PT: Vital Combat & Exaltations

#374

Vital Combat sounds okay. The only thing that has me worried is the pet nerf, since that is the primary way players recover anymore.

When the DPS, Defense, and Enemy Health Rebalances are taken together, I think I can be on board with it.

Status Effect Rebalance will change the strategy of several boss fights, but it might be for the best. Player immunity from chain paralyze is a welcome change. I wish this immunity would extend to other status effects.

Class Rebalances
Most of these changes are minor. I donā€™t know what the rationale was for removing helm cooldowns. That seals no longer healing directly is irritating. I know that is how seals used to work, but the immediate heal is partly what kept paladins somewhat viable. Now there is no skill in timing your spacebar with pally, since it doesnā€™t give you a clutch heal, but instead just a timed effect. The tome changes are most rankling. Tiered tomes have been nerfed in every way. If you maybe just applied one of these changes to tomes, it wouldnā€™t be so bad, but why go all out with 3-second cooldowns, lower base heal, and lower heal levels based on number of players (not to mention the changes to UTs)? This is a cooperative game, and priests were the quintessential cooperative class.

Other Items
Mostly, again, these are small changes that players can get used to. The big exception being that priests are further devalued by removing the party effect of Puri (plus of course decreased healing all around). Why the priest hate? In most upper-tier boss fights, players already spend half the time quiet/silent/sick, which lessens the efficacy of purification and healing. With these changes, the priest will become a self-serving leech class, as opposed to a contributing party class. Book of Geb change is good though. This differentiates it from Puri.

Exaltations
This is a huge, complicated system that only rewards the very best Discord players who can consistently complete these endgame dungeons (eventually, after massive grinding). Iā€™ve been playing for over eight years, and Iā€™m personally not skilled enough to reap any of these benefits. And yet I know I am better than a majority of players. According to RealmEye, there are ~98k active players. Exactly what proportion of those players will this new system be relevant to? Will the seemingly enormous resources put into this system pay off? The playerbase is split between the vocal elite players with godlike abilities and those of us who just want to pewpew a few tombs or O2s before going to bed. The divide increases when the developers implement a system like this that rewards the hardest-core players, while alienating the new and casual majority.

I would echo what has already been mentioned by @CptLeon and @Shatov. Some sort of separate game mode like Elder Realms or a ā€œhardcoreā€ realm would satisfy both camps. Those wanting endless challenge can find greater reward in an Elder Realm, and those of us who enjoy a more relaxing experience would have the classic mode.

#375

Actually, it does only last that long at max vit, lower actually with exaltation, and basically nonexistent with vit speccing
(Which is why i think it should be vit and wis based to prevent some builds from getting around the nerf entirely)

#376

This update will be mostly innefective in itsā€™ current state, that much seems established, but itā€™s not because they didnā€™t remove keys, but because they didnā€™t make this system balanced and solid enough, with the split healing overly encouraging large groups, Necro becoming basically the same as pre-nerf Priest, the timer being based on only vit is broken, and they didnā€™t nerf divines and mseal much at all, meaning said key groups will still be overpowered as ever.

#377

Ok, that was cute. I took that seriously with this thread. This has been the 3rd most difficult thread to read on the forums out of everything Iā€™ve read, especially the first part.
Iā€™m going to give my head a break nowā€¦

#378

Doesnā€™t matter how many times you do it. People make mistakes and even with knowing the boss pattern a stray bullet or a small rubber band or lag spike can end your run (sometimes u canā€™t even see the bullet due to the amount of people). With Healing being considerably reduced in an bullet hell environment (O3) I donā€™t expect someone who is paralyzed or confused (other debuffs apply) to be able to heal themselves after being hit especially when there is little to no time to regen If(IC/OOC) is implemented and since most shots on shot anyway. Taking a look at O3 one phase can last up to 15 minutes. I highly doubt someone can consistently dps the boss while dodging every bullet and having little to no healing due to the IC and the nerfs to priest.

#379

Those vit/pet changes seems overcomplicated. Why not just boost vit/wis regen all the time (that was it supposed to do - passive regeneration even during combat) and just stop healing with pet up to 5 sec after receiving damage without any modifiers?

