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[General] Morale Damage

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Azarael
Posts: 5332

[General] Morale Damage

Post#1 » Sun Jul 29, 2018 10:28 am

I stated yesterday that I intend to return Age of Reckoning morale regeneration mechanics, at least to the extent that the community can provide information of exactly what they were.

However, in the last topic on morale regeneration, quite some discussion was given to the difficulties posed by instant Morale damage, and specifically the power of instant AoE morale damage.

I am interested to see the community's thoughts on this, and what, if anything, should be done to rework and balance the situation with instant Morale damage, especially around M2 level. Some floated the idea of providing a group damage buff or reduction in place of the current effect, and with the ability to patch the client, previously unthinkable ideas are now possible.

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sullemunk
Addon Developer
Posts: 1213

Re: [General] Morale Damage

Post#2 » Sun Jul 29, 2018 10:54 am

One of the things that makes morale damage so powerful is that they ignore anny type of absorb bubbles. Perhaps test and add absorb mitigation to morale damage?
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Aurandilaz
Posts: 1896

Re: [General] Morale Damage

Post#3 » Sun Jul 29, 2018 11:18 am

Instant dmg morals are fine, and needed part of the RvR campaign to prevent long stalemates. If anything, more classes should be able to join the fight and do decent amount of M2 dmg, not just special few. (current WB meta favouring fast BW M2 and Chosen/Bork M2s from pumps, rest of classes may or may not reach a dmging aoe morale before fight ends due to current abysmal gain rates)
Morals often favour defenders, who can sit and wait until attacker waltzes into their ambush position, while attackers often struggle to reach same spot in time (snares, punts, bodyblock) to unleash their bomb.

However, now with client control I'd love to see AAO alter moral gains, say with each AAO percentage your realm has, you gain extra moral per second maybe up to 100 m/s from having 100 AAO. So that a smaller strikeforce operating against much larger realm gets to use their morale goodies and actually offer a serious threat despite being outnumbered.
And on the other end, if your victim realm has AAO, maybe the attacker moral dmg diminishes from hitting outnumbered underdog, say enemy having 20 aao makes them take -10% less moral dmg, and at 40 aao take -20% less moral dmg and all the way up to 100 aao giving -50% reduction in moral dmg taken.

There also exist quite powerful tools to counter enemy morals, say Mara drain and to lesser extent Knight Solar Flare. A few maras are currently able to halt BW from doing too fast of a moral drop, but with current state of balance are way too potent in their drains when it comes to the other 11 order classes. Knight Solar flare is quite a rare event these days unless you get half a dozen AMs to pump you to M4 before a marauder touches you. Rest of the drains are so rare I'm not sure I even remember them all, SM st drain being quite "meh". Potentially allow currently under-used or unwelcome classes to WBs (WE, WH, WL, SW) have specific anti moral tools akin to current Mara drain.

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Ramasee
Posts: 457

Re: [General] Morale Damage

Post#4 » Sun Jul 29, 2018 11:25 am

If possible, the first thing is that morale-based bubbles and morale-based, damage mitigation should work against morale damage. This would vastly improve these types of morales and provide a small level of counter play against morale damage dumps.

M2 and M3 morales should not have AoE direct damage. They should be changed to (short duration) DoTs or channels to allow some level of counter-play. Raze for example can be interrupted and has some chance to be healed through if it isn't due to the duration.

Outside that, it may be better for discussion noise sake to bring up the morales by category and then individually. Maybe better still to solidfy what rates of morale regeneration and morale setpoints we will used before we start trying to balance morales.

