Class Balance: Benchmarking Formula

[Kainzo]

[USERGROUP=38]@Balance Team[/USERGROUP]

Why is this important? This will allow us to objectively bench mark skills and classes together.

The balance bench-marking formula will help guide the community to have a general feel of where the numbers lie and things line up. It will be used in conjunction with play-testing and comparative tools to find a better sense of balance between classes and styles of play.

Spoiler: Use

Lostsoul Effectiveness = 305 power (total power from skills, sub-health gain/mana regen etc)
Health Regen = 0
Base Health = 0
Base Mana = 0
Fireball = 85
Strike = 65
Bandage = 60
Kick = 95

Formula for Damage skills:
((Damage * Area) + (Effects) - Cost)) / Delay = Power

Formula for Healing skills:
((Healing * Area) + (Effects) - Cost)) / Delay = Power

Simple Formulas​

Name | Formula
Damage |raw dmg + (raw dmg * attribute modifier)
Healing |raw heal + (raw heal * attribute modifier)
Area |Range * Radius
Effects |Interrupt + Stun + Blind + root + slow + Move + Debuff + Force
Delay |Cooldowns + Warmup
Cost |Mana + Stamina cost

Weights​

Effect | PerSecond
MultipleTeleport|100
SingleTeleport|50
ReplenishEffect|50
ForceVelocity|50
DamageImmunity|50
MeleeImmunity|40
SpellImmunity|40
StunDuration|45
SilenceDuration|30
DebuffRemoval|25
Interrupt|25
MoveIncrease|20
RootDuration|15
BlindDuration|10
SlowDuration|10
BuffsDuration|10

Spoiler: Example Skill with Formula

Pulse
damage: 60
damage-increase-per-intellect: 2.0
radius: 5
delay: 1250
Pulse = (60 + 180) * (5)) / (10 + 1.25) = 80
Fireball
mana: 100
cooldown: 6000
damage: 90
damage-increase-per-intellect: 1.5
velocity-multiplier: 2.0

Spoiler: misc

Formula for Damage skills:
(raw dmg + (raw dmg * attribute modifier) * (range * radius) + (Effect1 + Effect2 + Effect3 + etc etc) - (Mana Cost + Stamina Cost) / (cooldown + warmup) = Power
Formula for Healing skills:
(raw healing + (raw healing * attribute modifier) * (range * radius) + (Effect1 + Effect2 + Effect3 + etc etc) - (Mana Cost + Stamina Cost) / (cooldown + warmup) = Power

 

[Kainzo]

Re-opening this for balance consumption. We'll be tweaking this to something to use as a guideline for balancing (alongside play-testing)

 

[malikdanab]

Will be going over most of what I stated my "New Balance" thread, but might as well post it here. When it comes to the "balance formula" instead of having a single "Power Level" i think we should break it up into a couple of stats. Those would be:

Power: Damage/Healing/Effect/Etc
Efficiency: Power / Cost
Effective Power: Power Per second- Power/Cooldown

Like how you can't tell how good a computer is just by its specs, I don't think we should judge classes by a number. Thats said, we can still use numbers to balance. With these we can determine a general feeling of a class by a combination of play test and number analysis:

Example application:

• Class X is too mana hungry: (Low Efficiency)
  • First we determine is it really getting good value for its mana/is it a sustain class/etc
  • If not we decide on what to change
    • Decrease mana
    • Increase Power