#380

100% Agree. All you had to do was nerf pets to improve the longevity of the game. But you are scared to do so because you charged people through the nose for pet petfood in your little shops. So instead you came up with this dumb convoluted system.

#381

everything works really great with this testing and i think ic/ooc is a great feature along with exaltations except how you really destroyed priest in a group, it does not feel like a support anymore but more like a solo class.

#382

IC/OOC seems ok but itā€™s hard to judge with 8/8 char 100/100 pet on testing.

Priest nerf is just dumb, i actually wanted to max my priest next but i guess i wonā€™t bother since itā€™ll be unplayable.

Exaltation is balanced around discord runs so i wonā€™t use it at all.
I was really hoping to see more variation, but itā€™s just endagame grind and i canā€™t see the point of it.
If you can run these dungeons so much already then you donā€™t need extra stats. If you canā€™t run them so much youā€™ll get no extra stats and in-combat will make dungeons even harder.

I think ill leave after motmg then.

#383

So I invested quite a few hours into testing the new changes this weekend and thereā€™s way, way more good than bad to me.

IC/OOC:

I feel that people are blowing IC/OOC out of proportion both as a concept as well as the current execution. I think the concept is really, really good and should definitely be implemented, but not in the state it was in for this PT. I actually donā€™t have much of a problem with the execution of IC for the PT, Iā€™m very happy the duration scales with the amount of damage taken from a shot over the trigger. I also think its a great idea to use VIT scaling to decrease IC duration. My problem stems from the trigger itself.

15 damage is absolutely pitiful and everything beyond midlands will most likely trigger it. There are probably less than 10 shots in dungeons like Halls and Sanctuary that wonā€™t trigger the effect. I donā€™t think players should be able to brute force their way into not having to worry about it, but why have the number so low in the first place? This doesnā€™t benefit newer/lower skill players as progression from mid game to highlands to godlands will shred and punish them far worse than maxed players. One solution that came to mind was having the proc based off of the dungeon difficulty . With such a dynamic concept, I found it weird that this one aspect of it was left stagnant. I think reworking the gravestone rating for dungeons as well as having set values for different biomes in the realm would help this qualm I have. For example, in a 1 gravestone dungeon, 15 would be the trigger whereas in a 5 gravestone dungeon (or greater if the system is changed), 50-60 would be the trigger. I think this would play much better with the increase in the DEF cap as well, as currently only knight and classes that utilize armored only benefit from it.(edited)

With these changes though, I think its great that the base regen speed of VIT and WIS were doubled for OOC, however it along with the DEF cap increase currently feel a bit superficial. By the time Iā€™m out of combat, at least in a group, most times I would be at roughly 70-80% HP in dire situations and nearly fully healed in others. I donā€™t think VIT and WIS should be changed further with regards to the regen rate, but IC feels more punishing than how beneficial OOC feels (hope that makes sense).

Overall while I like the concept of these changes, I feel that they push the game in a direction that requires a ridiculously high skill ceiling. Iā€™m all for more challenging content, but I will never, ever be at a point where any hard dungeon I do is near perfect. There are also instances that make the system punishing, such as the Tarul Tentacles 2nd phase, the O2 Sun phase and clearing the Nest. Some patterns make dodging the entire phase near impossible, or other cases there is just so much spam from miscellaneous enemies that it makes it impossible to adequately dodge.

The DPS Buff Changes

I think the DPS buff rebalances are all really good, but I personally think exposed should be buffed a little bit just to give Samurai more relevance. As much as I personally like the class, it does feel clunky to play and there are times when its ability doesnā€™t feel nearly as meaningful as berserk or damaging. As I mentioned before, I feel the defense cap is somewhat useless. There arenā€™t many cases in the late game where this matters or can even be applied. The same goes for the early game to some extent, with most things dealing enough damage to make the cap irrelevant.

I donā€™t think there is an easy way to make defense of equal relevance to health because even with these changes, more health is better than more defense in a majority of cases. This coincides a bit with the armored nerf as well, making the cap increase really only apply to a select few situations. I might be under thinking this but I wanted to share my thoughts on this adjustment.

