Suggestion Disciple Allocation difficulty; Balancing the "hero of Balance"

[Volk]

Been playing the disciple for a while, I love the allocation design. It gives players the freedom to design their characters to their play style and has been hands down one of the best systems I've seen implemented not only for the game but for the population. An amount of invested effort can be seen by how well, or not so well, a player has tuned his character. In a more obvious environment how effective he or she is in combat.

But what about the class, that can't be allocated correctly? No matter how you allocate the stats, you lose one of the edges you either overlooked or thought your new build would make up for. It's an extremely difficult choice, but most so for the disciple.

The disciple is unique in that it has a variety of tools. Across the board it really doesn't have an outstanding characteristic with the standard customary downfall that would describe most classes of your rpg genre. Instead it has a little bit of everything. Moderate self heals, defensive counter abilities, field control, decent melee strength, versatility and survival tools (tumble, safefall, fist of jin); overall is the class with no absolute strength and no clear weakness.

Except for one. A big one.

How do you spec a class that benefits strongly from most of the stats? (charisma aside)

So your choice stats are strength constitution endurance intelligence wisdom.

See the problem here isn't necessarily the design because fundamentally having varying stats according to playstyle is the ideal purpose of the allocation system. But for the disciple it creates quite a problem even for an advanced player. Four stats affect the statistics of multiple abilities. Ontop of that you have to round functionality into this.

Intelligence affects the damage output of Smite, the percentage of returned weapon damage for Seikuken, the distance Force Push moves a target, the radial distance of force pull, and of course your total amount of mana.

Strength affects the damage output of flying kick, force push, force pull, Iron fist, Quivering Palm, and of course overall weapon damage.

Endurance affects not only how much armor can be worn (of in which the disciple starts in negatives understandibly) but also affects stamina regen. A unique detail, but a very hindering one also.

Wisom affects the effectiveness of Chakra, Renewal, Fist of Jin, balance, not only in strength but in distance as well, ontop of it being a must have stat as a heavy mana dependent combatant.

Agility affects the distance of radial reach for flying kick, how many blocks he can tumble, but also movement speed; which means that a lack there of results in being kited heavily in pvp.

A large pain comes from not only being heavily mana dependant, but extremely stamina dependant as well. So automatically to make the class function a substantial amount of points have to be placed into endurance and wisdom. But if wisdom affects mana regen and healing abilities (like the on hit proc of Fist of Jin) and endurance determines how much armor I can wear and the amount of stamina I regenerate (of in which most key disciple abilities are hinged, which starts in the negatives from level one) what is the proper amount of wisdom vs. endurance allocation for proper damage mitigation? No armor leads to a very vulnerable character, no wisdom means an ineffective mana regeneration rate, and just as disabling, an ineffective Fist of Jin? But to put fist of Jin at a reliable mitigation, an obscene amount of points are required to be placed into wisdom.

Another big problem is that the bread and butter damage dealer for the disciple is smite. Which is based on intelligence. Which isn't wisdom, strength, constitution, endurance or agility. Which means my go to damage ability is based Entirely on another stat.

But a disciple needs strength too though! Otherwise his key melee abilities and basic melee attacks aren't effective for dealing damage at all, and results into lengthy fights which a disciple cannot afford due to his costly stamina limitations.

In conclusion, I have found that the Disciple class has the highest D.P.S. in hero craft currently.

Absolutely highest D.P.S.

Greater than all Wizards, Warriors, and Rogues alike.

Yes, the Disciple has an extremely high Decisions Per Second rate while in combat.
Actually, a rather unnecessarily high one; a problem that does need some addressing.

If some of the stats could be lined up to affect the outputs of the abilities better, or maybe have higher costing latter levels of attributes that affect the abilities in increased amounts to balance out the necessity of multiple stats for the hybrid class(es)?

I assumed that this could possibly be a reasonable solution but I would love to hear some feedback.

To those of you who read all of this, thank you for your time and input. I greatly appreciate it.

 

[malikdanab]

Oh we hear you. We plan on fixing the scaling on all hybrid classes. To organize things:

Skills that scale off Strength:

• Force Push
• Force Pull
• Flying Kick
• Iron Fist
• Quivering Palm
• Seikuken (Because it scales off your base melee damage)

Skills that scale off Wisdom:

• Fist of Jin
• Chakra
• Renewal
• Balance

Skills that scale off Intellect:

• Force Push
• Force Pull
• Smite
• Seikuken

Skills that scale off Agility:

• Flying Kick

So we have 6 skills that scale off Strength, 4 that scale off Wisdom, 4 that scale off Intellect, and 1 skill that scales off agility. So the problem is not only spreading out your points, it's also the fact that you are spreading them out with very few skills affected. What I would do:

• Force Push/Pull: Make entirely INT base (Damage and Push/Pull) and deal Magic damage.
• Flying Kick: Make it entirely STR based (Damage and Distance)

This helps the spread of attributes. With this there would be 4 skills that scale off STR, 4 that scale off WIS, and 4 that scale off INT.
Even then, the actual scaling in Disciples skills are piss poor:

Renewal:

• CD: 18
• Mana: 135
• Healing: 150
• Scaling: 1.875
• Total Healing at 30 Wisdom: 206

Regrowth:

• CD: 12
• Mana: 155
• Healing: 120
• Scaling: 4.125
• Total Healing at 30 Wisdom: 243

So druids heals roughly 20% more for 2/3 the CD. The same can be show for many other skills.

