How to give Action Fans Active Blocking without Breaking Waterfall Stat Blocking

We had a very in-depth discussion today on the Discord about how to give action fans active blocking without breaking passive (waterfall or tab) blocking.

Keep in mind this discussion is on shield use, not tanks using shields.

1: Active Blocking should give you a flat damage reduction on incoming damage. This damage would be based on the shield type/size/quality. So a small round shield might reduce 100 points of damage on every attack coming in, and a tower shield might reduce 500 points of damage on every attack coming in.

There is alternative variant to this where you could have active blocking give 100% damage reduction up to the set threshold/exhaustion level (see #3)

2: Even while active blocking your passive blocking can still trigger for whatever percentage passive blocking gives to damage reduction. So if you have a block rating of 30% then 30% of the time you'd block the attack, regardless of if you are active blocking or not. This would then give whatever damage reduction you give on blocks (100% or less as designed)

3: Instead of creating an exhaustion bar or a stamina bar for blocking, the "exhaustion" bar is a set amount of damage that shield can take in any one gulp. So you can hide behind your buckler for 1000 damage or your tower shield for 3000. After that damage is capped your ability to go into your active blocking stance goes on cooldown and your shield drops and you can no longer actively block (but you can still passively/waterfall block). Smaller shields recharge this HP pool faster than bigger shields.

4: The shield itself has a set amount of HP (can be in the hundreds of thousands of HP) but it has to be repaired. The more you block, the more HP damage the shield takes.

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Comments

Noaani

Izil wrote: »

Make block drain mana or stamina on impact if there is a stamina system

That is an overly simply mechanic that can probably be abused to keep a tank in a permanent blocking stance in a raid.

falcorpix

Noaani wrote: »

Izil wrote: »

Make block drain mana or stamina on impact if there is a stamina system

That is an overly simply mechanic that can probably be abused to keep a tank in a permanent blocking stance in a raid.

Maybe if they go the mana route, but with stamina no, if stamina gets drained and the only way to get it back is to attack or wait, then permanently blocking wont be an issue.

I dont even see a reason to permanently block in the first place, thats just losing DPS and aggro.

Dygz

Seems unlikely that permanently Block will be a thing.
Neither will permanent Dodge or permanent Roll.

Enigmatic Sage

Dygz wrote: »

I don't think I need to re-read anything.
All I said was to expect there to be RNG blocking because Ashes is an RPG - and you wanted to argue about that for some reason.
If you want to fool yoursef into thinking that there won't be just because Jeffrey is no longer a dev, go ahead.

LOL

I'm having a discussion not an argument, big difference dude

Not "fooling" myself into anything, sharing my opinion during the developmental stage of the combat system as many in this community do and as is the intention of these forums and specific thread discussions such as this one

Enigmatic Sage

falcorpix wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Izil wrote: »

Make block drain mana or stamina on impact if there is a stamina system

That is an overly simply mechanic that can probably be abused to keep a tank in a permanent blocking stance in a raid.

Maybe if they go the mana route, but with stamina no, if stamina gets drained and the only way to get it back is to attack or wait, then permanently blocking wont be an issue.

I dont even see a reason to permanently block in the first place, thats just losing DPS and aggro.

Last I checked, they're going for a single HP bar and single resource bar for actions/abilities. There is a simple solution similar to what you were saying here. There's been lots of discussions like this in the past on the forums pertaining how active blocking should work to prevent abuse

I don't think being able to hold up a block forever should be a thing either. Things like resource drain over time or just consumption on use from blocking are genuinely quite common to prevent such abuse. Additionally, depending on values for those, the stagger bar and shield breaker limits work quite well as proven in many video games that utilise it. There could also be if resource drained or shield breaker limit reached, add delays to recovery of said resource or mechanic.

Dygz

You wanted to disagree with the info I shared - same difference.
But, "you're such an odd ball sometimes for sharing the info you know" kinda steps things up a notch from merely having a discussion.
I didn't suggest you were foaming at the mouth with vitriol.

Noaani

falcorpix wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Izil wrote: »

Make block drain mana or stamina on impact if there is a stamina system

That is an overly simply mechanic that can probably be abused to keep a tank in a permanent blocking stance in a raid.

Maybe if they go the mana route, but with stamina no, if stamina gets drained and the only way to get it back is to attack or wait, then permanently blocking wont be an issue.

I dont even see a reason to permanently block in the first place, thats just losing DPS and aggro.

The only way this would be the case is if stamina ad a resource is only used for blocking.

If it is used for anything else, they will add in a regen method.

I cant say I would be a fan of a combat resource only used for blocking.

Enigmatic Sage

IIRC,
if your class uses a mana resource, then your dodging and blocking comes from your mana. The team didn't want to have 2 resource bars on the UI because of reasons like overly complicating the UI. Even though I completely disagree as many games have two resource bars and a health bar.

I'm assuming part of the reason is because if you use magic to block, it'll consume your magic side of things which prevents some classes from having two resources to utilise for dodge and block mechanics. It's going to be interesting with how the 8 primary classes utilise this with their 8 secondary's + augments.

