New Combat Focus regen rate is way too low :D

@Chris So I guess I don't know what it is you're aiming at here in regards to gameplay. I'm adv level 81, most of my skills are 80-100. I'm a bow user. And you're right, I could just spend my time pulling my bowstring back doing max normal attacks, pretty much all day long. The green mobs hardly damage my health. So yeah I can do that,and toss out a heal now and then. That's the game you want me to enjoy playing? This sort of goes back to the "why do non-magic skills use a focus pool anyway" question. They're skills, I learned to perform them well. They don't for the most part do a whole lot more damage than my max normal attack, but stacking them and moving the glyphs around is fun. Working with my deck is fun. But it appears I'm just supposed to stand there and not use it most of the time. That doesn't philosophically make sense to me.

I will work on my focus pool (it's not all that high, around 500). But I am telling you that my focus pool ends up somewhere between 0% and 40% after every pull of 2-3 green mobs, and this is with 4 hour food and stacking glyphs. And the reason is that during the fight I am now basically regenerating nothing and pretty much every glyph I use is costing me 15-18 focus.

How am I supposed to learn to maximize my skills - which for me is an essential part of every game, figuring out what works best against each type of mob - if what you want me to spend my time doing is pulling my bowstring back over and over again so I don't have to go sit on a rock between every pull waiting to drop out of combat so that 300 focus can regenerate? And how exactly would that be better if my focus pool were simply bigger? The math seems the same, I just get to fight a bit longer and then sit on the rock a bit longer. Yes, I understand that if my focus pool was twice as big then I'd regenerate twice as much focus as now with each tick because it's a percentage. Maybe that will do the trick, I don't know.

I will try to work with it, but I'm feeling lost as to what it is you're building here. I'm feeling like it's a game where the more I learn, the more I'm forced to not use what I've learned.

Regardless, thank you for taking the time to respond on this thread.

 

+1

 

Agian..
As an archer, im curious what your build is.
I can spam rapids and aimeds and i have to stop for health before focuse killing yellows. Greens, depending on level, im easily killen 4 or 5 with pure skills.. 1 or 2 with normals, then another 3 or 4 with skills agian.

Thats with skills 80 - 100s.

Im honestly not seeing the focuse nerf for a range build. :/
Or cycle in a normal shot every 3 skills?

I know mages are having issues. Especially air relient mages.. bug not sure why ranged would be.

 

No more off topic then a lot of posts I read, and more on topic then you calling it out as your only reply. I'm sorry you didn't get my point, I'll try and quote more often. I was responding to having read several posts from higher level people complaining about issues that I'm not really seeing and speculating on how it is for people in my level range.

 

@Chris, here's a couple ideas to help make the focus regeneration nerf more palatable. Can you please consider them?

• When we're attacked and automatically put into combat mode, can you please make it so that we also automatically draw our weapons?
• Can you please eliminate the skill cooldown when entering combat?
• If you can't do those things then could you please make the combat focus regeneration buff for food 1/2 of the non-combat regeneration buff instead of 1/4?
• [edit] Oh yeah, please scale back the focus use a bit for high level skills.

 

Out of combat it is fine as it is. Regens fast enough.
But in combat... I mean i would be even ok with the current combat focus regen if the food buffs weren't nerfed so hard.
Dragon food only gives 1.3 combat focus...

I have 704 Focus, which is quite a lot as an Melee at ADV. Level 97.
We killed the Dragon in The Rise 20 times or so last night and Focus wasn't really so bad, still wish i had a little bit more though. Droprate really sucks now btw. don't think we will ever kill that Dragon again, not worth it
However, it's mainly the normal hunting sessions on "very" green mobs that bothers me, so many pauses/breaks... doesn't really make fun, imo.
Also don't feel like drinking focus potions for normal fights, i can play Diablo III for that.

But honestly, why the overall hard Focus drop all of a suddon, didn't it feel already about right in R36/R37?
Still had to take breaks there once in a while to regen focus, it was ok and felt balanced, almost nobody complained.
But the current 1/5 drop doesn't feel right to me, 2/5 or 3/5 would have been better imo.

Edit:
Well i was just hunting in DR again and for some reason it worked way better than when i opened this thread.

But i still think focus regen could take a little buff , maybe indeed 2/5 instead just 1/5.
Or buff the food slightly.

