PT: Classes balancing part 1, Gigantic Cave(Fungal Forest + Crystal Cave), LoD, LoS

[Ecookied]

Hehe. You are good.

[PerryHello]

boss can’t exit room lol

[XHippobroX]

not saying its necessarily a bad thing but mystic is more overpowered than she has any right being in the new gigantic cave. no enemies are stasis immune so the dungeon is fairly easy to rush and the boss can pretty much be cheesed out by just repeatedly stasising him, he’s still not easy, in fact I got popped what I imagine was near the end of the fight but I found it way too easy after trying the dungeon on a paladin. This may be due to my 100/100/100 divine pet carrying me the whole fight but it seemed much easier than intended

[IExisted]

• Berserk: bonus to attack speed *1.5 > *1.2
• Damaging: bonus to attack damage *1.5 > *1.2

This idea is a step in the right direction; however, going from +50% to +20% is a bit of an overkill. Although a change like this will hinder the ‘steam rolling’ resulting from two core classes, it will also see these two classes taking a hit when it comes to solo or small group play.

Reducing these damage buffs to +30% instead would see a similar outcome to that of +20% with steam rolling, but it will also help maintain the effectiveness of solo and small group play.

Also, I’ve noticed that the +20% dps boost proposed is the same amount as the curse status effect, and I agree that these status effects should be equal. So, in order to maintain that the curse status effect should be increased to +30%. This will also help abilities like the orb to keep some of its effectiveness while making certain UT abilities with curse more valuable on top of that.

There isn’t a whole lot of love from the community when it comes to curse, so like I said, a change like this is definitely a step in the right direction.

---

• Defense cap 85% > 75%

This is going to only make a noticeable difference to classes with high defense and to enemies that have many low damage projectiles. A change like this will narrow the gap between all types of damage and only increase the importance of the health stat. A higher health pool is more valued by experienced players (players with at least a decent pet) whereas defense is more valuable to newer players due to the lack of HP restoration at hand.

The reduction of the defense cap will also make fire rate based stats/equipment/buffs more valuable than that of pure damage. I can’t really say if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

---

• maxHP buff from paladin seals (and other sources) no longer heal the player when being applied

I can see this being manageable by all players thanks the the healing status effect, but a change like this on its own is quite harsh. As a melee class, immediate health is far more important than gradual health. Removing the heal would cause the Paladin to be far less enjoyable due to his ability not synergizing nearly as well with his intended role.

If the Paladin’s heal must be nerfed, then simply remove the healing status effect and adjust all seals accordingly. It’ll fit his playstyle better than the idea suggested here.
Also, the maxHP buffs would most likely need to be increased to make up for losing more than half of the total heal capability.

---

• Some monsters in-game now receive an immunity to condition effects (stun, paralyze, daze, slow),
• The immunity duration is equal to the effect’s duration *3 (e.g., stunned for 3 seconds, monsters cannot be stunned for 9 secs total),
• Many monsters in-game are no longer fully immune to Stun, Paralyze, Daze and Slow effects (mainly bosses that had full immunity)

This is absolutely a needed feature in RotMG due to the potential of permanently applying a status effect; however, making the immunity last three times longer than the effect duration is devastating to certain abilities and UTs. I suggest to instead implement a formula that adds a base immunity duration (one second?) and then scale the rest of the immunity duration based on the condition being applied and the duration of that condition.
If this is too complicated, or not feasible, then I would simply suggest using a multiplier of two rather than three.

With a multiplier of two status effects will be unable to dominate an enemy and be more forgiving when it comes to poorly timed status infliction.

Instead of reducing the formula to *2 or creating a new formula all together, it would make far more sense to simply treat these status immunities like stasis is currently treated, but with a catch.
Although it would be tedious, the best solution is to give each enemy their own unique immunity duration for each status effect. At first this sounds extensive, but if you put monsters into groups (such as all of the mountain gods) then it’ll actually be feasible.


This method would solve the problem of shorter duration abilities being able to be utilized just as often as often as longer duration abilities, percentage-wise. (Currently any ability will be able to be applied 25% of the time.) This will also allow flexibility in determining how a certain enemy/boss is affected by specific status effects, which the current proposed solution does not.


On top of this, to solve the issue of ‘trolling’ with short status duration that abuse the immunity, I suggest making the abilities with longer effect duration override the shorter duration. That meaning if a scutum (4s stun) were to hit an enemy that is currently stunned by a tiered shield (3s stun), then the stun duration will last an extra second to compensate for this.