Enemy Health and Status Rebalance

I think implementing the exponential scaling formula to all currently scaled enemies is a great change and Iā€™m happy to see it coming. Nerfing the base HP of enemies in conjunction with the DPS nerfs is definitely appropriate and based on the areas Iā€™ve tested, has made smaller group play go by much faster.

The status effect rebalances are a bit of a mixed bag for me. Iā€™m not 100% sure if I read it correctly, but my understanding of it is that first the effect from a projectile is applied, then the complementary immunity is applied. Again if my interpretation of this is wrong, please correct me. If this is what it is though, I feel that it makes all abilities centered around a status effect much less meaningful. I want to look at QoT as an example, as itā€™s always been a mediocre item. Assuming you hit the shot, you get the 5 seconds of Daze but then have to wait another 5 seconds just to be able to daze again, effectively making the cooldown removal a moot point. (If the complementary immunity is applied as soon as a status effect is given to an enemy, I have no issue with the change, these statements are based on how I interpreted the post).

I think the player immunity is also a great implementation, but I feel it should be extended to slow and confuse as well since they also hinder movement.

The Class Rebalance

I played a lot of Paladin on this PT and I genuinely enjoyed the class. Itā€™s really fun to play and Iā€™m glad the wismod changes make its higher WIS stat more meaningful.

Mystic also feels a lot better to play, even with the berserk from T5+ orbs removed. I think these changes should bring it into much better line with Wizard and Necro in terms of base DPS and I hope the changes are here to stay.

Warrior getting wismod is still a bit of an odd thing to me, especially when there are other classes that would make better use of it like Bard and Assassin. However, I feel the implementation of it for the PT is really good and I had a lot of fun with Warrior. It feels a bit less limited to play since you donā€™t need to worry about pressing space bar on a set interval every time. I understand the wismod was developed for the class already, but I really hope that it extends to the other classes I mentioned, as I feel they are both in need of some changes that I donā€™t think are relevant to discuss here.

As for Priest, I am not a fan of how badly it was gutted. I think the class needed changes, but the ones currently on the PT are way too much. The wand buff is nice and I think it complements Sorcerer a lot more than priest, but priest was never really meant to be a DPS machine. I think buffing the wands to compensate for all of the other nerfs was not a good step just because the class is absolutely boring to play now. The cooldowns are extremely punishing and I honestly think they would be a major turn off to newer players who pick Priest.

Tomes healing less based on allies is a cool idea and I actually like it a lot, however I think it punishes those who may be lower than their companions. Hereā€™s just an example: thereā€™s a group of 16 people and 1 person has 150/800 HP and another has 700/800 HP. This change is ambiguous, meaning that the person with lower HP may just get screwed over due to bad RNG with the mechanic.

If it prioritized players of lower HP to heal for the higher amount, I think that would be great, however I donā€™t know the internal workings of the mechanics so I donā€™t know if its my place to say. As for the UT/ST tome changes, I think Prot is balanced pretty well with the changes made. Iā€™m also not against the Geb tome changes, however I think it removes incentive for people to clear Sarcs even more. Tome of Pain and Puri are honestly not good. The damage buff is cool, but the cooldown kind of just makes it awkward to use. In most cases one would be better off using the Furor tome or Ceremonial Merlot for DPS rather than Tome of Pain.

As for Puri, I think it was nerfed way too hard. As others have said, the cooldown isnā€™t the only issue but rather how much all 3 nerfs stack up. It makes priest a class that is supposed to help the group into one thatā€™s somewhat selfish to use. 150 base healing and reading the Purification on party would make the item much better. There are only 3 pieces of equipment on the production servers that can cause group Purification and absolutely gutting 2/3 sources is not a good step.

To end my notes for the Priest changes, I want to step away from balancing and talk about how it actually plays. Even if the class is considered balanced by the devs, it just isnā€™t fun. I enjoy the class a lot on prod currently and while I understand the need for a nerf, it shouldnā€™t be gutted for the sake of balance. Finding a middle ground for it being fun and balanced is easier said than done, but these changes push that idea way too far to one extreme.

