New Balance

[malikdanab]

First off sorry for the pun

Another good 'ol "General" balance thread, but I hope with the new restructured balance team things can actual be accomplished Instead of tackling all classes at once, I think we should go a path at a time. This prevents us from being overwhelmed and also allows us to balance classes around others in the same path creating a baseline. So which path do you guys think needs to most work? @Balance Team

 

[Jrr_]

Right now I believe healers and warriors need to be looked at. Mainly paladin for warrior path and every healer.

 

[malikdanab]

Right now I believe healers and warriors need to be looked at. Mainly paladin for warrior path and every healer.

Well since samurai is coming...maybe we should balance the warriors so there is a baseline for it.

 

[Irishman81]

Increase divine stun cooldown to match the other stuns at 40 seconds is a start

 

[Egorh]

A quick rundown of what I think needs to be done (Warriors & Healers. Some ideas taken from my balance thread in suggestions)

Warriors

• Paladin-Bring down the damage and transfer the power from DPS to supportive (peeling, taunting, etc)
  • Divine Stun: Although the full charisma Paladin is strong it ends up sacrificing a lot of tankiness and damage to achieve the long stun. Because they are sacrificing a good amount I am not a fan of simply reducing the scaling. It needs a large cooldown increase (like Irish said, up to 40s)
  • Lower Strike and left click damage
  • More incentive to use those supporting skills (reduce stamina cost of taunt by 50, reduce mana cost of intervene by 150)
• Dragoon-It really only does well vs rogues (and melee casters: Pyro, Disc) and in a gank squad. Its kit is just not really suitable for teamfights. You could buff impale but that will enhance 1v1 potential more than teamfight (the main class that I am not sure what to suggest)
• Dreadknight-It has damage but in the current 'healer heavy' composition Dreadknight does not fulfill a role. Its DoTs are simply dispelled by the large amounts of Disciples and the other damage can just be healed away. Some ideas (2 require some new code but it technically already exists)
  • Reduce mana cost of Dread Aura
  • Add healing reduction to Dread Aura
  • Add an attribute debuff to Dread Aura (eg. Each tick takes away 5 wisdom)
  • Add an attribute debuff to Mana Freeze (eg. Brings target's wisdom to 0--cutting healer's heals in half)
• Berserker-Just an all around strong class. There is just too much incentive to throw in tons of strength. So remove the strength scaling on some of the skills (the one skill I can mainly think of is lunge)
  • Change scaling on lunge to Agility from Strength

Healers-I am personally not a big fan of simply nerfing healers. If they aren't strong they simply get replaced by DPS. I would like to see more anti-healing (more healing reduction, stat debuffs, etc.). Also I've been told by my friends that fought in the tournament that Revive was a bit ridiculous (the cooldown that is).

• Cleric-It just has way too many heals while being so tanky.
  • Reduce duration of Guardian Angel by 1s (3s -> 2s)
  • Reduce mana cost of GA by 75 (350 mana -> 275 mana)
  • Reduce wisdom scaling of Divine Blessing to 2.75
  • Increase wisdom scaling of Holy Water to 2.25 (you get a better heal for a more 'skillful' skill; you actually need to aim it)
  • Increase Revive cooldown to 3 min

• Bloodmage-Most Bloodmages are simply there to give enlightenment and pump out the damage. Even though they have a skill to correspond with being a caster-healer (Blood Bond) it simply is not worth it to use
  • Make it so the self heal reduction does not apply to Infusion
  • Reduce base boil blood damage: Initial 15, DOT, 15
  • Increase cooldown on boil blood by 10s (up to 20s)
  • Increase cooldown on combust blood by 4s (up to 10s)
  • Reduce Blood Bond's mana cost per second to 25
  • Increase Awaken cooldown to 3 min

• Druid-a class that simply needs a rework but we need to work with what we got (need some way to break the kiting cycle)
  • Give entangle a 1.5s warmup
  • Increase Reincarnate cooldown to 3 min

• Disciple-Although Kainzo has mentioned that he would like Disciple to be based off agility it would need a rework to do that (not a viable option atm)
  • Increase Chakra cooldown to 15s
  • Make it so you cannot heal more than once per 2s on Fist of Jin (instead of 1s)
  • Reverse healing on Fist of Jin (eg. it does 10 to yourself and 5 to allies, make it 5 to yourself and 10 to allies)
  • Remove interrupt on forcepush
  • Increase Seikuken cooldown to 30s