On a side note, this will severely nerf the power of electric pets, which is a good thing, but the ability may require some tweaking before a change like that is made public.

---

• Players now also receive an immunity to the same effects after being afflicted by such condition effects
• Players can no longer be afflicted by the same condition effect as long as condition effect is applied (no CC lock)
• Immunity scales with the Vitality stat, the more vitality the longer the immunity to the condition effect will last.

I’m willing to argue that this is probably the best way to make vitality a valued stat, although I would like to know the formula to truly be able to provide feedback on this concept.

One of the other popular concepts I see in regards to buffing vitality is the Vit mod for abilities. This idea for vit mods isn’t the way to go. A health regenerating stat has no place in dictating the power of an ability that uses mana. Wisdom makes more sense and functions more smoothly when it comes to wis mods already.

Another concept is making vitality affect outside healing, so tomes/seals/pets/etc. Ironically, the classes who can heal would be the most hurt by a change like this as they have lower vitality to balance out their ability to heal. The most notable classes to this concept is the Necromancer and the Sorcerer. The Necromancer would benefit the least from his own ability, which would make solo content on this class questionable and the Sorcerer arguably doesn’t need additional healing due to being ranged and all.

With that being said, I’m glad the current concept of Vit mods was chosen rather than the many other possible ideas.

---

The Lair of Draconis feels like the same dungeon, but the changes to it has made it far more enjoyable to play. I’m happy with the changes to this dungeon.

I feel the same way about the Lair of Shaitan, but I did find the smaller hands to be a nuisance more than anything due to how fast they respawn. I did the dungeon solo, so perhaps it is more manageable with other players.

The Rock Dragon changes were a nice touch, although unnecessary. It does make the fight more interesting at least.

I can’t really comment on the Cave dungeons. I lack the patience to do dungeons like that, if that means anything.

---

Overall, I’m excited for the changes that y’all have planned for RotMG based on what has been presented in this post.

EDIT: After reading the feedback of other players I changed my view on the way enemy immunity should be determined.

[HyperInvox]

DPS buffs nerfed
Def Nerfed

What the hell.
These aren’t class balance changes. In fact it makes warrior even Better since he still gets the most consistent damage from the DPS buffs while other non-sword classes get punished and barely get a DPS increase at all.
Def nerfs also don’t fix anything, As high Def characters still receive their benefits over the other classes.
These “Balance” tweaks literally do the exact opposite of what it intends to do. Might as well say “Warrior buffed, All other classes nerfed.”
DECA, Do you even proof read your changelogs?

[Zobiebuttz]

Sigh… Very disappointed. At least now I can move onto that new spry fox game that is like realm. Seriously, I hate all these proposed nerfs. Why can’t we just have a nice, clean sword nerf?

[Downdraft]

Don’t know why Deca decided to dump all over pally this patch, I’ve played pally to 20k+ BF, it’s good but not to the point where it deserves this much of a nerf imo.

The Damaging Nerf sounds good, maybe a lot but I could see it working.

The Healing removal seems ok aswell, it might have some unintended knock-on effects though (elaborated on later).

With the Vit and Def changes, Pally gets hurt the most since it’s +5 DEF becomes less relevant and it has the lowest vit of any melee, meaning it won’t benefit like Knight or Warrior will. The Def change also nerfs Marble Seal, so the only seal I’d see highly viable in groups becomes the Scholar Seal.

Pally already has the lowest DPS of the melees, I would be excited if Deca decides to find a new role for Pally but please don’t dump the class back to where it was pre-HP Buff Increase and throw it into the dirt.

In the context of organized Lost Halls runs, no heals from paladins means more Priests will be required (or abuse of pets which is a whole other topic). Since the two Damage buffs are being nerfed, Priest’s already low dps will go even lower. HP scaling requires a certain level of dps to be met, and with priests having less you’ll need to compensate… most likely with Warrior as it’s still the highest dps class. Warrior’s the one class that needs the nerf the most, and it’ll still hold on to it’s top spot with the proposed changes. Nerfing it’s attack or Swords in general (especially Colo Sword) would function better imo

[BBruno]

Yep. Kiddforce will fix that problem.

[DeIusional]

Look, I get that balancing is important, but not in a way that makes players want to quit.

[RyanYoon]

if you’re a new player, why are you rushing?

