A simple fix for the TTK (Time To Kill) problem

I have heard rumblings about short TTK for months now. There was even the (threat?) of revamping the Enchanting system to prevent overmatched/overpowered characters. I do not think that is the main answer, rather change what the enchantments do.

Currently, I am in Rare and Heroic +5 to +7 gear (Bard). I can still get 2-3 shot by Fighters and after my silence wears off 3 shot by Mages. I have about 4350-4500 Health depending on gear. This is exactly the same health of the L19-20 Scorpions I chain kill, up to 4 at a time. At the very least, a level 25 player should have the same health as a L25 mob, which is currently about 6k. And, with the option to choose gear with a higher health if they wanted to be more durable.

The problem as I see it is related to stats and enchanting. Currently, almost all classes focus on damage output, this is because there is no real advantage to stacking Con, Health, or resist.

The simple fix, is to allow enchanting to increase stats differently for defensive items and to double the amount of damage reduction +resist armor gives.

For example:
An Ashen Haunt cloak has about +45 health +3 Con and some resist stats. for a total health increase of 45+30= 75
If you enchant it, the +45 health goes to +46, and Con goes to +4, for total health increase of 46+40= 86
a +3 cloak would have +48 + 60= 108 health. This is nothing when you are hitting for 1000-2000 per second

But this should be changed to +20 health per point of Con and doubling the +health per enchant on items with Health on them.
+3 would then be 45(3)+ 6(20)= 255
+7 would be 45(7) + 10(20)= 515

If you had half your gear + defense and half + offense, that gives you about +2000 health for fully enchanted +7 gear, which puts you in the 6k range. And with everyone at slightly less DPS, allows you to survive about twice as long. 3 seconds to 6 seconds is huge in PvP, and allows you to actually get off a spell if you get jumped.

No big balancing, or armor stat changes needed.

Add into that increased mitigation with +resist, and the gear becomes much more diverse.

What do you all think about this simple, and I think, effective change. This would not break the enchanted armor that people have farmed 100's of hours for, but BIS would change slightly. And Set gear could become more attractive.

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Veeshan

they said last week there looking into enchanting as being the issue and there figuring out how they want to change it hopefully we see something soonish i think there a big patch planned soonish aswell so maybe it be in with that one. Apparently dessert spose 2 be done at the end of the month according to steven in a recent interview and rogue seems to be coming along aswell so i suspect desert and rogue might come in same time in the big patchand hopefully enchanting changes too but of course im expecting it delayed and be like mid next month steven tend to get excited and say thing are coming sooner than they actually are :P

Honostly i think enchanting need to be a % bonus across the board since gear is balanced for +0 and this would uniformally increase the base stats across the board so should help with keeping TTK around the same as it is when everyone is +0, this would also help with seconary stats/armor since they typically have higher numbers than stats so they get more of an increase iof it was a % bonus

i do think con as a whole need a slight bonus too i dont think it HP bonus is quite enough aswell like u said

DioGaraa

I feel like it’s more of a Con and defensive issue. Buffing con would help a ton! But damage mitigation feels almost like a waste. As a tank main, the more mitigation you build it feels almost worthless. I’m working if they need to bump the numbers of con, mentality, armor, mag resist, and mitigation a little. Not a lot, just a tiny bit.

SmileGurney

Honestly as long as gear progression is all about pure power creep we will keep running into balance issues. On other hand stuff like +Armour, +HP, +mana, Evasion or lifeleech gear is mostly useless.

Enchanting has too many levels, that's one.

Enchanting provides NO playstyle variety.

Enchanting allows you to apply a straightforward power multiplier to your character phys/magic power. Even if stats like STR and INT only gave 1 power growth instead of as it is now 3, we would eventually run into those issues, just at higher level gear.

What concerns me also is that Phase1 power "fix" just made a lot of stats on gear and a lot of gear redundant. You "love" seeing Rare+ gear with 20+ extra HP or mana points, or other stats which do no benefit the player in a meaningful way. This makes a lot of gear obsolete / dead on arrival before people even get access to it. The whole stat system makes little sense and that affects the gear also. This is another way how Intrepid so far FAILs to address playstyle variety, just after a lot of one-dimensional archetypes with no build variety. We can only hope they intend to address those issues, otherwise the game will be far more shallow than it should be for a game with replaybility value.

I would prefer if Enchanting allowed you to swap stats on gear for your preferred stats, and provided some playstyle variety on the top of archetype customisation. There should be nothing stopping me from building a 2 handed evasion or parry based tank, high armour / HP fighter, or lifeleeching mage, if I swapped sufficient amount of stats on my gear.

I would prefer if stats on gear were rebalanced, so non power related stats provided a meaningful benefit.
I would prefer if stats in general had aggressive diminishing returns applied to them, so combat is balanced around archetypes and player "skill" level AND not gear stat sticks.