I could go into reasons to why it's "Under-powered," but that would be off topic

 

[Egorh]

Ok since I have a lot of experience with Disciple I can throw my input into this.

First: By removing the agility scaling off flying kick in ways you are also rendering the new buff skill 'Alacrity' (I think that is it) that gives some agility for some time. But I'm going to be honest here, even with flying kick scaling off of agility I personally don't think it is that effective. Even as a party buff not a lot of skills scale off of agility, just some mobility--its not a very usable buff in the middle of fight, or in PvE.

So if we are indeed switching the flying kick scaling from agility to strength I also think we should be changing Alacrity. But instead of simply changing that stat it gives to something like strength why not make the skill more unique?

For this skill I would like to see more of a passive buff. Mostly, whenever you deal damage with a left click to a unit you gain a temporary 0.75 strength and intellect. It can stack up to 10 times and lasts 10 seconds before it would start to decay.

If this skill can stack up to 10 times it will give you 7.5 strength, and 7.5 intellect, when you add those together it equals 15 stat points total which is the same amount Alacrity gives (I think). The main question that comes to my mind with this skill is whether it should be a party buff for everyone in a certain distance or a personal selfish buff.

Second: One of the issues I have ran into during PvP is fighting those damn heavily armored people. We don't really have much magic damage but we still have to throw a bunch of points into intellect. So having Forcepull/push scale fully with intellect and do magic damage makes perfect sense. It is not like those skills do much damage at all but their puny damage is even more puny when fighting an armored target--hardly noticeable

Third: Ironfist is a joke atm. For the amount of stamina/mana this skill costs it is not really worth it to use. Simple buffs are needed for this skill. The buffs could either be increasing the 'umph' of the knockback/up or increasing the power of the slow (or the duration). Right now you would try to use it to slow down your target for running away or chasing but the duration and power of the slow is too little to really make an impact.

Fourth: Quivering palm is probably one of our most used skills. Since Disciple is a hybrid class why not have the % it increases your left click damage by scale with intellect. We could lower the base % to help balance.

Fifth: Overall for stats I think I have found a way to spread my points effectively but I would also like to see me having to throw less wisdom points into chakra to have it remove 1 stronger debuff (You need 20 wisdom to remove fire now) because as Malik has pointed out the healing does not scale the greatest.

Yea, yea I know that this thread was suppose to be mostly about stats and stuff but I can't help to throw in more Disciple balance. I can't always make my own thread because I can be biased at times when it comes to Disciple

 

[XenZan]

Typically, martial artist type classes always suffer from having may too many attributes that they need and never enough points to distribute. Such is often the case in RPGs, D&D being a perfect example with Monks. I'm not saying it's good or that makes it acceptable, I'm just saying it's often the case so I'm not especially surprised.

Personally, I'd much rather see more abilities scale off of wisdom and agility than anything else. I know intellect is the go-to for magic damage across classes, but I'd say wisdom fits this particular class much better.

I've also always kind of wished that their fist damage scaled better, or something, to where it was among the best of their choices, while lacking the ability to have enchantments. Likewise, I feel like it would be thematic for them to, maybe be capable of wearing a small amount of armor, as they do, but have their armor scale with attributes, like agility and wisdom, to where it could be better than actually wearing leather armor parts. I reference FF1 and D&D and a million other rpg games when I say this.

Of course, I don't know if any of these things are even possible within the confines of minecraft, nor do I know whether any of them could/would be balanced to not be stupid. Just my underlying opinions I suppose, and ways to reduce the number of "required" attributes for a competent disciple.

Regardless, I am liking the magic-damage-ness of force pull/push as well as the revisit of the way some abilities scale.

 

[Volk]

I'm feeling the love.

Thank you all for your input, it would seem we're mostly on the same page here.

Seeing creative ideas is very refreshing, I hope one day something can be done in favor of less frustrating allocation of the disciple.

 

[STDs4YouAnd4Me]

While we're at it, rework Seikuken. It's the only skill in the game (aside from a couple of Berserker skills) that could possibly put you in a worse position for using it. Looking at the mana cost of Seikuken, you wonder why you even have it bound sometimes (although Macro Mod hasn't been updated in months, so bound might not be the right word).