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Azarael
Posts: 5332

Re: [General] Morale Damage

Post#5 » Sun Jul 29, 2018 11:28 am

Aurandilaz wrote:However, now with client control I'd love to see AAO alter moral gains, say with each AAO percentage your realm has, you gain extra moral per second maybe up to 100 m/s from having 100 AAO. So that a smaller strikeforce operating against much larger realm gets to use their morale goodies and actually offer a serious threat despite being outnumbered.
And on the other end, if your victim realm has AAO, maybe the attacker moral dmg diminishes from hitting outnumbered underdog, say enemy having 20 aao makes them take -10% less moral dmg, and at 40 aao take -20% less moral dmg and all the way up to 100 aao giving -50% reduction in moral dmg taken.
A lesson we learned at cost two years ago was that we cannot use AAO to indiscriminately apply a buff or a debuff to all members of a realm, because engagements happen individually. Being outnumbered in an engagement does not mean your realm is outnumbered. I would not use AAO for this.
Ramasee wrote:If possible, the first thing is that morale-based bubbles and morale-based, damage mitigation should work against morale damage. This would vastly improve these types of morales and provide a small level of counter play against morale damage dumps.
This is indeed possible and sounds good.
Ramasee wrote:M2 and M3 morales should not have AoE direct damage. They should be changed to (short duration) DoTs or channels to allow some level of counter-play. Raze for example can be interrupted and has some chance to be healed through if it isn't due to the duration.
Also trivial to do with client control.
Ramasee wrote:Outside that, it may be better for discussion noise sake to bring up the morales by category and then individually. Maybe better still to solidfy what rates of morale regeneration and morale setpoints we will used before we start trying to balance morales.
Go for it.

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Gangan
Posts: 652

Re: [General] Morale Damage

Post#6 » Sun Jul 29, 2018 11:28 am

How about some counter morals? E.g. shields/buffs, that reduce or absorb moral damage exclusively.

Maybe put them into some of the rarer used race-morals of healer and tanks.

Somefing like :
- BO M2 - "Walk it off" - Grp-Member within 100ft get 160 Toughness for 30sec and incoming Moral dmg will be reduced by 50% for 10sec.
-Sham M2 - "Breath of Mork" - Heals target and allies in 30ft for 500health and grants a shield that absorbs 500 Moral-dmg every 3 sec for 9 sec. (values and time are discussable ofc:P)

If the old moral-reg is restored I would suggest to either lower the M2 moral-dmg or make them get mitigated, by armor/resi, but keep them undefendable. This way you would still have some "guarenteed" dmg, but it wouldn't hit as hard as it does atm.

Just some thought that flowted around my mind for some time^^
Pächter des Wahnsinns
Gangan - SH 75 .... Blumnmoscha - BO 63
Scophis - Zealot 73 .... Drengur - WP 64
Iznogoud - Sham 50+ .... Bixo - Engie 50+
Apogemoth - Magus 40+ .... Loarelle - AM 65
originating from Drakenwald

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Darosh
Banned
Posts: 1197

Re: [General] Morale Damage

Post#7 » Sun Jul 29, 2018 12:14 pm

Azarael wrote: Sun Jul 29, 2018 11:28 am A lesson we learned at cost two years ago was that we cannot use AAO to indiscriminately apply a buff or a debuff to all members of a realm, because engagements happen individually. Being outnumbered in an engagement does not mean your realm is outnumbered. I would not use AAO for this.
In the past you've tried to alter damage, something relevant in every scale of engagement, hence the issues.
If you were to alter something that isn't relevant in every scale of engagement, but ultimately translates to increased damage that roughly scales with the engagement, you wouldn't face as many (severe and arguably hilarious) issues.

Targetcaps ~ eliminating soaking based on AAO or players (friendly/hostile) in the vicinity; whatever condition you wanna pick, translates to 'scaling' damage, but does not eliminate the margin of error, requirements of coordination or ttk as such.

One could think of using morales to increase targetcaps (DPS/Healing) of one's own group, and decrease targetcaps of hostile targets, or just turn them into statbuffs, as others have suggested ~ everything that removes the dumbfire aspect of morales is well workable.

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Aurandilaz
Posts: 1896

Re: [General] Morale Damage

Post#8 » Sun Jul 29, 2018 12:17 pm

If you are going for "grand morale restructuring", I'd recommend something like
M1: minor dmg (Gork Sez Stop), minor ST debuff, ST tool (ST punt etc)
M2: channeled AoE dmg/ AoE dmg over time, greater ST dmg, greater AoE debuffs, modest utility buffs (FM - WWS) and "lesser" group utilities (tank M3 Distracting Bellows)
M3: lesser AoE dmg, greatest group utilities, best defensive morals
M4: greater AoE dmg, best offensive morals

Say, current tank Raze remains in M2 category because it has counterplays and does dmg over time. However tank M4, which solely add group defences would become M3. With M4 being solely reserved for the bigger AoE bombs (like Sorc Paralyzing Nigthmares or IB Axe Slams). BW M2, having "lesser" AoE dmg of 1200 becomes M3, same with WE M2, Mara M2 etc.
"greater" Group utility buffs like DoK 1001/WP stuff would also be M3 and be possibly seen more often.
Possibly move current damaging M1 roots to M2 tier due to giving both dmg+utility, with pure ST dmg morals remaining at M1.

