Experience and leveling points.....

Soooo, I want to make sure of a few somethings while I decide how to alter my toon since the changes to experience points this morning.

2 schools of battle, Bludgeon and Fire. If I used only Fire to kill something, would my Bludgeon skills be altered in any way? and vice a versa?

What about things like Fire Attunement if I killed only using bludgeons?

I'm asking because with the changes this morning I have to go turn some stuff off so that what I gain and what I expend are somewhat even. I don't care if I have a really large pool, but I do NOT want to run out of experience points while out fighting.

I'm not sure what to do here other than turn stuff off....which means I'll be leveling only a few skills at a time instead of 6 to 8. Right now I'm losing points hand over fist while I was gaining them earlier today.

Chris's reply about what he was doing is here.....https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/macroing.46584/page-6

Below is what was said:
--------------------------------------------By @Chris
Alright, I was asked to speak on this by someone I respect.

Guys, we've been thinking about this quite a bit. There are several options for "improving" this. So first off, I put improving in quotes because one man's improving is another man's "WTF are you doing to my game!" For the final wipe, how quickly people will advance in exps will likely slow down by 50%. That, compounded with the loss of the exp boost player got from previous releases will probably really feel like it is slow advancing for the first month or two. Those two things combined will probably mean people are spending exps at a much faster relative rate than they are now. In other words, more swings of the sword are going to be required to earn the exps so more exps spent without the need for macroing.

So the real issue is not the gust ball. If we removed that it would just be people would just be doing heal-swing-heal-swing macros while standing in front of their buddy. I believe currently the real issue is we are giving about 8X as many exps from kills and quests as the math for the # of swings to apply was designed for. So you end up with a lot of excess exps that aren't getting applied through natural means and players are left macroing to try to apply them.

The second thing macro'ers gain is more control over which skills get exps applied and at what rate. I think this is likely at least partially a symptom of me not doing a good job of balancing high use skills vs low use skills. For clarification, we have numbers we can tweak that control how many exps get applied on a skill use. This is so we can make things like base weapon attacks take more swings and big cost, more rare skills like Earthquake, take fewer uses to level. Additionally, there is another value I can tune that determines how many exps get used to level the skill. For example, thrust might apply 0.05% of your total pool per use and and only take 1X times the experience curve to level. So maybe something like 1.5mln to get to level 100. Whereas Earthquake might apply 0.5% of your total pool but take 4X times the exp curve to level. So something like 6mln to get to level 100.

I will take a pass at balancing these a bit more for R28. We will likely do another patch or two for R27 but this feels like something that isn't worth risking cramming in with no time for feedback. For R28 I will just be tweaking how much gets applied per use relative to other skills but not the exps to level number. If I change that without a wife, players would see some skills drop in level and other surge. I'll save that for R29.

So, what I can do for R27 to help with this is increase how many exps get applied per use so this becomes far less necessary. I will get that in today so it will make the morning patch.

I believe this is much less of an issue than people seem to believe it is. I know it will be less of an issue post final wipe when people gain pooled experience at a slightly lower rate but I'm going to adjust it some anyways. One of my design principals is always that I want people playing the game, not the system. If people are macroing to raise skills then that is absolutely people playing the system and not the game and needs some tweaking even if the perceived benefit is much less significant than the actual benefit.

 

Thank you for the info.

 

So, here's my problem....my Adventure lvl is 28.

I turned all skills to the minus sign, not training, headed to West Ravenswood, and killed 1 Brown Bear and 2 Large Brown Bears. These bears are all BLUE to me. Nothing in between, only disarmed to heal, rearmed and attack. here's what happened:

Starting experience points 66505 and NOTHING is turned to training, everything is the Minus sign for not training. *LBB = large brown bear
kill Brown Bear 66805 +300
kill LBB 67345 +540
kill LBB 67885 +540

Turned on ONLY
Healthy (almost level 28)
Strength (1/2 way thru lvl 21)

kill Brown Bear 67199 -686
kill LBB 66765 -434
kill LBB 66425 -340

Healthy is now 2/3 thru lvl 29
Strength is just shy of 24

Did it again
Starting experience points 66425 and NOTHING is turned to training, everything is the Minus sign for not training.
kill Brown Bear 66725 +300
kill LBB 67265 +540
kill LBB 67805 +540

Turned on ONLY
Healthy is now 2/3 thru lvl 29
Strength is just shy of 24

kill Brown Bear 67617 -188
kill LBB 67325 -292
kill LBB 66657 -668

Healthy is now just into lvl 31
Strength is a little over 1/2 of lvl 25

Suggestions as to what would be the next higher animal I should test on? Elves in Greymark are still a toss up as to who wins, Elder wolves kick my ass.