Ok, maybe not necessarily a new player, but most people around red - yellow stars have max rare pets. From what I’ve seen, when you call, people who are newer, like red and lower tp. Most “pros” have really good pets and have no need to tp. They can easily rush and solo themselves. But sometimes, there is someone who does join. But this goes back to my first point, most people who tp dont or cant rush forcing you to clear. Clearing is quick with a group. But, from what I’ve seen, you can rush every single gland dungeon with a rare pet or something around that. But, abby is the only dungeon that you basically cannot rush with a max rare pet.
This is a pretty stupid reason, but I feel it would be better to keep the trend of allowing all dungeons to be rushable, but that’s just me. Ofc the dungeon can kill you/overwhelm, but at least you can make it to the boss room without nexusing or dying.

[Dragon]

I feel like too many things are being tested in this PT session, which makes it difficult to focus on one thing and give detailed feedback, especially for massive, overarching changes such as the nerfs.

[Aurorious]

you say “this doesn’t fix classes this just hurts groups” I say “good that’s the point”.

And I say those classes in and of themselves didn’t need fixing. Pally especially. Divine pets won’t notice the difference and new people will be on 2013 pally. Which, if you didn’t play back then, felt fucking AWFUL. Even after pets came out and you could literally permaseal people STILL didn’t play pally because it just wasn’t as good (or more notably, as fun) as other melee’s. IIRC they mentioned statistics and pally back then was the least played class, even behind trickster. The Heal was the literal single best balancing change realm has ever had. Reverting it will push pally just completely out of the picture in solo play for even someone with a maxed rare. Pets were a mistake, and while balancing end game content around them is one thing, balancing CLASSES around people having legendary or divine is much much much worse of a mistake.

[TROLLDLLR]

To give my 2 cents on this, the removal of chain-debuffs is something I 100% agree with.

Some more questionable things are:
Berserk/Damaging—>1.2X
Def cap—>75%
No insta heal on seal
1 and 2 not only hurt melees, they hurt every other class that relies on DEF/benefits from Berserk/Damaging (Re: all the classes lmao)
Getting rid of the insta heal on the seal seems theoretically fine to me, but then again, pala has the designation of “the only class that can give you a slight HP boost when sick”, so…

The vit scaling is kinda wierd and doesn’t make sense to me. Seems a bit arbitrary.

If you want the tl;dr version:

I like the removal of getting/inflicting perma-debuffs.

I kinda like the vit scaling. Could use a bit of polishing ngl.

I’m not a fan of the proposed status changes
(1.4->1.2X modifier for berserk/damaging, 85-75% def cap, HP+ buff nerf) because it affects all classes, not just melees. If you want to nerf the melees, you have to go after the sword. That’s the only way to ONLY nerf the melees, because the melees’ abilities have a very wide-reaching scale in terms of team play, perhaps sans the knight.

This bit is my logic

I might be going in circles. However, what I’m trying to say can be modeled by the following statements:

Let A represent to “OP ness” of melees, and let B represent the “OP ness” of all other classes. By nerfing dmg/bsrk, you are subtracting x from both A and B, in the case that there are many players. Thus , if A>B, then A-x>B-x. Thus, the inequality still holds, with an equal degree of separation. During the solo case, however, the inequality turns into A-x>B-cx, where 0<c<1. However, I don’t think most players choose to solo on any non-melee class anyway due to ingame factors such as defense and aggro.

With regards to the Def nerf and the HP seal nerf, the detriment is even more obvious. While affecting uber high def classes such as the knight slightly more, For smaller def melees such as pala or warr (<65 def standard), the difference isn’t too great as compared to the impact on non melees (36<x<55 def usually). Therefore, we still fall into that inequality conundrum again: A-x>B-cx, where c is a number less than but close to 1.

Thus, you have not really improved the situation for the other classes relative to any melee at all in group situations- you just made everyone’s life harder. If that’s what you’re going for, by all means go ahead, but keep that in mind.

For the solo case, I cannot deny that these problems are less pronounced. However, these problems still remain for classes whose skillsets can be directly compared to those of the melees (For example, berserk orbs v. helmets).

In this case, I believe that buffing the other classes is a better idea. Maybe tack on a +1sec duration to the mystic tiered orbs or something. IDK. That way, the difference between the melees and the non melees is actually closed, as opposed to just shifting both values and keeping the distance the same.

[Survivor]

OP ness

1.4->1.2X modifier for berserk/damaging

It used to be 1.5, not 1.4.
If you had both buffs, that’d scale your raw dps on 0 defense by 2.25, but with 1.2 instead it’s just 1.44, less than the 1.5 either of the buffs would have given before.