 

[LightningCape]

Making rogues stealthier and finally finishing the switch from healer to caster for shaman. @malikdanab

 

[Egorh]

Making rogues stealthier and finally finishing the switch from healer to caster for shaman. @malikdanab

The only one that really needs to be more stealthy is Ninja. The other Rogue's kits don't rely on being sneaky.
Ranger-Just sits there firing arrows then (if you are good you don't need to kite, if you are bad you end up doing a lot of running)
Runeblade-Does all its damage straight up
Bard-It is a support and relies on groups
Ninja-Has situational damage that requires you to position yourself

 

[malikdanab]

All good changes, from here I'd like to test some of these proposed damage. So @Kainzo any possibility that implementers have access to the test server? Having a feel for classes through actual play is very important and since test is no longer public, it won't interfere with the main server.

 

[Kainzo]

The balance formula will need to be put into testing with a single class so we can have some measurement within the paths. Objectivity is very important, if you guys think things need to change on the formula, let me know. It can be seen here http://hc.to/formula

 

[malikdanab]

The balance formula will need to be put into testing with a single class so we can have some measurement within the paths. Objectivity is very important, if you guys think things need to change on the formula, let me know. It can be seen here http://hc.to/formula

Link doesn't work Q_Q. When it does I'll edit this post and put all the "Power Levels" for the warriors.

 

[Glacial_Reign]

Cleric full heal needs to have a longer cd than 20 seconds. It needs to be at least 40-50 sec cd. I understand it's a high mana cost spell but with a 20 sec cd is a joke

 

[Ruger392]

Cleric does need longer cd on its heals with slightly bit lowering on mana cost and give it an attack skill or two not to strong, If we agree we ccan put numbers ad work on skills.

I also think we should sit down and have talks about the most non balanced classes, *paladin, disciples, druid, etc*

 

[Glacial_Reign]

Let's work on one class at a time. We really need to focus on the healers first.

 

[Jrr_]

@malikdanab make a poll on which path to start at.

 

[malikdanab]

@malikdanab make a poll on which path to start at.

I made a separate thread in the general forum. I think its nice to let the community pick what they want first, because in the end we need to go over all of them anyway. Feel free to vote at: http://herocraftonline.com/main/threads/balance-for-the-people.54776/

 

[malikdanab]

The people have asked and they shall receive...I hope

So the majority wants the support classes being reworked. So we could fling numbers around (Which I don't mind) or we could try out Kainzo's formula thing. So @Kainzo should I go ahead and use the formula or are you planning on adjusting it?

 

[Kainzo]

I think the formula is something that needs adjustment by not just me but by everyone on the team, in order for it to work properly.

Its a good base of operations but I have issues with the formula when it comes to effectiveness. The raw damage output vs the cooldown may not give a "true" damage output.

 

[malikdanab]

I think the formula is something that needs adjustment by not just me but by everyone on the team, in order for it to work properly.

Its a good base of operations but I have issues with the formula when it comes to effectiveness. The raw damage output vs the cooldown may not give a "true" damage output.

If we were to keep the variables from your formula what I would do:
((Damage *Effects) * (Area)) = Power
Power / Cost = Power Efficiency
Efficiency / Delay = Power Frequency *
*(This number is what we are looking for. In the end how much you can do, how quickly for how long will determine the power of a class.)

Changes of terminology:

• Area:
  • Single Target: Range
  • AOE: Range*5 (Since AOEs are limited its as if you used 5 single target skills at once. I know that doesn't exactly take skill shot AOEs into consideration, but its better calculation than pure area.)

Side Note- The formula breaks down when it comes to weak skills:

• Antidote: -10

• Smite: -1.4

 

[Kainzo]

Right, which means either 1) smite has too high of a cost for how lwo the damage is or something else.

 

[malikdanab]

Right, which means either 1) smite has too high of a cost for how lwo the damage is or something else.

I'd say the cost, if the damage was increased it would make its damage/kite potential higher. For a measly 40+1.25 damage it costs 100 mana. Compare it to say fireball and you can see the mana cost isn't right.