I really like the changes to tiered seals, helms and orbs. I think this streamlines all of them fairly well and makes progression more consistent. Aside from the cooldown, I think the changes to tiered tomes arenā€™t bad. I only have a slight issue with T5 and T6 tomes costing the same amount of MP, but other than that, I think lowering the cooldown slightly would balance the Tomes a lot better. As for the other item changes, Iā€™m very happy to see QoT, Oreo and Conflict getting some much deserved attention. I think the changes given to them are very nice and hopefully it will bring the items into a bit more relevance

Exaltation

I am a very big fan of the Exaltation concept. One thing about it I think needs adjusting is the amount of completions needed. I donā€™t think they should be the same for every dungeon. A Nest or even a Void donā€™t require nearly as much time or setup as a an Oryxā€™s Sanctuary run require. Going off of that, the current situation regarding runes makes that goal seem even more implausible to achieve just because the rune supply feels like its dwindling more with each day. I think the basics for the system is very well thought out and Iā€™m excited to see more of it.

I think aside from the numbers needing some fine tuning just to make the grind seem at least possible over a fair time span, the system looks amazing and I canā€™t wait for it to come out when I have more time to play the game.

Overall I am really happy with a lot of the changes released onto testing but I do hope some of the feedback provided across the thread is considered. Thank you to the staff team at Deca for working hard on these changes, they really are great.

Bugs

  1. The negative effects from certain consumables are not applied. The most prominent examples are the tinctures of strength and courage; the stat they reduce is not affected in any way, whereas the stat they increase is changed as normal. Another instance I canā€™t test because I donā€™t have the item is the Seal of the Enchanted Forest. I am unsure if this will produce a similar effect to the tinctures, but it is worth mentioning nontheless.

This is a gif showing the bug with the Tincture of Fear: https://gfycat.com/femalechubbyblackbear

This is a gif showing the bug with the Tincture of Courage: https://gfycat.com/diligentmealykitten

  1. ā€œPhantom damageā€ in my opinion is a much more worrisome bug. Essentially, the damage numbers from a shot donā€™t appear above your head but you still take the damage from a shot. The reason I find this much more worrisome is because when thinking realistically about this, should someone get this bug in a fight like Chancellor Dammah, they would get flustered, make more mistakes and either die or nexus. This bug actually exists on production already, but on testing it seems to be occurring a lot more. The only reliable way I found of reproducing it was just skimming the hitbox of a shot, but it seems to occur in any instance.

This is one gif of the bug, Iā€™ll edit my post if I get more later: https://gfycat.com/piercingsilentkillerwhale

3, The Scholar Seal bug: this one isnā€™t too complex. Continued spam of the seal just results in the base amount of stats added to be continuously added. For example, if upon entering an instance, scholar seal will grant +50 wis. If spammed nonstop, it will just continue to give +50 WIS for each subsequent use.

Thanks so much to those who actually read through this text wall and I hope my feedback was at least meaningful.

#384

It is by class, therefore new classes should effect the buffs claimed on other characters?

#385

I would also like to highlight this argument that you brought up. Because it illustrates a very important point.

The fact is that this update opens up Pandoraā€™s Box.

We will never hear the end of how long the combat timer should be and what stats should affect the timer.

Iā€™m already seeing people clamoring that melees can have a significantly reduced timer. Iā€™m already seeing people clamoring that wisdom should play a role in the timer.

I strongly urge the community to realize the consequences of opening this issue up and how it will result in constant disagreement going forward.

#386

ā€œToo many possibilitiesā€ is no excuse not to balance the game

#388

I think the reception to an update is important.

I have not seen single individual reply on this thread approving every part of the update.

If the update will disappoint everyone in some way that should be taken into account.

At the end of the day you still have to please the playerbase.

And like I said on this thread already, Deca does not do balance well. It is unlikely that they will be willing to revisit this issue again after the update drops.

#389

Yes, this update is badly executed and innefective, iā€™m addressing that to try to make it get changes to please more people who asked for it, just typing out.