[Nevov]

I think the Vitmod idea is okay thematically since the healthier/the more ‘vital’ you are, the longer your effect-immunity is, which does make a kind of sense. Necromancer living in the dark isn’t so good at shaking things off as a beefy knight.

This thing could really bring in some use for high Vit items, if you are more concerned about lengthening immunity than other stats, swap in a UBVit could become a tactic in some situations.

[Xaronas]

Berserk/Damaging: bonus to attack speed/damage *1.5 > *1.2

Nice, they were too overpowered compared to exposed, curse. Maximum bonus on dps that exposed can provide is 37*20 = 740 extra dps (most shots per second are: 37 Shots/Sec with berserk and 5 dex effs applied in a tshot archer with dex focus items), whereas same class can easily get +1000dps without consumables or dps focus items with just Berserk/Damaging.

Defense cap 85% > 75%

If this is applied to enemies, then fast shooting classes (like dagger classes) will see a bigger dps increase than slow hitting ones (like sword classes). Also, the lowered def cap makes defense a bit worse so its a direct downgrade on melees without affecting too much the light armor classes.

maxHP buff from paladin seals (and other sources) no longer heal the player when being applied

At last! Deep down all of us knew that this was a bug. No more sewers healing. Maybe add the 5 missing dex back to pally though.

Introducing Immunity to crowd control effects and vitMod

I like it, knight has become more fun to play now (as much as i used him in testing at least), also the paralysis ability on pets is not overpowered anymore.

[DroidMXBro]

i see only one class coming out of this update not too heavily scathed … THE WIZARD

roll out ur mules bois wizard is the new meta (as if it already wasn’t one)

[XHippobroX]

My thoughts on the update,

Class balances:
in regular play, hard nerf to knight. maybe make the cooldown dependent on the enemy because not being able to stun for 9 seconds (or 12 for scrutum) seems a bit much at times. Vitmod is great but kinda buffs most the classes you guys are trying to nerf. However, being able to stun high level enemies and bosses is sooo good. Thank you so much this makes things like lod much easier to get in on. The nerf to damaging and berserk is great, haven’t played those classes quite as much as knight so far but it seems reasonable. still good but not busted as it was before.

New LOD:
How do I say this? This is a fantastic dungeon now. The order mix up thing is so cool and choosing a dragon based off dps is great. Each boss is well balanced, exciting, challenging and best of all, fun. I even solo’d it as a knight, while I might have been carried by a 100/100/100 pet, It never felt unbeatable or unfair. The one bit of criticism I have is make the drops more consistent! It is the one major downfall of this dungeon I tried a second solo as knight and got 0 from the first 2 bosses and had to nexus at third. Even the first time I only got pots from 2/5. the other 3 were either 0 or pbag. Make the pots guaranteed when solo’d otherwise people will feel like they put in a lot of effort and received nothing.

Cave dungeons:
Make them look different I only fought the boss of the crystal one but the dungeons are so similar to the point where I’m seeing reused sprites and more crystal things to kill. Also mystic is broken as heck in this dungeon because of removed immunities. She can stasis the enemies to rush and stasis the bosses head so the body segments are just sitting ducks. Edit: I do like the idea of breaking crystals to open the boss but people are just gonna leech right next to the drill. I would make it you can teleport so the rusher/ clearers can get back and not miss out. Or make an anti leech mechanism like what you did with the ice cave.

New shaitans:
still kindof annoying and obnoxious but not as much as before. The one thing I want to make clear here is Remove the silencing fires! Seriously, they make what would otherwise be perfectly fine into a nightmare. I’m trying to shoot the boss from afar with my quiver while clearing out the small hands and these hecking fire sprite things keep silencing me every time I try to go in. The worst part of the dungeon by far. Equivalent to the rain mechanic in Breath of the Wild, doesn’t make things more difficult just more annoying and longer. Playing as priest was a bit better but they still almost got me killed at times when I otherwise would just be having a good time wailing on the boss tanking the shots. I guess that’s kinda the point but for so many other classes it just feels annoying instead of dangerous. Edit: I feel like I should probably add this, the dungeon wasn’t horrible I did enjoy my time in it when I wasn’t getting constantly silenced. One thing I forgot to mention though is The big hands. I think it should be made so that they can be killed one at a time instead of respawning pentaract style. But I think I came across at the dungeon being awful so I want to correct that by saying that it was fine just not as good as some of the other dungeons.