But this might require far more time spent thinking/planning, since we have 24 classes with each having about 12 morals (some of them shared), giving easily over 200 different morals... And the ideas in above posts about some defensive morals countering offensive morals are quite intriguing as well.


And another idea, could your own Keep Lord provide a "Heroic Defender Buff" to nearby allies within say 300 feet (inner keep area), boosting their moral gain say by 10-20 extra m/s? It could help defending side with lesser time needed to reach morales that help with defending, regardless of attacking numbers. Attacker get to play with normal rates, but being a defender and defending your home turf would provide some salvation? Might make taking well defended keeps harder, or not, since you usually still need number advantage to launch attack in first place.
Or even something more exotic, keep claimed by your guild gives you -20s CD on morals, Allied guilds -10s CD and other realm allies -5s CD. So for best possible defence you would get most out of morals, and make claiming keeps really worth it. (and if CD reduction is too much, maybe just grant greater gain rates)

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Azarael
Posts: 5332

Re: [General] Morale Damage

Post#9 » Sun Jul 29, 2018 12:31 pm

I have no objection to time spent thinking, though I would counsel against judging solely based on function and not on power. Immaculate Defense at M3 for example, in its current form, seems an unwise proposal.

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Karast
Posts: 554

Re: [General] Morale Damage

Post#10 » Sun Jul 29, 2018 12:39 pm

Aurandilaz wrote: Sun Jul 29, 2018 12:17 pm If you are going for "grand morale restructuring", I'd recommend something like
M1: minor dmg (Gork Sez Stop), minor ST debuff, ST tool (ST punt etc)
M2: channeled AoE dmg/ AoE dmg over time, greater ST dmg, greater AoE debuffs, modest utility buffs (FM - WWS) and "lesser" group utilities (tank M3 Distracting Bellows)
M3: lesser AoE dmg, greatest group utilities, best defensive morals
M4: greater AoE dmg, best offensive morals

Say, current tank Raze remains in M2 category because it has counterplays and does dmg over time. However tank M4, which solely add group defences would become M3. With M4 being solely reserved for the bigger AoE bombs (like Sorc Paralyzing Nigthmares or IB Axe Slams). BW M2, having "lesser" AoE dmg of 1200 becomes M3, same with WE M2, Mara M2 etc.
"greater" Group utility buffs like DoK 1001/WP stuff would also be M3 and be possibly seen more often.
Possibly move current damaging M1 roots to M2 tier due to giving both dmg+utility, with pure ST dmg morals remaining at M1.

But this might require far more time spent thinking/planning, since we have 24 classes with each having about 12 morals (some of them shared), giving easily over 200 different morals... And the ideas in above posts about some defensive morals countering offensive morals are quite intriguing as well.


And another idea, could your own Keep Lord provide a "Heroic Defender Buff" to nearby allies within say 300 feet (inner keep area), boosting their moral gain say by 10-20 extra m/s? It could help defending side with lesser time needed to reach morales that help with defending, regardless of attacking numbers. Attacker get to play with normal rates, but being a defender and defending your home turf would provide some salvation? Might make taking well defended keeps harder, or not, since you usually still need number advantage to launch attack in first place.
Or even something more exotic, keep claimed by your guild gives you -20s CD on morals, Allied guilds -10s CD and other realm allies -5s CD. So for best possible defence you would get most out of morals, and make claiming keeps really worth it. (and if CD reduction is too much, maybe just grant greater gain rates)
It's not a bad overall concept but unless if the pumps / strips are balanced it would in the end be meaningless for order. As you stated in your first post 2 mara's and that is it or an order wb's morales, with the except of morale pumping BW's.

A little bit of love on junk morales too would go a long way. Many careers just have very poor options when it comes to morales for WB's. If you don't bring a good AoE morale, you suffer in comparison, and it is hard justify bringing more than 1 engi, or sl in a WB when BW morale 2 bomb + pump exists, you only do it if you can't find 5-6 reliable BW's.

I know people don't like to hark back on the hold pump / strip threads. But there is a reason you only see certain classes, and certain morales getting used, and this has a huge impact on WB comp and overall faction balance. Changing the gain rates, or moving around / nerfing damaging morales won't really have much affect if the strips and pumps are not adjusted as well.

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