[X] My Assistant

Some thoughts on the new "super-special title."

For starters, it's buggy as hell. When people imbue you or if you imbue someone, your karma and power level stays static and doesn't update until you manually turn off Dovahkiin. Second, Fus Ro Dah is pretty lackluster, it could use some revamping. Major ones. Third, besides the skill, there doesn't seem to be any boosts except a measly five damage increase which is only on par with Lord. Godslayer still blows it out of the water. Also, saying you have "The power of the Dragonborn" doesn't really help.

Wait, is Godslayer the only title with working damage bonus?

Going from "Newbie" to "Destined" all I get is some whopping 8.9 damage.

You misunderstood me and how OC used to work. Before this patch, even if you don't put any point in OC boost at all, you still get 33% dmg bonus.

Say you have a full overcharge bar of 120 and you do 1000 dmg per hit:

- Before this patch = Your damage x 1 + (Your current overcharge / 300) >> 1000 x 1.4 = 1400

- In this patch without Spirit Mode = Your damage = 1000

- In this patch with Spirit Mode = Your damage x 2 = 2000

This system may benefits new player since their OC is still low. But for high lv melee with 280 OC, it's basically make melee much, much shittier. You lost a lot and got nothing... (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sleep.gif)

That's why I never was a fan of melee skill since I knew that once it implemented, it will turn melee gameplay into a shitty, wannabee mage...

I see.

But I don't get it, I thought mages already had the edge over melees, why the nerfage then?

I wish I didn't waste all my money on Light and Heavy gear, I guess it's a good time to go mage...

For its cost, Orbital Friendship Cannon's damage is pretty lackluster. Its more along the lines of Pinkie's Party Cannon.

I mean, when you need to have Spirit Shield up 100 % of the time (and thus cannot afford Spirit Mode), the changes will essentially result in lower damage output, because you lose the damage bonus from Overcharge.

Which is one of my gripes about Spirit Mode. A, at max (when you have 280% Overcharge), 7.6% physical damage boost doesn't seem worth it when you have to pay with 1 SP per turn as well as Overcharge. Overcharge is easy enough to build up, but Spirit Regen is too low to compensate for its SP cost at higher arenas when you need Spirit Shield. Melees are buffed up for the early arenas, but are essentially nerfed on the later arenas and/or higher difficulties because they take much longer and as I said before, I have enough trouble maintaining MP, let alone SP. That, and the difference between a static 100% boost and the original Overcharge boost becomes less and less.

From what I see, mages get their high damage output from the bonuses given by their equipment, which in battle, costs nothing. Meanwhile, melee users now have to use up not 1, but 2 things in order to get a buff to their damage rather than having an (essentially) innate boost. After reading some posts about maging, I'll retract the major buff to mages comment, but this feels like something that makes melee even harder to play in higher levels rather than balancing it with mages.

I mean, ok, we now have more uses to SP and Overcharge, so we're making more use of all of our stats, which is a good thing, I suppose. Still, a higher boost or increased Spirit Regen would be nice. >_>

I'm more or less fine with the rest of the patch. Just my 2 cents again though.

But I don't get it, I thought mages already had the edge over melees, why the nerfage then?

I'd guess that it's part of an attempt to balance the game.

Although everyone uses magic, "mages" cast damage spells, which does more damage than melee but costs mana. Melee doesn't cost anything to swing your weapon. Ideally you want them to be equally effective, and you choose which you want based on your own preferences.

Unfortunentally balancing these issues is almost impossible. Even commercial games rarely succeed. There are so many other variables that tweaking one changes many of the others. You make the monsters deal more damage so they're a threat to mages who kill them quickly, and melees die that much quicker. You up the damage melees deal, and now there's so little difference between the two that mages are no longer cost effective. And so on.

With the nerf on maces, it's an attempt to balance between the various weapon types. When the original change to maces happened a few patches ago everyone started switching to maces/clubs. All the other types were no longer useful. All the other types allowed the monsters to still attack you while affected by the procs. With the damage increase that monsters got, keeping the monsters from attacking you became more effective than dealing a little more damage over time to them. That's why you could no longer stun a stunned monster, to give them a chance to hit you. Unfotunentally stunned monsters got more damage dealt to them as well. This made maces even more desired.

If something added to a game makes everything else, or at least everything else in that group, undesired it's not good for the game. All that other stuff is now a waste of programming. So it had to be balanced. The first attempt was reducing the damage dealt to a stunned monster. But people still prefered maces. So more balancing had to be done. Which is what we have now.

In a game like this you really only have one person doing the testing. But one person isn't going to find all the problems with a change, since you can't think of everything. From bugs that you miss (like scan not working as mentioned above) to just people's play styles. It's more effective for Tenboro to release a change right after checking what he can so that we can spot things. Like whether or not maces need more balancing. The desired effect here is for all weapon types to have roughly the same usage. We'll see in the weeks to come whether or not that happened.

