Stmichael1989 wrote:
Armor doesn't scale linearly. In terms of increasing effective health, which is the amount of raw damage (before mitigation) needed to kill you, each additional point of armor is worth more than the one before it.
Although your statement is mathematically correct, effective health is not the reason armor is so good.
Explained here :
Spoiler:
If you have 2200 armor (i.e. 50% mitigation),you take 50% damage from each attack. So if you have 5k health, it takes 10k damage to kill you.
If you increase armor to 3300 armor (i.e. 75% mitigation), you take 25% damage. Still assuming 5k health, it would now take 20k damage to kill you. So although your armor as only increased by 50% (half of 2200), the damage needed to kill you has doubled.
Hence the first 2200 armor pushed your effective health to 10k. The last 1100, pushed it by another 10k. And this 1100 armor can easily be achieved with 6 or 7 armor talismans.
Although this statement is always mathematically correct, the flaw, imo, appears when you factor in WS. Assuming 50% penetration is achievable by most class at high renown, everything changes. Your initial 2200 armor would only protect you for 25% and effective health would be about 6500 instead of 10k. Now put you at 75% mitigation again (3300 armor) vs 50% penetration, you have a true 37.5% mitigation. Your effective health now is 8000. So while adding 1100 armor was in fact still doubling your xtra effective health (+1500 for the first 2200 armor, +1500 for the last 1100 armor), the effect is now equally effective than simply stacking wounds. You need 7 x 150 armor talis to get 1500 xtra effective health. While 7 x 22 wounds talisman would net you 1540 health.
If you factor in an WL/mara armor debuff, then you need to add 1500 armor to that 3300 armor to still get that effective 1500 health. So basically, armor is worth stacking more than simple wounds in a pure mathematical sense (assuming 7 talismans), only past 4800 total armor, which is realistically achievable only by tanks (full sovereign tank set is 4300 armor without talisman).
The reason armor is so good is because it downspikes the damage you take, making it possible for healers to outheal that damage. You could have 30k health (stacking magical wounds +200 talisman ), if you take 1k damage per second -because you are squish-, but your healer can only heal 500/s, your effective life is 60s. All the while, you can have 2k health, taking 500 damage per second -because you has mad armor bro- while being healed for 500/s, your effective life is infinite.
So, imo, although the maths works, I believe looking at armor in terms of effective HP pool in a vacuum is not the way to go. Hence, the question we must ask is : is the increased in potential armor from anni to sov bigger than the potential dps gain from WS and total dps in a way that healers can manage the relative spikes in damage then, more easily than they do now? I don't have the data to answer that accurately, but, as per my first post in this thread, I believe it is not and should be discarded as a balance-state breaker.
Farfadet, RR72 shaman Volgograd, RR80 IB
Video thread here.
Final thoughts on the OP though, when it comes to finding a tier that combat is balanced towards, maybe aza is right and the balance forums should be locked. But not until Sov. I don't believe you balance at end gear. But attempting to balance around anni is equally worthless. A lot of classes simply don't have their man stats capped yet.
With more sets, and the ability to mix and match, quite a few ohysical classes will be able to switch to WS talis, or defensive sets.
In my mind, the balance discussions should be min Conq gear, but preferably Warlord. Start there, the scale down and up appropriately. But saying that all classes should interact from anni is the wrong answer imo. This includes in the balance forums.
TLDR: before the thoughts of how to handle state stabilization, I think the state that we wish to balance from should be determined. If that is not the current, then bye bye balance flame threads.
Jaycub wrote:
The other problem is class design itself, take for instance robe annihilator gear. It has 1048 armor total. However, you can slot up 5 +180 armor talismans in it, 1-2 in your weapon(s), +210 from tome jewelry, and an additional +124(?) in the skaven ring.
That's 1414 to 1594 increase in armor, which is more than twice of what the class gets from it's armor base even if you cant afford 180 tallies the cheaper ones still push you to over twice. But wait there's more, 660 additional armor from pots...
Increasing armor 2x by cloth squischies is problem because?
Armor doesn't scale linearly. In terms of increasing effective health, which is the amount of raw damage (before mitigation) needed to kill you, each additional point of armor is worth more than the one before it.
I get that, but why is that a problem that Light Armor/Robe classes incrase their armor that much?
Final thoughts on the OP though, when it comes to finding a tier that combat is balanced towards, maybe aza is right and the balance forums should be locked. But not until Sov. I don't believe you balance at end gear. But attempting to balance around anni is equally worthless. A lot of classes simply don't have their man stats capped yet.
With more sets, and the ability to mix and match, quite a few ohysical classes will be able to switch to WS talis, or defensive sets.
