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Balance Chain Lightning.

Discussion in 'Release 36 Feedback Forum' started by MrBlight, Nov 24, 2016.

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  1. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

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    Chain Lightning, then Lightning, back and forth.
     
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  2. Oba Evesor

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    If you not using a locked deck there is no cool down of 15 secs, just spam chain over and over.
    The issue, to me, isnt chain lightning. I dont think the CC resist buff is working. I've noticed skellies stunning over and over, even when the resist buff is there. Another problem is the Air resist tree only resists dmg, not stuns, so if youre light armor you get zero stun resist skills, unless you use a shield.
     
  3. WehTeheFf

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    This. Having no cooldowns due to unlocked glyphs is kind of a problem for pvp balance I think. At least it makes it harder.
    Really good points, yes. The CC resist buff needs some work for PvP, dunno if also for PvE. I think it would be a good idea to separate CC resistance in PvP and PvE, no idea if that's a no-go for the devs, I hope not. Some differences between PvE and PvP might be neccessary to achieve good balance in both fields.
    Might also be a good idea to seperate good CC effects from good damage dealing abilities. A skill that has everything is just TOO good in most situations and has a high potential of making other skills obsolete. But since I haven't played THAT much as a caster that's just my general opinion, not specific to lightning/chain lightning (although those two felt just TOO good when I tried them).
    Of course there's the problem of limited hotbar spots which makes it impossible to put more than a hand full of different skills into the deck without relying too much on RNG. Well, that's the path the devs chose so now they must work with that :p
     
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  4. Toadster

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    Could some try to break down what is actually broken here? I think chain lightning at my level is very balanced for PVM and would not like another nerf bat swing. My eye is already popping out.

    Is it the percent chance to stun for chain lightning at higher levels?

    Is it the resist being non-existent for these players or not working at higher levels?

    Is it the interupt mechanics? With interrupt being percent DMG based does rapid fire do less dmg quicker and not interrupt high levels?

    from this post it seems like there are skills they could train to overcome these situations but I do not PVP and hate to see skills suffer because of these posts.
     
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  5. Roycestein Kaelstrom

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    Chain lightning already has its damage nerfed, reg consume chance and focus increased. The perma stun issue has more to do with the CC resist buff that appear after getting cc'd doesn't work correctly.
     
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  6. uhop

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    You guys have a good discussion going, and not being a PvPer, I cannot contribute, so I watch you from sidelines. Yet, it looks like a stun effect is borken in general: I got frozen solid in PvE scenarios by lowly fauns.

    See this bug report: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/pesky-fauns.72110/ TL;DR: it describes two cases. In one 3 (three) fauns stunned me solid for minutes, and I had to terminate my session to get out (with no damage, mind you!), and another one with 1 (one!) faun barraged me with stun-like effects with practically no windows in-between. I had some other close calls with fauns, both before and after, but nothing like that. Hence the bug report.

    My point is that the stun problem probably should be viewed (and solved) in a bigger context, and it is more than a bunch of whiny gankers wanting to nerf more capable opponents.
     
    Last edited: Nov 25, 2016
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  7. Nox Haven

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    I don't understand what you mean? You can still spam it with the deck system...
     
  8. Drocis the Devious

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    You're missing a part of the problem with your explanation. Here's a question for you, what's the point of having a stun effect if every player in the game is supposed to get a working CC resist for free by default?

    The problem is that the design of stuns and in particular chain lighting and lighting stuns is broken. Yes, there's a bug, but that just fixes the baseline poor design we already have. You can't give one school of magic a spell that does tons of damage, stuns, is ranged, and oh yeah it also works on multiple opponents. That doesn't make any sense.

    There has to be a counter that makes that OP spell kind of pointless the moment someone uses it. The same thing can be said of the fire spells. If Douse and Ice Shield were not good counters we'd be haven't the exact same conversation about Fire Arrow and Fire Ball.
     
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  9. Stundorn

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    Forget about Balance.
    The only pvp Balance is no gear, no skillpoints like a 1st round in CS.
    There will never be a balance!
    There will be all variations of Wins and Losses!
    Fair, unfair, playerskill-, skillpoints-, equip- based, and all mixed up.
    Forget about "Balance"
    It's like real life there's no Balance, there's some lucky shot winners, some skilled people, some exploiters with more points and better equip... , some zerg, some this and that.
    But there will be never balanced or fair PVP because for this you only can play chess or weiqi or something like that, where both contrahents or teams have exactly the same preconditions and only playerskill is defining who wins and who lost.
    This would be "balanced" everything else is something different.

    I like pvp very much, but not in games where time to skill up, equip, zergs ganking is vital to it.

