Game Design My Issues With Wynn, Pt. 1 (combat)

I’m sure many of you will find this situation familiar: You decide you want to play Wynn. You have this really good feeling, a sort of longing to accomplish something. You log on… and then leave a few minutes later, having done little to nothing, because there’s nothing to chase, and nothing worth the time to do. It’s just… empty. I’ve done this many times before. It’s become a recurring part of my weekend game sessions. Today, I want to talk about the issues in Wynn that cause this feeling, issues that I’m sure many of you agree on at least partially. I’m also going to make a lot of comparisons to Destiny 2, as I have spent the majority of the last two years playing it, and it does a lot of things right that Wynn just doesn’t.


First things first; the “little” things.


Intelligence is broken as fuck: Low cost spells and a tie-in to both mana regen and spell damage basically force spell users to invest in it, especially in a no cooldown environment.


Every attack speed tier besides super slow and super fast is pointless: want to maximize your spell damage and chances of getting mana and life steal to proc? Go super slow. Want to maximize melee damage? Go super fast. Want to shred with powder specials? Super slow. Everything else is useless.


Melee is boring. Even if it’s good on paper, it's boring. Spamming left click isn’t fun. Give weapon melees particle and sound effects based on their base texture; IE water daggers make bubbles and splooshes, earth hammers make quakes along the ground and make loud crashes, Air Bows make firework particles and use the wither skull launch sound, ETC.


Right, now that those issues are out of the way, I want to talk about the fundamental flaws in the way Wynn works. I’m going to split it into five, possibly six parts and give each one its own thread because sweet jesus this is a lot of text, and I want to give each part its own separate discussion

Combat is one-dimensional ​

There’s no ebb and flow to it; you’re either just getting one shot or taking damage, drinking a potion, and then continuing to spam spells. Every boss in the game is basically a giant bullet sponge with little to no actual mechanics besides hordes of minions and spells that are found on mobs everywhere else in the game. They also all can one shot or get close to it on basically every build, barring certain exceptions. In addition:


Every arena is a giant, flat, open square/circle with zero cover. There are exactly three exceptions: Decrepit sewer’s on-command walls (which never get to be fully utilized because the boss can be knocked out of the center, or blinded, rendering the cover either useless or pointless), Theorick’s occasional ice spikes, and Orange Cybel’s pressure plates. That’s it. Those are the only times in the game where you actually have to pay attention to the arena you’re fighting on. For the rest of them, there’s no cover, or traps, or anything to make you do something more than strafe the mob you’re fighting. Even Hashr, the only boss in the game with a dynamic arena, just moves you from one coverless square to another coverless square with a harder boss. Want to know why the boat section from Underworld Crypt is so good? It’s a dynamic arena, where threats come in waves rather than always being on and ranged threats need to be fought at range rather than just chasing them down.


For a much better example, look at Destiny 2. In D2, every arena is different, and all of them utilize terrain in different ways. Look at strikes, the equivalent to Dungeons in Wynn. In one strike, called “The Corrupted”, you have to parkour between three seperate floating islands, with lethal debris floating past, in order to catch up with and attack the boss and clear the adds. In another one, called “Warden of Nothing”, the boss will emit a giant, damaging aoe that forces you to take cover behind a pillar or wall, or burn. Even in the one strike where the boss arena is flat and sparsely covered, in “A Garden World”, cover starts to generate and constantly shifts position while the boss shoots a giant fucking death laser that you have to avoid. None of this is even mentioning the actual mechanics in the fights themselves. This is just mentioning the attacks the bosses have and the arenas you fight them in, yet it’s still more unique than most of the boss fights in Wynn.

Bosses shouldn’t be affected by crowd control. The fact that most bosses in Wynn can be affected by knockback, blinds, and freezes means that it’s all too easy to force the boss into a corner and then just keep it there. Forever. While we’re at it, levitating mobs shouldn’t be affected by vertical knockback, either. It’s hilarious to watch them float away on the wings of their own charge spell, but it makes combat against them a pain.

Mobs in general need actual pathfinding, as well. You shouldn’t be able to escape a horde by jumping to a different platform on the sky islands and letting them fall to their death. This is also probably a major reason for the bad arenas

Also, spell AoEs should be line of sight based for both you and the mob. It would remove a lot of the cheesability of cover, and give actual counterplay to spells like flamethrower. I’m assuming this is a major reason all of the arenas are so bland.

Health potions are too powerful. They completely remove any downtime in combat, and completely ruin the point of mobs doing chip damage. In fact, I’m willing to bet that a large part of why every boss either one shots or gets close to one shotting is because if they didn’t they’d pose absolutely no threat. However, this completely ruins the usability of a glass cannon; if every attack is guaranteed to instantly wipe you off the face of the planet, there’s no point in running it, especially with all of the AoE’s mobs have (flamethrower, especially). I’d wager that this is at least half the reason -health and 0 health items don’t get use (the other half being the benefits they give are shit compared to the drawbacks).


