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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Personally, I'd prefer to gank on a Cleric with death and life augments. The only fear you'd have is the fighter debuff right now but anything else you'd annihilate. There are immense pitfalls to having only 1 or 1 and 1/2 counters to each class rather than a balanced combat system. If you can avoid the healing debuff you can survive and kill much easier. Probably not as efficient as 8 vs 1 like in A1 vs Cleric but still, you could run in and gank small groups on your lonesome lol.
Having a healer PKer suggests the "everyone's a dps" design and right now I don't quite see if that'll be the case. Yes, cleric in A1 was broken, but with no balancing and, like what, only 3(?) other classes - that doesn't tell us much about his final killer potential.
Its not so much about mana issues or lack of dps issues. Its a case of short bursts of activity. Who cares if you die to a bounty hunter anyway...the whole point is wiping groups of people out and see how many you can kill before you lose your prowess and bounty hunters turn up. Anyway, Cleric will have a DPS class too but it will be a beast of a class because it will also have life augments which will maintain healing on any skills you want.
If you don't care about the inevitable death at the hands of a hunter, then you don't need healing, because PKing doesn't involve your victim fighting back
I don't think you understand the term gank. If you think you can run into a group and not have at least one person fight back I don't know what to tell you. I'm not about the PK, I'm for the gank.
So, in other words, for a PvX game
PvPers will not be able to play solely a PvP game, since they have to also complete the PvE to stay relevant enough to kill anyone
I've both PKed and ganked as a healer in L2. And I would've run out of mana were it not for mana pots (cause it was a private server). And I've fought against p2w healer gankers with really big dps and even then I'd usually win if they forgot to heal themselves a few too many times during the fight.
You won't be CCing your targets after the first PK (if your victims do not fight back), so the ratio between your dps and theirs would be even bigger, cause they WILL be able to CC you. So now you'll spend even more mana on self healing.
And if you're talking about a normal pvp situations where you're the only one and there's 1+ enemies against you - you'd need an even bigger dps output, because now there's several sources of CCs and dmg against you.
its all about target selection and working from range. You only melee if you have no choice. You jump the group when the group is separated or fighting a few mobs. Then you build your toon for sustain and damage - easy because of the windfall stats in ashes. Heals are still off the same stat as damage despite my request to change this fact so the build is pretty straight forward. In a TTK of 30 seconds (we won't say 60 seconds because of a lack of balance) I'd only have to heal sporadically. You'd take augments that allow damage and healing at the same time - from Religion, Social Organisations, Racial, Life, Death, possibly the other two schools. You'd also take an oh shit big heal or three in case you need them. It is true you can be CC'd but you can't be chain CC'd. In a 1vs1 Gank you can also be CC'd so its just PvX with 1 CC every so often like a 1vs1.
Hopefully, my ideation means the game will be balanced like Guild Wars 1 :P
Join my guild and we can go pvp George on NA
But the response to NiKr's question didn't parse that way for me... what exactly is it that we're reacting to? I'll update my understanding of how things should be interpreted, if given data.
50% at lvl 50 is not the same 50% at lvl 10 like I was saying.
They balance it with Fighter Debuff but I think every class should have access to various counter skills that aid in balance. Right now, if I wanted to troll a group in a dungeon I'd just send a Fighter on a Healer, nuke the healer and watch the Elite PvE Mobs wipe the enemy group.
Steven said that gear impact rumps up as you leave behind the early levels.
To me it seemed that the "50%" that weapons bring come from the power of the weapon, rather than the fact that you have it. So a lvl1 weapon might give you 1% of power, while a max lvl max OE weapon would give the full 50%.
I previously thought that your own power (passives, skills, buffs, etc) served as a "multiplier" on the weapon. So if you had a weapon that had 100atk - you'd have 200 "dmg output". And if you then changed to a weapon that had 200atk - you'd be at 400 "dmg output".
But it seems that it'll be smth like "you have your own power of a 100, then you add the 100 from a weapon for 200; but if you switch to the 200 weapon - you'd have 300, which is somehow still within the 50%(?)"
My examples are bad as always, but I hope I at least got my point across.
Oh ok. The thing he said fits into the family of damage formulae I know Ashes to be using, so I don't think this is an update, for me.
(this post is moreso for the people, you know. Those people)
I explained before the power increase would be only 1 or 2 % per level. The actual ratio is like 0.75% per level because of the 14 ranks of enchantments on top. That's perfectly acceptable for upward fighting.