At this point, I would kinda think that a BLUE critter should be a break even proposition, am I wrong here? How are we to keep our experience bar at a place where it is usable? Only 2 important innates active and nothing else and I'm losing points?

I have 4x experience, figure that in, sorry, should have said so.

 

The fix doesn't affect those with millions and millions of XP (already exploited). But it sure does burden the poor plebes just starting out.

@ Haz, currently, I only level up one innate at a time. To do otherwise is just punitive, in my opinion. Try it with only one innate and see if advancement is appropriate.

Ultimately, it may be a design goal to have ALL innate skills turned off until you get to a reasonably high XP level, and then turn them on selectively, one at a time, to advance them individually. I mean, I think that's a horrible design goal, but that seems to be how it's turning out.

 

so even 4x exp is useless now, guess you have ti figure out somthign to exploit so you can gain exp

 

I don't have the 4x xp anymore, and my pool is draining so fast I've currently turned off all skills except the one I'm training.. meh

 

Until today, they had us gaining experience at 4x normal rate, BUT those experience points were only being applied at the base rate to skills when a skill was used.

Now, they skills are soaking up experience at 4x the rate as well to be in line with how it will feel once all experience boosts are gone after the final wipe.

But i thinkt heres a problem because it's also efectivly acting as though your using your skills 4x as much as you normally would to kill the same target

 

Actually, that is exactly what this patch has done to my training. simple as that.

 

If you swing a sword, then its gonna eat up experience as if you had swung that sword 4 times?
EDIT: Nevermind, ignore that

But until today they have had us gainign extra experience but it wast being applied as proportionately as it was intended until today, so sicne is the first time experience gaina nd application has been in-line proportionately, it will allow them to balance it

 

I went from 268k to 6k in about 2 hours fighting all blue mobs.

It was fun leveling up my skills fast, but my xp pool is gone.

 

phew... its not just me

 

I think if you're not in a group, you can't get to these super high levels. There may be outliers (certain poplar builds) but I think group vs. solo is a big balance issue right now.

Takes me a million hits to kill something.

 

@Baron Drocis Fondorlatos
Seriously? What skills do you have, and what are you fighting?

 

One thing I dont really undersnat why increase point usage why not just shut of the 4x experience boost.

My Dark Pally is now out of 4x and I have to watch my skills VERY hard to even maintain any level of Exp Points

 

Why? Have you tried group leveling as well?

 

LoL Group Leveling, I can do it I know how, it is pretty easy actually all you do is enter and area with 2 - 3 peeps and stand there and let the other guy(s) kill stuff and you gain exp.

Not much fun - I am stable around 220K ATM but am watching skills very diligently and making sure I have NONe that are taking % from the pool so once a skill hits 80 it is locked immediately.

I am fighting in tier 3 - 5 and some 5 areas so the critters are all harder to me I stick with Blue / Yellows and they are balancing out use / gains.

Also I have my Lich out whenever I rem to cast it so it helps kill them and doesn't affect my focus so I can keep on Casting.

I am pretty good at managing skills , and also a HUGE proponent of playing the game and learning how to do it and still increase stuff so I am doint OK on my Own.

Ill post pics of my Template in a few to show what I have gaining . . . once I hit 40s in my bludgeoning which I still have not

 

Ok Made a Video I added a few more skills to train again since Root is back to working so I ate up a little more points, down to 180K. I am in the Sanctus Spine playing with the Wolves and Bears Here is Video of my deck and template and what skills I have Gaining . . . . Enjoy



Once I get the 4th Glyph on a lot of my fighting skils I willlock them for a while to increase exp pool an focus on buffs and other skills then go back and work them up more later

 

And this was a Quick Fight to show how I do and Yeah down to 170k area so still training more than gaining exp but I like the balance. GM Skills will be HARD since only a small pool but will cross that bridge when get there

 

Lol why are you guys so worried about your pool sizes?
Simple fact - you can only level up as fast as you are gathering XP by your actions (typically killing things). Ultimately nothing else affects your leveling. If leveling is all you want, it's best to pick your battles carefully, choosing mobs that almost kill you but not quite (frankly I don't like the new mob color coding at all, all too much handholding and the information is way too coarse).
In any case, if your XP pool depletes quickly it only means it is put into good use
@Haz maybe you could try Plains of Righ Inis, it's got some timber wolves and since it's open terrain it's easy to make a quick escape (plus the various mobs fight against each other a lot in there). Ranged folks might also enjoy the ah-always-so-eager brown spider population.

 

It's kind of inorganic that in order to "not lose time" when leveling that you must do these meta-gaming calculations on which skill would be best to raise first.

I thought we were trying to do the exact opposite... that the game plays itself naturally...