Introduction
Hello! Back again with one of my “why something sucks” posts. I’d like to address the concerns I have with vital combat with a more in-depth post and an entire outline of how I believe vital combat should be “implemented” to satisfy both those who have put a significant amount of work (or money) into getting their pet to where it currently is and to satisfy new players who are having difficulty getting into the game due to the slow paced nature of the petless early game.
So… there seems to be a lot of debate about vital combat but a very small amount of “here’s how we should revise it to make it better.” With this post I hope to get everyone (players, developers, raid leaders who are strongly against pretty much everything on testing right now, etc.) to understand the current issues with the vital combat system and exactly how one might go about fixing these problems.
Why Vital Combat (in its current form) Sucks
The main problem that currently needs to be addressed with the current iteration of this system is that, while it effectively nerfs pets to level the playing field between newer and older players, it lacks compensation for those nerfs resulting in much of the currently available “endgame” content to be much more difficult than it currently is on production for both small and large groups. This becomes a major issue when you face the reality of this game being permadeath. There needs to be more forgiveness in a game like this as it takes many hours of work just to be at a state in the game where you are able to even attempt much of the endgame content (and those hours of work can be stripped away from you entirely in the snap of a finger).
Additionally, many of the bosses currently in the game have been designed around the existence of pets. If vital combat is implemented as it currently is, many of these already released boss fights and features will have to be retroactively tuned to make sense alongside the vital combat system, and I know that DECA already has enough on their plate as it is. This process could heavily delay the creation of new content as more effort is expended on fixing old content that wouldn’t have to be fixed if vital combat was implemented correctly.
I know one of the many concerns that have come about is the “tanking” meta that currently exists in the game. I think that the proposed nerfs to both berserk, damaging, and armored all address this excellently so that the damage you can deal while tanking in certain phases of many endgame bosses has been decreased significantly. These nerfs alone already address many of the issues with the game as they very effectively prevent “cheesing” of endgame bosses. So why go further? Why implement vital combat in the first place? What should be the main reason behind implementing a system like this into the game?
The main reason to implement changes like these should be to give vitality and wisdom as stats more of a use and to level the playing field between newer players without a pet (or with a weaker pet) and older players who have spent many years and now have a very powerful pet.
How We Should “Fix” Vital Combat
The main difference between what I am proposing and what DECA currently has laid out is the function of vitality and wisdom. Both vitality and wisdom have been known for far too long to be slow and almost meaningless to max. With DECA’s current implementation, vitality and wisdom are decreased when in combat. This seems rather contrary to how character stats should behave. Shouldn’t the stats of your character be just as important, if not more important, when you are in combat? In every game I have ever played, your stats exist for the sole purpose of assisting you in battle. The current version, instead, decreases your stats when in combat and instead they affect the cooldown on being able to use your pet. It’s really, really difficult for me to wrap my head around this overly complex system that takes into account both you, your pet, your vitality, and your wisdom. Why make it so complex? It’ll only make this game (which is hard to get into currently) even more difficult for newer players to understand.
And now it’s that time for me to list out how the system should work in order to simplify it and balance it with existing content:
- By default, health regeneration and mana regeneration are tripled in order to keep newer players with a weaker pet up to pace with older players with stronger pets and to make these stats much more useful
- Pet heal and magic heal ability cooldowns are three times longer (aka they are now 3 seconds)
Edit: All pet heal and magic heal ability cooldowns are 3 seconds regardless of pet level
And that’s it. That’s literally all you had to do DECA. There doesn’t need to be a “vit modifier” to the pet cooldowns. Hell, there doesn’t even need to be a “vital combat” system at all. You literally just have to nerf pets and make wisdom and vitality better stats. Of course, changes would have to be made to status effects like bleeding to make them deal more damage so that they actually work alongside the new healing speed (not like bleeding works the way it’s supposed to right now anyway lol). The point is, players with pets will be much more even with players who lack pets and vitality and wisdom will have more of a use now.
So with that said, let me address some concerns that you might have and explain how this compares to our current regeneration abilities.
Above I have pictured a set that is BUILT for healing large amounts of damage in small amounts of time. Fungal Breastplate grants 60 vitality, Ring of Unbound Vitality grants you 10 vitality, and the tier 7 seal grants you the healing status effect. The paladin has a maxed vitality stat of 40 vitality. With this set (which I think is the max amount of healing achievable by any class – don’t quote me on that), you have a grand total of 110 vitality. With the buffs that I proposed to vitality whereas vitality has 3 times more effective healing, this would grant you what is currently equivalent to 330 vitality. So how does that stack up to our current ability to heal?
- 330 vitality is the equivalent of almost 41 HP/second
- Additionally, we have 20 HP/second from the healing status effect
- This yields healing of 61 HP/second with a max vitality set without a pet
- If you count in the 90 HP per every 3 seconds that a divine pet yields, you have a grand total of 91 HP/second (again, I must emphasize, with absolute maxed out vitality)
Now let’s take the normal base vitality of a Knight at 75 which would be equivalent to 225 of the current vitality stat…
- 225 vitality is the equivalent of almost 28 HP/second
- If you currently have healing, you would also be gaining 20 HP/second
- This yields 48 HP/second without a pet
- If you count in the 90 HP per every 3 seconds that a divine pet yields, you have a grand total of 78 HP/second
And finally, let’s take the base stat of 40 that many classes have which would be the equivalent of 120 of the current vitality stat:
- 120 vitality is the equivalent of about 15 HP/second
- If you currently have healing, you would also be gaining 20 HP/second
- This yields 35 HP/second without a pet
- If you count in the 90 HP per every 3 seconds that a divine pet yields, you have a grant total of 65 HP/second
This is all extremely balanced, and all it required was an incredibly small change. You will find the exact same thing if you do the calculations for wisdom. I hate to break it to everyone, but in combat/out of combat are needlessly complicating a system that already works and just needs some slight tweaking. For the love of god, and for my love of this game, please do not implement vital combat. Please… You really don’t need to reinvent the wheel on a system that already works. It just needs some rebalancing.
And that’s all I have to say. Please share this post if you agree with it so that we can improve RotMG as a whole. I want this heard. I don’t want a needlessly complicated combat system when RotMG has always been about simplicity. I want RotMG to feel like RotMG. It doesn’t need this unwarranted complexity.