So right now this tells me that pvping anyone who's above you in progress is absolutely useless. Which means that, unless you're playing at release, there's a fairly high chance that you won't be experiencing any good pvp until you're at max lvl (and maybe even deeper in, cause who knows how the gear will be balanced there).
And like I said before, I personally dislike this kind of approach. Others prefer it, others expected it already - both of which are fine. I'm just giving my tiny piece of feedback to Intrepid, if they're still reading this sandal-forsaken thread.
I've explained enchantments also boost stats on armour. These are also only 1 or 2% per level, probably also 0.75% per level. Thus, the gap is actually not so bad. Where the problem comes in is the disparity between a white set of gear and an orange set of gear both at +14. I'm not sure what the power gap will be between these, but, in theory only the stats should be wider (as in more stat types on the items). This is how you achieve vertical balance believe it or not. Unless you also use scaling which I do not like.
Yeah all good my friend. I just make my theory crafting and let the devs make the decisions
this depends on the game. in bdo is quite easy to enchant your armor. in other games, it isnt. also, you just have attack and defense basically. other games have more stats.
in a game where over enchanting is hard (ill refer to it as oeing from now on), getting lucky / buying a high oed weapon is too unfair. why? because you need to oe 5 pieces of armor (physical defense), or jewels (magic defense) to counter the enchant of only 1 weapon. this also means that your entire guild needs to enchant their armor to not die.
if you have 10 people in your party, now you need 50 pieces of armor at +10 to counter 1 weapon at +10 from the enemy. and if the enemy also has a mage with a +10 weapon, now you need 50 pieces of jewels at +10 as well.
you cant make oeing give too small numbers because then its pointless, unless those numbers allow to kill a mob in one less hit than a +0 weapon. but if you make them give you too high numbers, then what i mentioned above applies.
i like the idea of a guaranteed oe in your gear through a difficult to obtain item and having a high oe in your items being important. that way those who risk it and get lucky will benefit from that, and also you allow other players to eventually catch up through farm.
14 x 0.75 is 10%. In a raid group of 40 that's +400% boost. I think the numbers are fine.
I'm not advocating everyone gets 14. 0.75% per level including 14 enchantment tiers gives 48% power increase which is between 40 and 50% character power. It is a good thing if people can't achieve level 14 enchantments. Its also a good thing if it takes a long time to get plus 14 enchantment. In fact, the numbers would be even lower if we calculated each individual piece at 0.75%. I'm talking in terms of tiers again so a full set of tier 1 is 0.75%, a full set of tier 2 is 0.75% etc. This means upward fighting is possible but so is downward fighting being easier. Everyone should have a safe enchantment level of +4 I think Steven said so there's only a 7.5% difference between +4 and +14. Still between 40% and 50% power. The point is the risk vs reward and the amount of investment. I didn't design the systems. I just theory craft the current systems.
you need to check that math again ;3
I did check the maths...tier 14 is 10.5%. That's a full set of 14 by the way. 40 people in tier 14 enchanted gear would equal to a +420% boost between them which is perfectly acceptable for a raid.
One could argue that it is the comparison between gear of two individuals, but not the total over all amount of power from gear.
An example on the extreme side in order to illustrate;
Imagine a game where gear was 100% of your characters total power. You are literally just a wet noodle until you put gear on.
Now imagine that gear at the level cap had two tiers - with only 1% difference between each tier.
In this game, where literally all character power comes from gear, the difference between the best geared player and the worst geared player is only 1% - an amount that is easily surpassed via player skill.
Now imagine a new set of gear that is 50% better than the top end gear set - all of a sudden players with this gear are essentially unbeatable to anyone that doesn't have it.
Thus, it is not the amount of character power coming from gear that determines if player skill plays a role, but rather the difference in comparison between the gear that two players have.
This is why most games increase access to gear of a specific tier every time they add a new tier to the top end of their game - it means people putting in a minimal effort are still easily able to stay within a few tiers of the best geared in the game. Usually the difference between those that put all the effort in and those that put none of the effort in really is noticable in PvP, but at least in Archeage, putting in a reasonable amount of effort allowed you to compete with people putting tens of thousands of dollars in to their gear.
The reason skill in L2 was such a factor is more because of how restricted gear was in the game, rather than due to the over all power gear offered players.
George's example of his friend fighting 1 gear step and a few lvls upwards on the most gear-dependent classes kinda means that it was close to what you described in AA (though I'd imagine the difference is way closer than thousands of $ in p2w).
But my point was that George doesn't want this kind of thing, because it's only possible exactly BECAUSE L2's gear was close to each other in power. And he doesn't like that and wants gear to represent even more power (and lower lvl gear to not be able to hit through higher lvl gear).