#390

The suggested reworks in my post shouldnā€™t make puri too niche and still usable. It is true that there are some bizarre UTs within these dungeons that a player first looks at and sees it as mediocre. I think mostly every UT is in a range of being too balanced or strong enough with some exceptions.

Event whites are in a different place however due to how very outdated the realmā€™s design is and the inconsistency of difficulty with the Event Bosses. Also, event whites are balanced off of how rare they are and thatā€™s way worse. Obviously, these such things would be somewhat solved with a proposed rework.

#392

These are my last, unsugarcoated criticisms, before the testing closes off, iā€™ll try to explain the deeply rooted flaws with the system even more indepth with examples, just something to preface and let DECA know, no sugarcoating whatsoever: Vital Combat and Exaltation are not good in their current states, they are both broken systems in their current state that will both fail due to being innefective at their intended purposes of making steamroll groups not overpowered, and of properly rewarding dedication over time respectively. They should not be implemented in their current states because of this failing. The dissatisfaction of the playerbase with these changes doesnā€™t just stem from people ā€œmad that they wonā€™t be able to steamrollā€, but noticing the severe flaws of a system you are stubborn to change in any significant way, your stubborness in refusing to address the massive flaws until perhaps itā€™s too late will result in not just pro but also anti-steamrolling being disappointed very frequently. Just a warning, not hate or anything.

The In-Combat condition isnā€™t nearly as impactful nor is nearly as long as it seems once players find ways around it, especially after you made it less impactful than last PT

Adding 2 seconds on ability cooldown on getting hit sounds like it would be enough right? Divines get 3x weaker after being hit, this seems like it would be a major nerf that they deserve for their absurd exponential power, except thatā€™s not how well it works at all in practice, one thing that has become very clear by now, yet you refuse to even consider changing, is that the timer is something that can be effectively bypassed entirely, with little cost, and with no real nerf to your divine ensuing if you can do so, since the added cooldown is the only change and is conditional.

Let it be known that the timer is effectively not 7 seconds at all, it is 5.4 seconds and 4 seconds from 40 to 75 vit, sounds good right? But then you have to realize how many things organized groups will eventually stack, optimize, to lower this timer as much as possible and abuse the Magic Heal spam that you didnā€™t nerf in any other way, Sandstone Seal is very common and will be omnipresent in raids, 20 vit, down to 4.6 and 3.2 seconds, alright, but thatā€™s not all, Exaltation, a feature you designed heavily around steamroll groups (but weā€™ll get to that later), will reduce this further by 1 second, 3.6 and 2.2 seconds, suddenly not so impactful huh? This is with no vit investment, no Fungal Armor or anything, and yet we effectively reduced the timer by 50% and 70% depending on classes for raids already. Any player paying even the slightest attention will not be permanently In-Combat or anything, say what you want about rewarding dodging skill, thatā€™s not the point here, the point is this system is easily bypassed, rendering it moot, your refusal to change it to a vit and wis based system, as would be sensible to keep wisdom relevant compared to vitality and prevent this system from being easily abused, because it would ā€œadd too many functions to wisdomā€ (nevermind this current, vit centralizing system already gives vitality three functions, one of which is directly better than wisdom) shows a serious lack of thinking about the negative consequences and exploits that could be used.

You also seem quite afraid to directly nerf divines, despite the fact that letting them remain intact in their current state, even if conditionallyā€¦ is very questionable, the Mheal at max level out of combat results in about 55 MP per second with wisdom included, which is overpowered as can be for alot of reasons, but especially how much split healing in tomes actually favors large groups, for reasons iā€™ll explain further down, and the complete absence of split healing on Necro, youā€™re leaving mechanics to leave the insane healing of groups way too untouched with some optimization.

