Nerf to Evasion / Glancing Blows / Fortify Defense

@Vas Corp Por Hinted while Showing off the new Blackblade Pass of this nerf. I am not sure if anyone Caught on to it. There is an avoidance nerf coming... thank god as Avoidance is out of control. There was specific mension of nerfs to Glancing Blows / Fortify Defense and i am Assuming Evasion. No more 5 stacks.

The only thing i hope they fix is the Duration. I will Greatly miss the added Duration of 5 stacks. Personally i would hope that these would all be atleast 1 min possible 2 min buffs. Fort Def every 30s is not fun.

 

Fortify Def has been giving 100% crit protection for half a year without having to time the casting like it says after a crit is landed on your Avatar.

Finally. Not a nerf but a long overdue bug fix.

 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/175015751?t=57m09s

No more 5 stacks.... Douse ... all kinds of stuff. He's referring to the Avoidance part not the Anti Crit. Starts at 57:10 in the video.

The Nerf Hammer to Avoidance Be Swinging .... Can you see the wind up ? It's long overdue. This is comeing from someone who can Achieve 100% avoidance. Avoidance is entirely too powerful and needs the nerf bat something fierce. DR needs to be taking over to give Armor meaning.

 

Not surprising. It's the continual erosion of the card combat system. They are slowly getting rid of it without openly stating so. I imagine a few skills and artys will disappear that have anything to do with card draw speed... cause who cares?

 

Honestly i was never fast enough on the keyboard to stack properly on the card system. I think they have enough mechanics in the game that it would warrant the removal of the Card system in the very near future. It would be a nice leveling factor for PVP since there are only so many keys you get to work with. It would also help bridge the gap between the supper elite and the not so elite. This would make the entry barrier into PVP much easier. Not to mention the whole deck system is hard to explain to new players and really takes away from the new player experience. I think it would be a good thing if they did get rid of it eventually.

 

Those buffs are required for me to use to fight any mob yellow con to me at adv lvl 97 (in numbers). While I dont mind a nurf and in fact I get tired of having to cast them all the time but they will need to do significant work on mobs to make them easier (or alter other variables like armor, dodge, parry, etc...). The problem is not usually one yellow con mob at a time, but the fact that aggro range is so massive that you rarely have one on you.... usually 3 or 4 (even in open areas like ulfain). Unfortunately I rarely see them think about these things before a nurf and upon release its chaos until they react a few weeks to months later to fix what they brought about... usually after a bunch of people have rage quit over it. I usually spit out warnings like this and wish they would listen. for example, Im still getting popped by fire mages for 150 hp even with high fire resist, douse and ice shield since they nurfed fire resist months ago. If I get 2 of them on me at once, Im toast.

 

Yeah I also say they are required since you are always outnumbered, especially if playing solo.

If defenses get nurfed too much, then difficult story areas like Grannus Colossus will be unsolvable and will impact anyone who is interested in finishing the story quests.

 

The Complete Armor system needs reworked.... there is no one that can tell me DR has any meaningful value in it's currently implementation. There needs to be a very Clear post form the dev's with the intent of Class armor as bone armor has crossed the line in my opinion. Bone armor is like plate. Now if you had Bone armor like Bone Armor from Traditional UO.... Where it cannot be repaired. I might be willing to accept that. With the way things are now i am not willing to accept how Bone Armor infringes on Heavy Armor. It is better than Chain Armor which should not be possible. It has the fizzle chance of Leather but the Avoidance of Plate and the DR of Chain. Armor in General is seriously out of balance.

I just feel incredibly bad for everyone who is Spending 250-400k on bone armor sets that are going to get nerfed for the sake of game balance. I don't see how the game will be healthy when Bone Armor is the best hands down.

 

To simplify the card system, just remove stacking of same glyphs. Combos only. I'll repeat this whenever I get a chance. Much easier to balance combat if you remove the same glyph stacks.

 

Honestly the big problem which I see in this game is the high dependant of many defensive skills... even for leather and cloth, annoying to anyone who want to be a purely offensive character...

 

Are we talking here of stacking or charging? Big difference.