And then the next patch, which will be targeted at something other than melee balance, will throw all that out when it somehow affects it anyway. As is usualy with a patch in any game.

EDIT Note that this wasn't a balance adjustment between mages and melee, but withing melee itself. As I said, having only one part of a group being the only useful one makes all the others a waste of space. After melee balance is attained, then you can try to balance melee and mages. And mess everything else up in the process, simply because of how things are connected.

This post has been edited by Drawde: Dec 24 2011, 21:02

Tenboro, thank you for the update, everything seems to be working well (it was a nice gift to wake up to), hope you enjoy the holidays!

My thought is that mages and melees are pretty much balanced in patch 0.6.2.
Mages can clear things faster, but melees can play in higher difficulties (on average). So there's no distinct advantage for choosing either of them.

0.6.3 broke the balance; melee's power output is nerfed.

For a long time I thought Tenb really need to release some test platform so people can have some play-testing before patches are released; you can't always wait till the official release to find bugs/balancing issues.

You misunderstood me and how OC used to work. Before this patch, even if you don't put any point in OC boost at all, you still get 33% dmg bonus.

Say you have a full overcharge bar of 120 and you do 1000 dmg per hit:

- Before this patch = Your damage x 1 + (Your current overcharge / 300) >> 1000 x 1.4 = 1400

- In this patch without Spirit Mode = Your damage = 1000

- In this patch with Spirit Mode = Your damage x 2 = 2000

This system may benefits new player since their OC is still low. But for high lv melee with 280 OC, it's basically make melee much, much shittier. You lost a lot and got nothing... (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sleep.gif)

That's why I never was a fan of melee skill since I knew that once it implemented, it will turn melee gameplay into a shitty, wannabee mage...

pretty much say it all. and dont forget : this update also makes melee players got higher chance to get 1-shot
(due to lower dmg output, especially when the mobs are agitated condition)


I think it's better to revert the previous OC dmg bonus.

My thought is that mages and melees are pretty much balanced in patch 0.6.2.
Mages can clear things faster, but melees can play in higher difficulties (on average). So there's no distinct advantage for choosing either of them.

0.6.3 broke the balance; melee's power output is nerfed.

For a long time I thought Tenb really need to release some test platform so people can have some play-testing before patches are released; you can't always wait till the official release to find bugs/balancing issues.

Nope. Mage can do anything faster as long you stay concentrated while melee is slow but you can turn off your brain while grinding.

The new Skills are basically reworked Spirit Attacks that trade the SP damage and OC damage boost for procs. I am disappoint. It seems half-assed, even more so than the usual incomplete features that usually get added in updates. I hope the whole "You need 100% and anything over gets converted to damage" gets changed once more are added. Skill combos is going to be important for melee, especially with the loss of the OC damage boost.

i like the old equipment interface better....this one's so confusing

Nope. Mage can do anything faster as long you stay concentrated while melee is slow but you can turn off your brain while grinding.

[komica41.dreamhosters.com] Please use your brain, my master. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)
(And don't play HV when you're drunk (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) )

Just my 2 cents again... again:

Maybe it's just impulse or something, but I find myself treating the new equipment screen like a "hide/show" menu, where I end up clicking the large weapon slot section at the top a second time expecting to "hide" it to go back to the main equipment screen, forgetting about the exit button right below it. The "oval" having the same function as the exit text would be nice (but obviously redundant).

I'm liking the new weapon skills so far.

Any chance we will be able to assign them to the quickbar?

Will training up the Power Tank (under the trainer) be of any use now with this new patch?

Wondering what would Bunko say about this patch (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

[komica41.dreamhosters.com] Please use your brain, my master. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)
(And don't play HV when you're drunk (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) )

Impossible! (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Wondering what would Bunko say about this patch (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

Probably something that will get him banned (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

Probably something that will get him banned (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

One can only hope.

Also, this patch just made me realize that for the longest time, my stat calculator hasn't been doing Specific Mitigation properly. I was updating my scripts and when I went to double-check my factor constants, it wasn't matching up.

Will training up the Power Tank (under the trainer) be of any use now with this new patch?

Why would it? It's effect is more for people who want more mod power.

- Spirit Attack has been replaced with Spirit Mode. When toggled, physical damage is boosted by +100% and magical damage is boosted by +50%. Spirit Mode consumes one point of Spirit and 10% overcharge per round.

Does that mean that melee FSM battles will go back to lasting 3000-4000 rounds? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/mellow.gif) I'm too scared to try.

The overcharge ability needs an update--something like "slower drain" would suffice, as well as auto-activation. My 270+% OC is pretty much wasted.