 

@Chris
i think that a little fix on these % need to be made.... but what about TAP SOUL ? ... now a player can'use that skill ... (2 min of not healing .. mean.. no playing for 2 minutes..) you can make that using of TAP SOUL on NON COMBAT BAR decrease healing attunement just for 10 seconds? (2+tapsoulskilllvl/10) .. and 30 seconds on COMBAT MODE? (to prevent use of tapsoul+healing on PVP) (10+tapsoulskilllvl/40)

and also: we are seeing archers class not worried about this focus change.. this not ALERT you about a possible different drain of focus by archer skill?
(my ground pound skill .. uses 25 of focus at level 91 .. a similar skill in archery... multi shot 16 of focus)

and more: fizzle of a speel consume a lot of focus.. a chainlightning skill uses 36 of focus (in combat mode) .. if i fizzle 3 times the chain... i loose 1/4 of my total focus... (without any result)

 

The nerf is alright, what was possible before was not!

 

Maybe a good way to balance PvP ?!

 

Yup my ground pound, crushing blow, and knockback all have insanely high focus cost around the 20-25 range. 3-4 swings of my hammer and nearly 1/4 of my total pool is gone. By the time I put up all my tanking buffs (4-6 of them) and do a few attacks. I'm already at about 1/4 to 1/3 of my focus gone. A few more attacks and by that time I have to get ready to refresh my 'glancing blow' 'parry' and 'bonus block' buffs plus 'douse' if I have mages all over me. By this time it's about 15 seconds into combat and I'm already approaching over 1/2 to 2/3 of my focus gone and chugging my first focus potion already and possibly going to need to heal soon depending on how many archers/mages decided to attack me (which for some ungodly reason there's a ton of those guys in the game and they like to spawn in pairs and chain pull each other). If focus is used by everybody I don't know why bonuses only come from int. based skills. Surely some other skills from str and dex could grant small bonuses at least. Does endurance, constitution, raw power, and agility mean nothing when it comes to how many deadly and impressive attacks I can perform with weapons?

 

I've reverted to using lower level abilities and chugging focus potions like they're going out of style and it's improved some, but I don't think being forced to use lvl 40-50 abilities to avoid running out of focus for characters over level 80 is an acceptable answer. I still think the regen is too slow, or food buffs were nerfed too hard. I'm fine with the base regen staying low and boosting player economy by bumping food buffs up some making things like food more important. I also still think there should be ways for melee, archers, and tamers to regain focus the same way mages have aetheric feedback. Or maybe change the way aetheric feedback works based on what stance you are in. Caster stance = use after crit spell for focus regen, berserker stance = use after crit melee for focus regen, defensive stance = use within x time after a parry or block for focus regen.

 

By the way TAP SOUL, in this moment is unused... and i don't understand why is need to decrease attunement of healing (with negative value).. ok, now the spell is more used but it's not more easy increase the health decrease? Example: The regenerated focus is half of health removed. it's too easy?


BTW Focus: The focus used for spell depends on skill level. (Ex. Rapid Fire at 99,9 level cost 34 of focus and with stillness 27)

 

I'm wearing plate and basically have a deck of bow skills (without multi) right now, barely any magic during combat (pretty much Glancing Blow and nothing else). Based on what you said about your health, maybe you're wearing leather - I'm going to try that and see if it matters. I'm also going to try upping my focus pool as Chris suggested and see what happens.

I can't figure out how you're killing 1 or 2 with normals in between spamming skills and you see any real focus regen. I'm getting 2 focus regen a second in combat with 4 hour food. So if I just use my base bow attack for 60 seconds, I only get back 120 focus. If I killed 4-5 greens spamming, I definitely used 300-400 focus. So the math somehow isn't working for me where you're seeing enough focus regen during those couple kills to then be back to spamming glyphs. The only way I can get my focus pool back is to drop out of combat...or not use my focus pool in the first place.

I feel like an old man in fights now, exhausted after crushing a couple mobs. I already feel that way in real life, I don't need to do it here too.

 

If you find the negative attunement for life magic from tap soul to be too high you should try training it higher. I just got tap soul on my new character this morning and noticed that it decreases the debuff as you gain skill. At 1 skill it was almost -20 but when I got it to 20 it's at -19 with the tooltip saying at 40 skill it will be -18.

