Combat "balance pass"

thats absolutely not true. Increase Fire warding.i receive 450 of ice Arrow with shield,110 water warding and 120 Blue blooded
If you take a crit of an x6 fireball on the head, you have to die. Fireball the most hard skill to use in this game. Not like puncture/ piercing ****

 

I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll return to active play in a year, and find I need to grind my way back to being able to do what I could do six months before I left.

 

Is the balance pass being done to correct PvP imbalance or PvE? Seems that when there's a PvP player(s) who's unhappy with their build getting stomped by a certain combination, a "balance pass" comes out and kicks the crap out of PvE players.

If we're dealing with PvP (predominately) couldn't you tag the changes to occur only when flagged? It would certainly fix the issue for PvP without whacking everyone else.

Fenris

 

Normaly in MMO, nothing wrong here. I logged in WOW yesterday after 6 months and i am far behind others player and i need to grind to catch them and do what i did 6 months ago. Same it happened when i logged back in sota after a break.

 

Its for both. In pvp there is for sure some issues with some things that 1 shot people. as to PVE a lot more balance needs to happen for some of the top 3 classes which are all favor of the month because of what they can do.

 

right, this is the nature of a mmo game. The end game is always moving.

 

If you mean that new end game is always moving, I have no problem. Top level players will always need something new to do. If you mean current end game is always moving, then why even play? Where is the fun in chasing goalposts? Instead of moving them all the time because too many people are catching them, add frickin' new ones.

 

well yea but balance things will always need to be done and yes I’ve been burned many times by changes it is what it is. Small team etc and when they add items and skills it does have unforeseen consequence that need to be worked out. I just wish instead of letting things be outta balance for years the fixes come a bit faster, imo it’s worse hen it goes unfixed for years thinking about ut here.

 

Fair enough. But I still maintain that feeling like you're not progressing enough compared to the time you're putting in is bad enough; feeling like you're losing ground is a reason people leave.

 

I don't think PvE balance is really so bad at the moment. Some things are obviously all-around more powerful than others, but there are a lot of different things you can play that are powerful enough somewhere to get good xp and loot, so it's not really that big of a deal.

I do think it would make things a lot easier in the long run if there were more emphasis on balancing like things. For example, when combat specializations were introduced, trees that were viewed as more powerful got weaker spec bonuses and visa versa. It would be much better if those trees and their specs were both balanced instead of one compensating for the other, and the same goes for like skills, gear, artifacts, consumables, blessings, and environments. Trying to fix imbalances with other imbalances is a lot messier and ends up unnecessarily annoying a lot of players (example: int food).

 

I do agree that current pve does seem more balanced for many classes except a few which looking at numbers seem to be way over the top compared to all classes. from a PVP perspective there are very specific issues with certain classes which can be balanced through other means with out affecting the PVP side.

I would either look at adding a damage modifier to reduce overall dmg when fighting other people which gives you more control for tweaking spells to balance that out with out making people feel like they are not progressing in the PVE side. Some games already scale the pvp dmg which makes the fights longer but allow for more time to handle things with skills making more about skill then pure dmg output. The other things out there in other games is making specific gear for PVP that does the same idea of scaling back dmg from other players and weapons for pvp to do the opposite where pve items are as id but dont hit as hard vs players. That could be away to better balance out the pvp side well leaving the progression side the same with only few tweaks to the OP classes to adjust.

technically we have decks that bind to gear so why not

 

I always loved resilience gear in wow, I think with our crafting system it would be great.

for example any item made in blood bay you have a chance to get resilience rolls on gear in addition to say socketing for pvp etc.

 

yep they did it in wow and also in Rift. it was put in for that reason as its very hard to balance pvp in a PVE system other wise.

 

So long as healing doesn't make players unkillable. Doing damage to some players is tough already but equally tough when they heal themselves to full in a second.

 

the exception I might make is if they are spec and geared for healing primary they should be virtually unkillable 1v1. That is a full counter to pure burst dps player build.

 

Chris will Nerf the skills without a second thought and without batting an eye. Its a LONG standing tradition here in SOTA and the PRIMARY reason there are so few active players. I think that I personally know twice as many players who were devoted to the game and no longer play because they got sick of losing several months worth of advancement and then being told by Chris, to " Re-spec if you don't like it." This game is dying and maybe letting players actually enjoy the game is better than these misguided balance passes.

Thats the issue though, they cant effect PVP without screwing all the PVE players , again this has been proven by around six years of screwing up the game trying to balance PVP and PVE. Its just never going to happen and further efforts only benefit other MMORPGs who are collecting our pissed off playerbase abandoning this project.

 

While i still think power creep has been becoming mroe of an issue lately

I do also think PvP needs to be slowed down a bit, whether it be via soemthign similar to a resilliance stat or whatever. You can die in 2 or 3 hits to someone and recover from near death to full in a second, which personally i don't like. I think even folks who arent built well for PvP could enjoy it more if they see themselves doing something with thier attacks (or defenses)

 

Exactly my point earlier in the thread. Perhaps there's some PvE imbalance, but it's not the rationale for a "rebalance". The responses i'm seeing in the thread focus on PvP mostly. Make use of the PvP flag and alter how the skills behave for them and don't clobber everything across the board.

Fenris

 

I dont think a balance can be achieved when it comes to PVE...Chris has been at it for years unsuccessfull . The way i see it theres 3 ways to go about this ..rock , paper scissors ( not possible due to the multitude of trees and skills ) or make every tree as viable as the top 1 tree everyone is using . The third choice is to keep nerfing and nerfing every month alienating players that have dedicated time and gold for gear . Who enjoys seeing their favourite playstyle destroyed ? The only reason people call for nerfs is because of pvp ... i doubt anyone will bother making posts because you did 500 dmg to a zombie while he did only 300 .

So what needs to be fixed/balanced is pvp fights...that can be done by introducing a pvp stat as wow did like resilience ... and make pvp fights more of an attrition and strategic fight rather then 1 -2 shots youre dead . Max dmg for any skill in pvp shouldnt be higher then 200 ...

A resilience skill can be added that anyone can learn ....at GM it negates 50% dmg from other players and another 25% resilience stat can be obtained from gear .Much simpler and you wont need to worry about pve balance again.

Its no secret im no fan of nerfs of any kind ... i think making other trees as viable as top tree used would add more flavour to the game , increase player retention , and will encourage people to test more then just what they got used to.. overall will make for a far more pleasurable experience then... polearms got nerfed what do i do now..i need new play style, gotta spend time to learn this new tree and i need new gear for it ....

 

Amen Elrond.

Fenris