How to fix all this exactly? Itā€™s simple, split the In-Combat timer into two timers, one for Heal and one for Magic Heal, vit and wis based respectively (rebalance things that give vit and wis if necessary), which would still make vitality very useful as an intended purpose while preventing exploitation of the system, maybe rework the Armor Exaltation to be something other than lowering the whole In-Combat timer, an option could be making it only lower the vit based timer, to keep it good for survivability; last but not least, rebalance the scaling of Out-of-Combat pet strength for an added targeted nerf towards divines to prevent their current full gamebreaking strength from being accessed even if builds and raids exploit the current system. Double the strength Out-of-Combat per tiee remains excessive even with the addition of In-Combat, so a slight tweaking of the scaling strength and the initial strength at common could have a targetted, significant unconditional nerf to divines, slightly to high level legendaries, and leaving rares and below untouched or more evened out with the legs and divines, like max common being 10 HP and MP per second, and each tier 1.5x (do the math).

Please donā€™t add a pet nerf if youā€™re gonna just give raids the opportunity to get around it almost entirely by stacking enough perks.

Split Healing, and why it actually still favors large steamroll groups

First of all, Necro still has no penalty on healing large groups, basically making him Priest 2.0, please change this, that is just objectively unhealthy as it will just replace one thing with the other for raids.

Why it favors large groups? Well, the healing decays harshly at first, but stops altogether at about 14 players, and yet large groups can still just stack more priests, this means split healing punishes mid sized groups too much, and doesnā€™t punish large groups enough, it actually doesnā€™t split the healing proportionately at all, and still enables up to 3 digit HP recovery from tomes alone from stacking priests in large groups, please lower the cap on split healing and make it decay more proportionately and fairly to medium groups and less overly favorably and leniently to large ones.

Exaltation, an obsolete and elitist feature

Summary of why this feature is terribly executed now:

  • It has no reason to be so grindy, completing 1200 endgame dungeons per class, 19.2k total is not reasonable even as a long term goal over years, even if it wasā€¦

  • Stats and a loot boost are obsolete once youā€™ve completed thousands of endgame dungeons, as youā€™ll have every drop, it should take way less, start boosting your account way before you get to the point of having every endgame drop, which leads me to my next pointā€¦

  • Having to complete thousands of endgame dungeons clashes against the idea of trying to increase challenge, while decreasing grinding and overreliance on discords, do i seriously need to explain this?

We seriously hope you address these

If anyone at DECA actually reads this far (i hope, there are so many replies it might get drowned out, and i hope DECA devs donā€™t immediately skip over this thinking iā€™ll just mindlessly shit on the features), this is not out of hate towards you or the concepts, despite being mostly favorable to DECA, i can say with confidence by numbers and experience this update looks good on the surface but is really badly executed in the fine details right now, and this is not from wanting steamrolling, quite the opposite, but the dissatisfaction is absolutely deserved and then some, as even just the surface level flaws have turned off many people who would otherwise be in favor of a pet nerf and tome nerf. I needed to word this harshly to convey the severity of the flaws, not to hate. Because if despite all the flaws pointed out here this is actually the finished state of it, most of the playerbase will be really disappointed for good reasons, this is a massive change, so listen to feedback more since we donā€™t want a flop, you still have half a month to change these before this update goes live, make something good out of that half a month.

#393

Well said. I think itā€™s pretty imperative that Deca listens to some of the feedback in this post specifically, especially the ones regarding splitting the In combat mode into two separate vit and wis modifiers. As it stands with this PT, Vit is better at Mana regen than Wis is due to the fact it enables your pet.

I think that, while stupidly difficult to achieve, the combat timer Exaltation benefit does need to be reduced as you mentioned. If it has to stay the way it is, then I would make it a max of -0.5s instead of -1.0s.

Additionally, vit-boosting group items will become the meta as you mentioned. Thatā€™s not really helping anybody, as groups will just start to transition to using those items as the meta as opposed to mseal and puri.

#394

On paper this looks absolutely awful, need to see how it feels in game but I truly believe this will make people quit the game.

#395

I think that instead of adding a flat cooldown on tomes and removing the purification, the amount of hp healed could just lower by around 2% per player healed, up to -90%, which would make priest essentially useless when alone in big groups, but still useful in small ones. Additionally, the healing would additionally decrase per priest in a proximity. For the Tome of Purification, though, it could be like the healing of the Tome of the Mushroom Tribe, that it would purify a certain amount of players, again, lowering with the amount of priests there are.