In my mind, the balance discussions should be min Conq gear, but preferably Warlord. Start there, the scale down and up appropriately. But saying that all classes should interact from anni is the wrong answer imo. This includes in the balance forums.
TLDR: before the thoughts of how to handle state stabilization, I think the state that we wish to balance from should be determined. If that is not the current, then bye bye balance flame threads.
I think you're right. It seems a bit premature to significantly alter the balance mechanics in the current state. Post-Conqueror implementation (and possibly Invader, as those are the mid-t4 sets) would seem like a more solid vantage point.
Regarding the future mixing and matching of different sets, then I doubt you will see much of it, if the current set-design changes carries through to those sets - as most will prefer to run full sets for the last set bonus (and thus prevent the old 4p+2p gear setups etc from live). Personally, I find those changes flawed and limiting - especially looking forward. But that's another discussion.
APONYMOUS l WP l R40 l RR8X BRAKEDOWN l KOTBS l R40 l RR8X BOILING l BW l R40 l RR8X PUFFED l SLY l R40 l RR8X RHYTHM l AM l R40 l RR8X EEWULL l DOK l R3X l RR4X
Dabbart wrote:when it comes to finding a tier that combat is balanced towards, maybe aza is right and the balance forums should be locked. But not until Sov. I don't believe you balance at end gear. But attempting to balance around anni is equally worthless. A lot of classes simply don't have their man stats capped yet.
With more sets, and the ability to mix and match, quite a few ohysical classes will be able to switch to WS talis, or defensive sets.
Spoiler:
Once again explain to me by why core class balance should be dictated by gear sets?
At its core; gear, procs, set bonuses etc should not be what dictates class balance nor should the be band aids that suddenly cover up core class flaws/inferiorities
Also with talis and potions you can already reach soft cap on your main stat, hell with ferocious assault on my mara i can reach 1050 str
Issues with post:
- Restating a debunked point - It has been stated that the class balance will not be dictated by gear or procs, there is no reason to raise this point further.
Dabbart wrote:when it comes to finding a tier that combat is balanced towards, maybe aza is right and the balance forums should be locked. But not until Sov. I don't believe you balance at end gear. But attempting to balance around anni is equally worthless. A lot of classes simply don't have their man stats capped yet.
With more sets, and the ability to mix and match, quite a few ohysical classes will be able to switch to WS talis, or defensive sets.
Once again explain to me by why core class balance should be dictated by gear sets?
At its core; gear, procs, set bonuses etc should not be what dictates class balance nor should the be band aids that suddenly cover up core class flaws/inferiorities
Also with talis and potions you can already reach soft cap on your main stat, hell with ferocious assault on my mara i can reach 1050 str
it certain true "to some extent" that some classes with progression get a little better/badder; but we are taling about sov not warpforged; all this fear of fix in before x set is not understadable: there are some issue which are pretty clear and will remain regardless. Also not like the balancing is going by perfect value balance as close as possible; the fix gone in a total superficial direction for the moment as make this into this other one or lower cd etc. These are not things that require math to be balanced and for sure wont change so much in sov.
All health pool progression
Sov procs
Sov abilities
50% armor progression / possibly some resist
Reduce wdps progression 50-75%
Weaken armor / resist pots
block all armor tallies outside main armor slots
Limit crits/healcrits and ini progression
Gear would be ok-ish and constant effects would be constant-ish. Progression would be reasonable and gear would be outshadowed by skill/abilities
(I think devs want an even smaller power gap and that means reducing stats as well a notch or two)
Issues with post:
- Raising a issue pointed out previously by individuals and subsequently heavily moderated - the thread is not about specifics on what should be altered or how to go about achieving class balance
- Posting off-topic on unwarranted tangent
- Warned
- Gerv
Dabbart wrote:when it comes to finding a tier that combat is balanced towards, maybe aza is right and the balance forums should be locked. But not until Sov. I don't believe you balance at end gear. But attempting to balance around anni is equally worthless. A lot of classes simply don't have their man stats capped yet.
With more sets, and the ability to mix and match, quite a few ohysical classes will be able to switch to WS talis, or defensive sets.
Once again explain to me by why core class balance should be dictated by gear sets?