    As a casual i'm doomed to never play pvp, i dont want to be cannonfodder to people who like to be in the winner team and dont look for a fair fight, but an advantage to affirm Themself as "good pvp'ers"

    Not chainlightning is ridicoulous
    Gankers are ridicolous
     
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  10. uhop

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    Actually I didn't offer an explanation per se, rather more data points. I am totally with you that right now the abilities of different schools of players are rather skewed, and far from equal. And like you said countermeasures are lacking. All these are supposed to be fixed.

    I don't blame developers --- being a developer myself I know that it is very hard to provide a (near)perfect balance, and keep everyone happy. Yet this is why we are here: to identify problems, and give a feedback from different perspectives, so problems can be fixed.
     
  11. Bow Vale

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    CL does have a 20m range. Thus if you are beyond his you don't get hit, if in a group and know your opponent, spread out. Maybe the subsequent chain distance could be cut to maybe 10m and then 5m etc which would help the unprepared group, but generally even having been victim to the stealth/CL stack attack while in a group, we did manage to kill him, and looking back through the logs the damage given to us was high on some people but not on others, which makes me think resistance does like it should play a big part in damage received.
     
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  12. Drocis the Devious

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    I'm not trying to blame anyone, either. I think the combat system is fun to play, just has a lot of gaps in the design that are causing some serious balance issues.

    Chess is a very balanced game, but I believe White (because it goes first) wins more often than not, making it a slightly more advantageous side to play with. But even that just means players should rotate who gets to go first for the sake of competitive balance.

    I'm confident we'll get to the right place eventually. I wasn't always so sure in the past. But Chris and team have proven that they're very good at changing things once it becomes obvious (through data) that it needs changed. I'm not a developer and what I've learned over the last 3 years of watching this process is that I would be very hard pressed to change things I believed were "right". I have to give Portalarium a lot of credit for making big changes over time to find the best solutions. I think that's something that probably wouldn't happen if they weren't so experienced.

    Having said that, I hope we see more big changes soon.
     
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  13. Drocis the Devious

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    I don't know if it's still like this, but in R33 I tested CL a great deal and because of the chain effect the range was essentially unlimited. I was killing things I couldn't even see on my screen!

    Why? Because anything that could be hit with CL would increase the range. A rabbit for example, that you didn't even notice might add another 20 range making the CL effective range 40! It was crazy.

    So if it's still like that, shame for not making this change in R33. It was crazy OP then even though it was listed as having only a 20 range.
     
  14. Nox Haven

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    So having a spell that can hit unidentified stealth-ed targets automatically, while stunning them and causing damage, and simultaneously doing the same to every other target in the vicinity, not once but repeatedly until death is not OP?

    Hell, sign me up for stealth homing auto Stun rapid shot/multi shot with my archer build right now please.
     
    Last edited: Nov 25, 2016
  15. Nox Haven

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    I understand you are frustrated that people think your chain lightning is OP. We will see what the developers think and that will be the end of it.
     
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  16. Drocis the Devious

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    He would have to be an archer in heavy armor to have knights grace.
    Having auto attack spam arrows is also something that should not unstealth players. One bad design choice doesn't justify another.
    And as for stun resists, there's not a whole lot of those for light armor folks, that IS by design, but it's not balanced.
     
  17. Drocis the Devious

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    Yes of course, but if we're talking about it being non-judgmental, then it should also hit group members with friendly fire. And that's where balance comes into play. It's a game that both the person with chain lightning and without should enjoy equally well.

    I've actually lobbied @Chris in the past to make the lightning spells an AOE effect much like fire ball. And to make all AOE's have a chance of hitting the caster if they don't target it correctly (read: away from themselves). This imo, would make them much more challenging and avoid some of the imbalances we have right now.
     
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  18. Nox Haven

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    Calm down. I understand you are frustrated. This is not a niche issue. This has been tested thoroughly. Everyone who uses chain lightning loves it. Everyone who it is used against hates it. Discussing this is the purpose of these forums. If you don't use it or don't care then let the people who do care discuss it.
     
  19. Drocis the Devious

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    Like what?

    What stun resists are there for light armor and not using a shield? (very hard to use a bow and shield together, btw)
     
  20. Drocis the Devious

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    Of course I don't. That's kind of the point of this conversation...right now there are lot of people running around with CL in their deck. :)

    Ya know what would be a great counter spell to CL?

    Elemental Reflect:

    It only works against Elemental Magic. So if someone casts air magic at you it immediately gets reflected back on the caster and does extra damage! If someone casts non-elemental magic the spell does not reflect back and instead does extra damage or last extra long. It would require a large amount of focus to cast and maintain.
     
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