 

Most archers hardly ever use multishot because it's really very ineffective. A better comparison is rapid fire, which at lvl 90 uses 25 focus, same as your ground pound.

 

-104 of attunement.. it's not normal!

 

I think the path of life mages and death mages are really going to diverge since tap soul is heavily biased towards the death tree. Probably because life and death magic are polar opposites. This might become a trend for the higher level spells of other opposing magic trees.

 

I can see where certain players at certain levels and play styles are going to experience different levels of Focus usage and not be concerned with Focus Regeneration. I can only speak of myself and my situation which based on what I hear here is very similar to a vast number. You could test the system till the cows come home with Players with different stats and skills and never see what the true problem is.

At my level and skills I presently have a little over 500 mana. I use Food to help regenerate health and mana. I do not use potions yet because the recipes are falling so slowly it will take months to get them all and probably a year more to get to the point of doing a Dragon Level MOB, for the ingredients, with possibly two people, one being a high level Healer. So at present I need to stick with Food only.

My Focus Usage and Regen skills are not as high as they could be but then I did not need them at 100 before, which seems to be where I need them now. Again it will probably take me over 3 - 4 million experience points to get there.

I am a Meleee Polearms user with some Air and Water skills. I was capable of taking on two Obsidian Bears. and by the time the battle was done I had possibly 25 - 100 Mana left. Now I can kill the first Obsidian Bear and run out of Mana about 1/3 - 1/2 way through the second. So then I spend the rest of my time swinging with Auto Attack. Hopefully I can kill it but since my health is down from the First Bear it is going to be close whether I kill it, die or run away. And nothing irritates me more than having to run away from a MOB when it only has 100 - 200 HP left.

If I am lucky and I am able to kill both Bears, I then go into Non-Combat mode to hopefully regenerate my health and mana. If I Field Dress both Bears it takes approximately 10 seconds, I then have to sit and wait another 35 or 40 seconds to get the rest of my mana back. I'm not the type of player who walks through these instances player "Tip Toe Through The Tulips" on my Ukuele, but if you are, more power to you.

At present my In Combat Mode Focus Regen Rate is approximately 3 per Second. My Non Combat Mode Focus Regen Rate is approximate 7 - 8. Remember when I said I had 500 Mana and by the time I was through fighting those two Bears I had 25 - 100 Mana left? So that means I need to regenerate 400 Mana. Even in Non-Combat Mode 400 Mana / 8 Mana per second = 50 Seconds to get my Mana back to 100. If I consider it takes a few seconds to get into Non Combat Mode after a battle it is even higher. If I forgot to go into Non Combat Mode you would be looking at 400 Mana / 3 Per Second = 133 seconds, Close to 2 1/4 minutes. That is why I call the present system the Fight One Minute, Rest One Minute System. Now you can test all you want but to me the numbers are obvious, at least for my level of playing skill.

I only get to play approximately 3 hours or so a day. I like killing MOB's, that is what I do. I have up until now done it my way. So, yes, there are many things I can do to get my character back up and fighting MOB's the way I used to. But a lot of that is going to take a considerable amount of time. In the meantime to what I enjoy doing I will have to fall back to Level 4. That means less EXP and that those who are already at multiples of GM's will continue to increase the gap between mid level Players (Again More Power to them).

 

@Chris here's my issue with your change. In your never ending quest to micro-manage realism into the game, you continually divest the game from being fun. Everyone looks for action, fun, and adventure for their limited time spent playing your supposed virtual world escape from real life, only to be hammered in the face with grinding, waiting, more grinding and more waiting. Is it really so important to limit our playing time with endless hamperings of 'realism'? What is so wrong with the idea of a much more robust regen rate that lets us quickly participate in an endless stream of fun?
Why should I have to worry at all about focus management? Focus management skills and deck building are the gateway to combat fun for the masses? You give us all the various skill trees with lots of opportunities to be diversely talented and then throw up road blocks and obstacles to keep us from doing so. Where is the 'fun'? Personally, I think the customer base is much more interested in action, fun, and adventure than the 'realism' of 'needing to recuperate' after a fight in a virtual world. Ya'll are about 'niche' this game right out of any viable market of success. Don't get so caught up in the details that you forget that fun is what brings in long term customers, realism is just a documentary.

 

How are you getting it to three? Food?