Long story short, there isn't a go-to build for Disciple since it does indeed require points in everything except for Charisma. The sad truth about disciple is that if you're not putting the MAJORITY of your points into Endurance, you're going to have a rough time.

 

[STDs4YouAnd4Me]

(although Macro Mod hasn't been updated in months, so bound might not be the right word).

Statement retracted. Apparently macromod is close to coming out via Kainzo's murmur:

Kainzo Macrmomod/keybind beta test coming to Balance Team tonight - everyone else shortly after. (Yesterday at 5:24 PM)

 

[malikdanab]

Disciple SHOULD be squishy. The problem is that it doesn't have enough damage or heals to compensate that.

 

[Super593]

Hm.

Why not making their starting endurance enough to wear small bits of leather "Imitating light armor"

When you think about it.What if Monk skills primarily scaled off of INT,WIS and AGI

Since Monks were very Agile and quick fighters and the Monk built into herocraft seems to fit that description.

Plus an INT,WIS,AGI Based class would be something new.

As much as strength makes sense here.Keep in mind that judging from the skills the Monk has as it is.They seem designed to be thrown in quickly n effectively.Hence why I said AGI for most of em.

It's understandable as to why it should be squishy.It should also be Quick,Fast,yet also deadly.

Disciples Weapon damage could perhaps be boosted by agility.As some kind of unique passive to themselves.

 

[XenZan]

Disciple SHOULD be squishy. The problem is that it doesn't have enough damage or heals to compensate that.

I think squishy might be a bad word choice. I feel like perhaps they shouldn't have as much health as say a warrior class, but their ability to not take damage (i.e. armor) should be fairly good, to reflect that they are superb at dodging, rolling with blows, etc. I don't think, however, they should be running around in armor though, which makes it awkward and why I suggested that their armor scale with an attribute on some small amount or something.

 

[malikdanab]

I think squishy might be a bad word choice. I feel like perhaps they shouldn't have as much health as say a warrior class, but their ability to not take damage (i.e. armor) should be fairly good, to reflect that they are superb at dodging, rolling with blows, etc. I don't think, however, they should be running around in armor though, which makes it awkward and why I suggested that their armor scale with an attribute on some small amount or something.

Not even that. Disciple has a stupidly low armor value of 18.75. I'm fine with them being squishy, but as a healer it doesn't fit the class.

It will NEVER have the damage or heals to support it (It would require Ninja lvl damage and Cleric lvl heals.) Compare it to say wizard, which has 26.25 weight, disciple's armor is too low. In my opinion, mages should be the squishiest followed by Rogue/Healers then warriors.

If disciple is to stay a melee class, it needs it's armor increased.

 

[XenZan]

Not even that. Disciple has a stupidly low armor value of 18.75. I'm fine with them being squishy, but as a healer it doesn't fit the class.

It will NEVER have the damage or heals to support it (It would require Ninja lvl damage and Cleric lvl heals.) Compare it to say wizard, which has 26.25 weight, disciple's armor is too low. In my opinion, mages should be the squishiest followed by Rogue/Healers then warriors.

If disciple is to stay a melee class, it needs it's armor increased.

I think we are both saying the same thing, just in different ways, hahaha.
I agree, their armor needs help.

 

[Evanist]

I seriously hope they will buff disciple.
Here is the thing: The base pull distance is so low that it is not even worth it that much. You need to be almost melee range. I don't care what the wiki says, I was chassing the guy, he was like 2-3 blocks away from me, and forcepull did not do anything. Now... the reason for this would be... and now people will be going on and on that this is not true: The slight lag problem. It seems that before you get the signal of the position, the guy is like 2 blocks away from where you want to cast it. To fix this forcepull should maybe have basic pull distance of 6-7 instead of 5, just to compensate with the wait time between positions.

 

[malikdanab]

I seriously hope they will buff disciple.
Here is the thing: The base pull distance is so low that it is not even worth it that much. You need to be almost melee range. I don't care what the wiki says, I was chassing the guy, he was like 2-3 blocks away from me, and forcepull did not do anything. Now... the reason for this would be... and now people will be going on and on that this is not true: The slight lag problem. It seems that before you get the signal of the position, the guy is like 2 blocks away from where you want to cast it. To fix this forcepull should maybe have basic pull distance of 6-7 instead of 5, just to compensate with the wait time between positions.

Remember that it also scales with INT. With 20 thats an extra 3.5 block range. I think the base is fine, maybe increase the scaling from 0.175 to 0.25. Like we've said before, the actual base for disciple isn't that bad (Besides that horrible armor weight.) it's that it's scaling is really poor.