combat session without the huge pauses of nothingness it has atm.

Cleric**This class had a fun rein of terror in Bastion and was arguably the reason why self healing was nerfed. You could solo 4-5 people because as long as you're dealing some amount of dmg and healing you can go all day. Now, IMO, I don't think there's anything wrong with Cleric as it is it's just disgustingly underplayed. Don't think I've seen more than 2-3 Clerics online at a single time. High heals, Invuls, and good armor I think Cleric is just fine.

**- If you really wanted to go after anything it could be the strengths of the heals, but imo I think it's decent.

I have to chime in a bit for the now on Cleric being pristine, because it's not. I can explain a good few things about it and then hopefully better minds will give some life back to it so people start playing it.
Let me start by saying Cleric is not "just fine" and there is a real reason for it being "disgustingly underplayed." Unfortunately one of my suggestions sorta helped with this as is was taken only in part with other changes.

The biggest problem with Cleric is... There is nothing for you to do 90% of an engagement! With only two heals on long cooldowns you attempt to heal a target and then the next and then you have to wait for 7 seconds before you can do it again(not to mention how difficult it is to actually target a heal without a bind.) If you dare to use Guardian, Fullheal or Holy Aura you will be out of mana within seconds and then you just get to stand there with your thumb up your ass.
With the combat abilities of a Cleric removed, the Cleric cannot fill his free time with left click mashing, and with the insane mana costs of his higher abilities mixed with the long cooldowns of it's only two normal heals it's boring.. simply put.

Now I called for longer warmups and more healing when all other classes have equivalent heals and tons of other abilities, but when pray was removed and the cooldowns went through the roof, I failed to push the point home here and only chatted about in on the test server. My bad.

Cleric's free time need to be adjusted. Pray needs to be added, and I believe the cooldowns need to be halved by 50% with the existing longer casting times left in place.
This will maintain the Clerics place as combat support and allow then to try to manage their hard to use heals consistently without have a 90% downtime in between.

The other thing I will say is that during Bastion Cleric was a godsend in groups, and in the first half of Bastion is was a force to be reckoned with in a 1v1, but saying that Cleric could win a 1v4 is completely inaccurate, unless it was fighting 4 unspecced classes, in which case most specced classes could do that. I played Cleric for the entire map, and it was VERY difficult to kill 2 people at the same time. 1v1 early days on Bastion I could win most of my fights, but 2v1 or more and it was almost always a guaranteed loss. A Cleric could on the other hand run for a long time, as he could go for a smite/hoe KB effect and pull a heal while running away, but actively engaging 2 people was nearly always a death wish.
I am not sugar coating it, I was there, I was doing it, and the Cleric was not the solo God some people oddly make it out to be.

 

[malikdanab]

Cleric SHOULD be like you are trying to heal you party to life (DPS kill people to death), but they aren't anything like that. I agree, they use their heals then what? Are they supposed to melee...fat chance. It's just a boring class. I know some classes will be more popular than others, but then there's healers which people avoid like the plague.

 

[Eldrylars]

Cleric SHOULD be like you are trying to heal you party to life (DPS kill people to death), but they aren't anything like that. I agree, they use their heals then what? Are they supposed to melee...fat chance. It's just a boring class. I know some classes will be more popular than others, but then there's healers which people avoid like the plague.

Cleric used to be more fun because you had to contently work your heals and positioning, but with only two normal heals on long cooldowns it's worse then it ever, because now you cannot fight AND you cannot heal for large chunks of the time. Druid, BM and Disc all have things to do other then healing, which is fine and dandy. The Cleric does not need to do things other then healing, but should not have to stop, stand and wait to recast a healing spell. Of course there are the people who do not like to play support, healers, non killshot classes and they never will like it, but even the support, healers, non killshot players don't enjoy it because you cannot even heal half the time you are playing.