 

they are one in the same .... Charging is Stacking .... look at your hotbar when you charge an ability.... it stacks up.

 

Yes... This is completely the case. Too many defensive buttons when 80% of our defense should be coming passively to us from our gear.

 

All this cry about Avoidance being op.. ermm.. WHAT is blind for exactly??? Maybe increase the duration of that and boom problem solved...

 

You cannot be saying that it is currently balanced? Avoidance is the #2 mitigation stat in the game ... right behind dodge. That is making Light armor just as effective as Heavy armor for tanking if not better. Yea that needs a nerf. If you are telling me that this is how the game should be working then i am going to call BS... DR is supposed to be the primary mitigation stat but has no scaling. This is why we are all using avoidance. Avoidance has gotten overpowered and is now getting the nerf bat. Hopefully a proper DR system is implemented at the same time to give armor meaning again.

 

Can start by recognizing that Avoidance should primarily be a term used for the light armor tree.

Synonyms: absention, circumvention, delay, departure, dodge, dodging, elusion, escape, escapism, eschewal, evasion, flight, forbearance, nonparticipation, parry, passive resistance, prevention, recession, recoil, restraint, retreat, run-around, self-restraint, shirking, shunning, steering clear of

While Resistance should primarily be used in the heavy armor tree.

Synonyms: battle, blocking, check, combat, contention, counteraction, cover, defiance, detention, fight, friction, halting, hindrance, holding, impedance, impediment, impeding, intransigence, obstruction, parrying, protecting, protection, rebuff, refusal, retardation, safeguard, screen, shield, stand, striking back, struggle, support, warding off, watch, withstanding.

It's been confusingly backwards in my mind and is probably why people struggle to understand it. @Chris

Heavy armor currently has more avoidance while light has resistance (ignoring bone). Odd!

 

okay, if you truly believe that then go into the rise skellie room and use only Light armour with avoidance.. Blind is there for a reason to counter high avoidance builds, plus Avoid does nothing for spell damage.

 

Your talking about Semantics. Avoidance was implemented in the game as a supplement for heavy armor. This was due to how the previous system worked. This happened in R22 or R23 i can't remember. This is by intent of implementation a "Resistance" stat. Either way you cannot tell me it's balanced. I think you are using the semantics of the wording to argue the point. The fact is, Avoidance was implemented as a mitigation stat to supplement the changes to DR in heavy armor. This was due to how Plate was working back in <R21 you took 0's until an NPC hit hard enough to cross the threshold. Call it what you want but it was intended for heavy armor. The reality of it is that the stat even with Heavy Armor has become over powered. Mitigation needs to be spread among the other stats on the armor as Avoidance has become the only stat that matters.

Fun fact ... if you look at your combat log it says blow was glancing due to armor. That goes back to it being a mitigation stat. Or resistance in your terminology. The blow still hit ... yes you got hit but due to your armor it did not do full damage. The traditional sense of avoidance would more or less be dodge in this game...

 

as someone with 7k+ hours i am Uniquely qualified to say these things, i have Been inside and out of the combat system, Sure there are flaws and certain imbalances, but avoidance is not one of them. PVP is the only situation that applies to this discussion in reality, and thats what pvp is, one player trying to defeat another using various methods and strategies i.e using blind on tanks to lower their avoidance.

 

We are going to have to agree to dis-agree here. All i know is the Nerf Bat is coming ... If you are relying on one spell that is in the Sun tree to counter avoidance. That is not balance. Especially since that spell is not really accessible to people wearing plate until around level 120 of the Glyph. If it is required for NPC's to be casting Blind to counter this mechanic that would mean the mechanic is out of balance also. Think about liches / Dragons / Trolls. Everything in the game is going to have to hit ridiculously hard to even threaten players using high avoidance builds. This would then put everything in the one shot territory for a blow that is not glanced. This is bad for the health of the game. It also makes balancing the damage between NPC's incredibly hard. The game needs the damage to be threatening to non heavy wearers but mitigate-able for heavy wearers.

From everything you've put up here you just sound like someone that wants to hold onto the OP stat in the game as it benefits them. Personally i am trying to look at it from a grand scale of the health of the game which is including group play.