Overall great update, the shaits and caves dungeons could use a bit of work and the lod should have more consistent loot but the class balancing is great as always. Keep up the good work Deca!

[Hoffster]

Yeah this nerf targets all classes on realm as a whole, and will probably make things that shouldn’t be dangerous to ranged classes dangerous.

[Volc]

Lots of stuff to unpack here but I’m going to focus on the class balancing that Deca is attempting.

• Berserk: bonus to attack speed *1.5 > *1.2
• Damaging: bonus to attack damage *1.5 > *1.2

I believe that this needs to be addressed a little differently, there is a massive difference between a boost that only affects the user vs a boost that affects everyone so my first suggestion is to make that distinction in the boosts by making it so that self-boosts retain the *1.5 modifier. This would wind up nerfing the mob entirely but helping classes that have their own way of boosting themselves (Mystic, Necromancer, etc.). For the record, the *1.5 on self boost should NOT apply to Warrior and Paladin, they should get *1.2 like everyone else they buff (more on Paladin later). Working with the change above, I also think it would be beneficial to expand the number of classes that have access to these boosts. One of the main reasons why pally/warr are so in demand is because a lot of classes don’t have a reliable way to boost their DPS. You could buff some of the weaker/rarer UT items on some classes by giving them such buffs. Some examples are:

Ronin’s Wakizashi
Trap of the Vile Spirit
Ghostly Prism
Bottled Meduzosoan/Plague Poison
Scepter of Devastation
Quiver of the Shadows
Kageboshi
Cloak of Bloody Surprises (revert back to its original state)

You could even expand upon this by making it so all tiered abilities have a buff/stat boost for the user. Classes like Rogue, Ninja, Archer, and Mystic already have buffs (stats, speedy, berserk); however, Sorcerer, Assassin, Wizard, Trickster, and Samurai do not. Aside from Wizard, who is powerful in its own right, the other 4 classes are not exactly powerhouses on their own and are rarely seen in large numbers in dungeons with 20+ people. Here are some propositions for the 5 classes I mentioned with no ability buffs:
Prism - Armored (when used) and/or +ATT
Poison - Damaging (when used) and/or +ATT
Spell - +MP
Scepter - +MP and/or +WIS
Wakizashi - +DEX and/or +SPD

Defense cap 85% > 75%

Good change. Melee classes tank less and this game embraces its bullet-hell side a little more. Remember when the objective of bullet hells were for you to dodge the bullets not eat them?

maxHP buff from paladin seals (and other sources) no longer heal the player when being applied

This on top of nerfing damaging is a bit too strong a nerf for Paladin. I’d suggest either retaining the *1.5 for Paladin and make *1.2 the party effect or keeping the seal heal, but doing both might actually kill Paladin. I suggest that to make up for Paladin’s nerf, maybe give the tiered seals a passive buff like +HP or +DEF (I mean the other two sword classes do so why not pally?).

The immunity duration is equal to the effect’s duration *3 (e.g., stunned for 3 seconds, monsters cannot be stunned for 9 secs total),

Overall I think this is a good change, some bosses were way too easy to steamroll because of this; however, I have one complaint: some UTs are so badly hurt by this that they may become totally useless, which shouldn’t happen considering their rarity (obviously I’m referring to higher end UTs nobody cares if the Snakeskin shield is still useless). I believe that either some or all UTs should have a reduced immunity duration, either *1.5 or *2. Just to give you an idea, here are some UTs that are nerfed hard by this change that make them far less useful than they were originally intended to be:

Spiteful Scutum
Honeytomb Snare
Quiver of Shrieking Specters
Wakizashi of Eastern Winds

Players now also receive an immunity to the same effects after being afflicted by such condition effects

This overall is a good step in the right direction, but I would like to propose something more: class-dependent debuff immunities. This would significantly increase the viability of weaker classes in certain scenarios, which honestly is a win win in my book if implemented correctly. There are plenty of interesting combinations that could overall increase the usage and strength of a class. For example, you could make Samurai immune to unstable, Mystic immune to weak, and Assassin immune to sick.

Immunity scales with the Vitality stat, the more vitality the longer the immunity to the condition effect will last.

Sorcerer can finally flex on the other classes.

Long story short if you want to truly balance the classes you’re going to have to give them more tools in their kit to use, and the easiest way to do that is by diversifying and strengthening their abilities.