GreatPhilisopher

SmileGurney wrote: »

Honestly as long as gear progression is all about pure power creep we will keep running into balance issues. On other hand stuff like +Armour, +HP, +mana, Evasion or lifeleech gear is mostly useless.

Enchanting has too many levels, that's one.

Enchanting provides NO playstyle variety.

this^^

they gotta fix the gathering to fix the legendary equipment problem and the enchanting too many levels too straight forward where it just stacks too much stats in a dumb way it should add % to secondary stats instead but they also gotta fix the broken damage of weapons and making the defense stats better. not just make the stats keep going up until they reach a ridiculous degree like many other games.

now i am not all knowing or something but i think a way to do it is by nerfing the phys/mgc dmg on weapons to like half of what it is if not more then having the tiers damage be 1.2x,1.4x...until legendary where its 2x phys/mgc dmg of a common weapon(which still seems too much tbh so maybe make it even lower depends on how hard it is to get legendary gear or how good defense stats are to mitigate the damage) then having each weapon focus on a secondary stat from the main ones, say a wand gives magic casting speed % , a spear gives physical penetration % ,so people will pick different weapons for different builds instead of everyone and their extended family using a bow.

maybe with higher tier crafting/enchanting weapons can add a second secondary stat that is lower % obviously and be able to change the type of stat in a limited way, in the end getting higher level weapons and upgrading their rarity will make the secondary stat bigger (not to a crazy degree obviously) than the basic flat magical/physical damage which still gets bigger but to an unreasonable degree that make the TTK a one shot parade like it is now but actually more build,match ups and skill dependent.

that will make it so someone with higher level and better gear have the advantage obviously but let a lower level player with not as good gear still have the chance to kill higher levels if they skilled enough and not too many levels apart but will also give the chance to a group of lower level players with a decent level deisparity able to kill higher level players too.

of course they will have to nerf the mobs reasonably too

on another note the weapons skillsets are so bad, other than the small difference between magical and physical weapon passives there is literally almost no difference between the weapons , they give too much points , too much that are just tiny stat or % dump, they should make the skill points less so people have to choose , lessen the amount of passives and make them more impactful,more unique and different depending on the weapon and maybe add an active skill or ultimate skill for each weapon to differentiate them even more for different play-styles

Solonthebandit

If people want gear to not matter why play something like AoC over something like LoL? I've heard guildies say gear progression is the skill in proper MMO's. I felt like that was a step to far but its wild to me how much complaining is happening on these forums over gear gapping. Isn't that the point? A feature, not a bug?

Veeshan

SmileGurney wrote: »

Enchanting provides NO playstyle variety.

It actually makes less variety, its str/int/dex/wisdom only gear with enchanting how it is any secondary stat is useless in comparison

enchanting exists basicly as a gold sink it seems which is fine but it provides way to much of a bonus

GreatPhilisopher

Solonthebandit wrote: »

If people want gear to not matter why play something like AoC over something like LoL? I've heard guildies say gear progression is the skill in proper MMO's. I felt like that was a step to far but its wild to me how much complaining is happening on these forums over gear gapping. Isn't that the point? A feature, not a bug?

no and thats a terrible example , items in DOTA and LOL are literally gear , in dota the items/characters are mostly balanced so no matter how long or far you are into the game even if a team had a terrible start they can still win ,do strategy and make a comeback and fights arent 1 sided no matter how bad the gap was as long as the losing team outskill the other and be smart .

meanwhile in lol other than a few characters if any of the rest get like 2-3 kills at the start and get ahead even with 1 item they roll stomp the rest of the game with absolute ease which is what ashes of creation is so yeah , be like DOTA not LOL

AstuWar

All of the above + make gear only enchantable by a scroll of matching rarity.

Veeshan

they need to add decimals to stats tbh for enchanting purposes

+8 should be x2 the base stats
+15 should be x3 the base stats
+20 should be x4 the base stats (im assumuming this is the max since ashes codex goes to +20,)

or something along these lines, in some cases atm a +10 item is 10 times stronger than the base items which is extreme

Of course weapon dmg and probaly armor wont follow this but it should follow the x2 since it already an already high number i would keep that how it already works.

Seems like enchanting is a % for stats however it always get rounded up to the whole number so +10% to a +1 makes 1.1 but then it gets rounded up to 2 which then get rounded up again next enchant level which makes it super unbalanced.
you can see it a % based cause all weapons give +3 per enchant until you get like a 400 dmg weapon then it gets a +4 per enchant

Copperfield

i aint playing the game currently.... the ttk is broken which makes the pvp unjoyable..

I hope in future patches that they fix this

SmileGurney

Copperfield wrote: »

i aint playing the game currently.... the ttk is broken which makes the pvp unjoyable..

I hope in future patches that they fix this

Same, TTK and size of the power gap between geared and ungeared players killed the pvp content for me. If you combine this with grind required to breach that gap...nah thanks.

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