To fix this, I’d extend the time it takes for health potions to work from three to four seconds, and make it so taking damage interrupts the healing. It would force players to actually back off and find cover when they’re in danger rather than just chugging a potion and being on their merry way. It’d also give mage’s heal a use; it would tend to give less overall health, but do it faster, and won’t get interrupted by damage. To offset this, I’d also reduce the damage bosses do substantially, so players wouldn’t have to back off every time they get hit. Most mobs are already kind of fine.


One shot attacks are too prevalent and often uncounterable. You shouldn’t die because the boss spammed charge 80 times and randomly landed on you, killing you instantly. There’s no counter to that; it’s just pure RNG. You should die because you, and you specifically, fucked up, and didn’t back away at the right time, or failed to find cover. Wipe and instant kill mechanics should be highly televised, counterable, and not reliant on RNG.


For example, look at Destiny 2’s Crown of Sorrow raid. In the raid, the main mechanic is the Witch’s Blessing; a buff that lasts for a minute and 5 seconds before killing you instantly when it runs out. The buff can be swapped between players (IE a buffed person loses the buff and a non-buffed person gains the buff) at a certain location (that’s usually to the side of the main fight), and swapping the buff resets the timer. Throughout the raid, crystals will also spawn (and make a noise when they do) that will wipe the entire team after around 15 seconds, and can only be broken when a buffed and non-buffed person shoot it at the same time.


These are both examples of a ‘good’ one-shot mechanic. The Witch’s Blessing dictates the flow of the fight; it gives fights a good tempo, and punishes you if you try and break the tempo or don’t pay attention. The crystals, meanwhile, interfere with the tempo, but give you enough time to readjust and break them before they wipe you. Both of these are highly telegraphed and can only kill you if you don’t pay attention to them; but also require you to stay alert even in the downtimes of the fights. It requires communication and coordination between your team. Compare that to the heavy charge spam of the final phase of the Orange Wybel. It’s telegraphed, sure, but there’s not really a way to counter it (barring an extremely well-timed multihit), meaning that your life is out of your hands and reliant entirely on if the wybel lands on you, and also how much agility and luck you have. And keep in mind that the Wybel is actually a really well designed fight for Wynn. Very few bosses have that luxury.

Part 2 is out (9/7/2019). Link
Part 3 will be out soontm.

 

But they are televised? You're most likely referring to cybel which is a bit of an outlier example in the boss department. His fight is probably the best designed in the whole game with his multiple unique mechanics and being more then a damage sponge. You can see when cybel beings using charge a lot and also by his white particles surrounding him. This is true for all mobs using spells, they always have an indication when using spells. Cybel charge spam is quite televised but is hard to dodge. It isn't random at all, it literally charges at you. One shot mechanics in Wynn are definitely done better. (also cybel charge can be tanked too with the right build so this still doesn't make much sense)

Ok so I read this part after I wrote that, however orange cybel's mechanics I would say are still fair. Why does countering something matter that much? Your example of destiny 2 is a completely different boss and not every one shot mechanic should be counterable. If every one shot was counterable (which in your case doesn't include dodging, which is literally a mechanic to stop you dying from cybel charge) then preparation would be downplayed and a lack of carefulness and restraint wouldn't be needed. Picture this, cybel is about to spam charges, and if you kept going ham on with your full dps and weren't careful you would get your ass kicked. If you were just able to counter cybel's oneshot, then you literally wouldn't give a fuck and kept smacking with your full dps. Thus making the boss fight less intricate and more damage spongey. Obviously not every boss/one shot mechanic would be worse if it was counterable this would only be in cybel's case. About the preparation point, if you could just counter cybel's charge, then proper preparation would be downgraded too. You should punish players who don't prepare for especially tough bosses like cybel and reward players who do prepare. If you could just counter cybel's charge then you wouldn't be punished at all for not preparing and being a more dilligent player. My take on it, sorry for the response rant.

Honestly bosses shouldn't be immune to cc but at least resistant to it. But really CC isn't that abusable when solo and most bosses can charge out of it or teleport out. CC isn't invincible, and comes with the downside of doing less dps (cant usually combo spells or hits with them)

 

Agree on all of these. Cybel's chargespam is significantly overhyped, and crowd control/stunlock is somewhat weaker in practice than people say it is.

 

Have you played assassin? The ability to juggle enemies between two separate crowd control spells basically renders every boss in the game into a totem pole that occasionally spits spells in a random direction. Hell, it even cancels out charge and teleport, as I mention somewhere.

I’m not talking about those times where it just charges repeatedly, I’m talking about when he literally flies around the ceiling before crash landing and doing all of his damage in a single explosion.

Also, I’m not denying that Wybel is well designed; I say it multiple times. But a lot of how well it’s designed is due to having limited set one hit kill conditions, IE avoid the self destructing robots.