At its core; gear, procs, set bonuses etc should not be what dictates class balance nor should the be band aids that suddenly cover up core class flaws/inferiorities
Also with talis and potions you can already reach soft cap on your main stat, hell with ferocious assault on my mara i can reach 1050 str
Spoiler:
Good for you and your mara. Ofc, Ferocious assault doesn't stack with Chosen Auras or Pots, so meh. But if you actually want to pay attention to my point, What is your WS? GIve yourself another 2 gear lvls(IE conq/inv) and what will your stats look like? Before any procs, % increases, or other set bonus'. Just your base stats. How much more armor pen/survivability will you gain from the next 2 gear progressions? Now, imagine that you are NOT a dedicated DPS, you are infact a BO. A couple more gear progressions, all of a sudden you can cap out a few stats, and start to get REALLY dangerous, while actually being partly tanky... Now think of AM/Sham. How are their new class mechanics going to function in RR70gear? Will they still be "balanced" comparatively to how they are now? Who knows! I don't think so however. Anyone who thinks anni v anni works the same as Warlord v Warlord is forgetting Live... And if they do function the same, then why the feck even bother to grind up said gear?
Class Balance will be GREATLY affected by gear, because that is where 80% of our stat benefits come from... Your opinion of gear is just plain weird. So, all class balance(or the great majority of it) should be almost entirely irrelevant of gear? How the hell do you propose that? Take out all gear stat progression and add in an auto stat progression based on RR? The arguement on what Procs or set bonus' is irrelevant, since WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE GOING TO BE. Do you know for a fact what the 5p Inv bonus will be? Cause I don't. I don't happen to believe that the devs will just roll out oldschool gear set bonus' after all of this balancing talk...
But AGAIN TENTONHAMMER you basically just start the argument you want to have. My point stands, from what Lvl should Balance be set towards? if you can't handle discussing it from a gear perspective then fine, from a RR perspective. Should we balance END GAME and everything before it based upon RR40 and below? Cause that is the currently Gear lvl we are at, and what we are attempting to balance from atm. That is my point. But feel free to keep pushing for some ridiculously complicated balancing system where gear has no impact on class balance... And then you can laugh as no one bothers to grind up gear, cause why? It has no impact on class balance..
TLDR: My points go entirely side tracked.
You are re-stating the same point you have made above in a more aggressive tone which is not appropriate to contribute positively to the discussion - That annihilator gear should not be the balanced state.
Furthermore - 7. Post legibly.
Your arguments must be presented concisely and with good structure. Posting an illegible wall of text or a stream of consciousness post will result in action.
It has been noted, by Azareal. here viewtopic.php?f=96&t=17829&start=50#p215534 that a sense of progression is required, it will not be completely removed.
Please refrain to argue based on the concept that all gear will be gutted.
@Dabbart: The question is, is the game more balanced and fun when careers are able to softcap their main stat and get up to half the softcap on a secondary stat (Invader) or right now in Annihilator where softcapping your main stat as it is isn't made without sacrifices?
Obviously the balance would tend to be biased towards the current state because of the on-going balancing efforts for the current armor sets. But Engineers for example dread careers getting more stats to play with, as has been pointed out numerous times with the armor scaling examples. If everyone gets more armor with being able to softcap relevant stats and Engineers need to be again rebalanced around that as they simply can't work within that framework (WS is useless, they'd need to get an armor debuff or ability types moved to physical), would the game be more fun, more inline with the core design intentions?
In the case of Engis, does the current dichotomy of physical and magical damage make them more fun and brings more flavour to the career or is it negligible and any streamlining process wouldn't take away anything from them? Or would AMs/Shamans be better off as a more streamlined career (I imagine something like straight damage boost approach to the DPS side and straight healing boosts on the healing side instead of the see-saw) or is Aza's aim of having you work around the sometimes cumbersome career mechanic better?
It's a tough question to answer, but it's something to ponder over.
And I know that armor is a bad example as the majority of the playerbase tends to favour normalising the armor gains but there's other examples of current career balance going out of whack with more stats and the question of at what point did the game function the most as it was designed to remains.
Which would be why Balancing at this point would be damaging to the Engi's(in your point, I don't play engi's and don't think that'd entirely be the case, but irrelevant), or would entirely neuter all future sets to the point of uselessness, or require some arbirtrary auto-leveler as described in OP, but said auto-level system wouldn't impact war v war battles, simply War v anni or such.
Find a spot to balance from, where ALL the various classes are seen to be either at, or close to their Prime lvls of Power. If specific balancing on individual classes is required to stablize a particular gear set/RR for this then so be it. Now, I know a bunch of people hate my RL analogies, but it's just like hanging sheet-rock. Get out your lazor, and find a lvl line, then you bring your first row to that, and build up from there. If that means the bottom/top needs a few slices to make them fit then so be it, you want the Wall it's self to be straight and level...
), if you take 1k damage per second -because you are squish-, but your healer can only heal 500/s, your effective life is 60s. All the while, you can have 2k health, taking 500 damage per second -because you has mad armor bro- while being healed for 500/s, your effective life is infinite.