But there is obviously ways to balance this regardless of resource type, consumption and other mechanics.

Dygz

Looks like all classes use a mana resource - Tanks have Javelin and Fighters have Hammer Strike.
But... yes.

Enigmatic Sage

true, it does seem like almost every class uses magic in some way, shape or form. For them to implement an offensive resource bar and a defensive resource bar could be a quite viable trade off instead of the traditional mana for magic and stamina for melee but there really isn't anything wrong with the traditional method either if the right systems are in place for balance.

raylegh

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something but isn't that as easy as applying the blocking stats only when active blocking?

I mean this way you have waterfall stat and at the same time an action combat thing to activate it.

falcorpix

raylegh wrote: »

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something but isn't that as easy as applying the blocking stats only when active blocking?

I mean this way you have waterfall stat and at the same time an action combat thing to activate it.

Not sure I understand what you mean.

If you mean that when I press block I get stats like block chance, damage reduction, etc, then i guess you completely miss the point of Active Blocking, the point is to not rely on such stats in the first place.

The point is you have a shield and it blocks stuff when pressed at the right time and when you do so it is satisfying.
If I active block and I all I get is 50% chance of reducing damage by 25% and my character is still taking hit to the face, then thats no better than classic tab-target tanking and might aswell just use that system instead.

Or I just got your point completely wrong.

raylegh

@falcorpix You got it. But first we need to assume what are those stats and how work. Because I can understand why is not satisfying getting stats like "chance to something" while active blocking but if you get for example 80% (depending on certain stat) of reduction damage then is a different thing. Active blocking is meaningfull and stats are too.

If you all are referring to active blocking always getting 100% of damage reduction, then yeah sure you have a problem to merge with tab target system, but personally I don't need to block always 100% of damage to enjoy active blocking.

falcorpix

raylegh wrote: »

@falcorpix You got it. But first we need to assume what are those stats and how work. Because I can understand why is not satisfying getting stats like "chance to something" while active blocking but if you get for example 80% (depending on certain stat) of reduction damage then is a different thing. Active blocking is meaningfull and stats are too.

If you all are referring to active blocking always getting 100% of damage reduction, then yeah sure you have a problem to merge with tab target system, but personally I don't need to block always 100% of damage to enjoy active blocking.

well, 100% block would be my preference, but i can deal with other options.
My main concern is how good active blocking actually feels, Tera for example has, well had, super satisfying active blocking, it feels like attacks have weight to them and impact the shield, etc, meanwhile in ESO blocking is very underwhelming, just like the rest of the combat.

CROW3

falcorpix wrote: »

well, 100% block would be my preference, but i can deal with other options.
My main concern is how good active blocking actually feels, Tera for example has, well had, super satisfying active blocking, it feels like attacks have weight to them and impact the shield, etc, meanwhile in ESO blocking is very underwhelming, just like the rest of the combat.

I never played Tera, but i hear you on blocking feeling correct. What are your thoughts on damage mitigation if an active block fails (for whatever reason)? Is the hit taken at 100%, or is there other passive mitigation (such as dodge) that comes into play?

falcorpix

CROW3 wrote: »

I never played Tera, but i hear you on blocking feeling correct. What are your thoughts on damage mitigation if an active block fails (for whatever reason)? Is the hit taken at 100%, or is there other passive mitigation (such as dodge) that comes into play?

I dont like passive mitigation, as in stats such has dodge/block chance, etc, Im okay with active mitigation skills (the regular "reduce dmg by X% for Ysecs")

As for Tera, it wasnt just the block that felt correct. You had the active block, you had the dodge iframe and you had a couple of mitigation skills, each had their appropriate use. Blocking was used for most attacks, but there were a lot of unblockable attacks, so dodge was used to avoid unblockable attacks and also used as a mobility, there were also attacks that were unblockable and undodgeable (DoTs for example), thats where mitigations skills would come to play.

And even with all these defensive abilities, healers were still needed, because there is so much going on and the combat is so fast paced, that its just impossible to avoid every single bit of damage.

All this to say that, Tera raised my standards for tanking way too high that im having a hard time having fun tanking anywhere else and I'd love AoC to break my curse.

CROW3

falcorpix wrote: »

All this to say that, Tera raised my standards for tanking way too high that im having a hard time having fun tanking anywhere else and I'd love AoC to break my curse.

That's cool - I'm going to have to youtuibe some examples. The vast majority of my tanking is in WoW and a bit of FFXIV (which feels like DDR to me).

Vaknar

What a neat and very well articulated idea! It's cool seeing ideas that are elaborate and well described in such a concise way

Do you see any potential downsides to doing it this way?

Noaani

Vaknar wrote: »

What a neat and very well articulated idea! It's cool seeing ideas that are elaborate and well described in such a concise way

Do you see any potential downsides to doing it this way?

There are a number of ideas in this thread.

If you are talking about the OP's idea, the only real downside is that it forces active blocking on to everyone. In a game where action or tab target should be a player choice, forcing all defense to be active (ie, action combat) goes against the goals and stated design of the game.

Mag7spy

No it doesn't you have to use tab and action its hybrid not fully separate as stated in the design of the game.

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