I included the immunity part because it really limits creativity in boss arenas. Like, imagine if a boss’s main mechanic was that you had to go from sky island to sky island fighting him. It’d be really shitty if all your work fighting him was disappeared because you accidentally arrow shield him off a cliff into the void.

Or look at the decrepit sewers boss. The mechanic is a great idea but because you can kock him out of the center and stun him repeatedly you never see use out of it.
Of course, if there was a way to teleport mobs while keeping their data intact we’d be golden.

First off, I talk about this earlier; the fact that it needs to one shot a majority of the playerbase in order to pose a threat is ridiculous.

Second, this ties into the potion suggestion; lets say he takes two thirds of your health. Now you have to back up because it’s going to take a bit to heal and if he charges you again, or if any of his minions attack you you’ve at best wasted a potion charge and at worse are dead. Backing off before he starts charging is still the safer option, but it’s no longer the only one. The risky player gets rewarded with a faster boss kill. It doesn’t need to be a one shot to be threatening.

 

Not completely sure on this one, but I think that move is him really trying to follow you with charges, just at a really fast rate so it's harder to see.

Cybel is supposed to be considered the hardest boss in the game, or maybe the devs thought that doc was supposed to be the hardest, however that still makes cybel supposedly the second hardest in the dev's initial minds when creating him. Leniency with cybel not one shotting you with charge (which plays in part in preperation, you're supposed to prepped for cybel or have a more tough time fighting him) isn't something that the supposed second hardest boss (in the dev's eyes) is supposed to do. Having him one shot focuses more on the player being more restrained and again not being able to go full ham without a care in the world, thus making the boss more indepth and intricate then a dumb health sponge. Cybel forces the players to play his way with the threat of a one shot unless of course the players are thoroughly prepared. Again rewarding the players who thoroughly prepared with the win and forcing the players who aren't as prepared (aka not as optimized builds) to play into his boss fight and avoid his attacks. These are how boss fights should work, while repeating myself a lot, punish the unprepared and reward the prepared.

And about the potion part, honestly don't think nerfing pots would do anything but buff mage pretty hard. Instead of making cybel do 2/3 dmg and nerfing all pots (which doesn't take account as much for mage) you could just keep the old system and make him one shot. Like I stated previously one shotting would greatly force the unprepped to play into the fight forcefully or die or be prepared and being rewarded.

Like I stated CC isn't even that strong, I honestly didn't know that cc apparently disabled tp or charge but I find that a bit hard to believe. I'm pretty sure that like idol tped/charged out of a lengthy multihit. CC also usually deals less damage and also leaves less options for combo potential/more damage dealing potential. Mobs are harder/impossible with some moves to hit in the air then on the ground. And CC immunity completely decimates the potential of any cc spells, already their drawbacks are already supposed to be with their damage and now they don't even do shit. CC resistance I am fine with, because CC to the point of more combo potential is actually a good addition to the game and still allows CC to do their job, while also being more like traditional CC. (to fucking allow more damage to come through while the dude is stunned) Also about the part that the bosses could fall off or shit, just make their arena or whatever not shittily designed like near the sky islands. That's shit design.

sorry again for the long ass rants, I don't even like how much text I write sometimes

 

does that not happen to you? because that happens basically every time I fight him. he pretty much never touches the ground unless I force him to, and then he brings an instant one shot through a 70% dodge chance.

Except that's a large part of why every arena looks exactly the same. There's never any environmental hazards, or dynamic arenas, because the boss can easily be cheesed. It's not that you can't design bad arenas, it's that you can't design any arenas around the boss. and again, I would be a lot more lenient on cc if there was some other way to prevent cheesing.

There's also spells like uppercut and war scream that basically make team fights absolutely horrible since the boss is literally not in the aoe of everyone else's spells half the time.

Except it doesn't; CC would still be good against crowds of mobs, which is kind of the point of CC; controlling crowds of mobs.

How about a sort of compromise where it's toggleable? Let's say you're doing a raid boss and trying to get up to a DPS phase. During that time, he's immune to crowd control so he's a constant threat to you while setting up the damage phase. you can't just designate an assassin and go "spam spin to keep him passive".
Then, when you get to the damage phase, you can use CC on the boss to maximise damage potential. you get what you want (rewarding good use of CC), I get what I want (bosses that are actually threatening besides sometimes casting one hit spells in random directions, and also preventing people from fucking up the damage part with uppercuts and multihits). In addition, some bosses can have CC or knockback immunity if the arena calls for it and some wouldn't. We'd be able to have interesting new playing fields without compromising the bosses already in game too much unless it calls for it (like witherhead). In addition, that'd be something you'd have to know and prepare for.

Right, first off, Talking about the wybel here. I'll talk about the Cybel, LI and the Endgame later on in the part that focuses on progression. Second, there's basically no difficulty curve or progression curve in the endgame because everything one shots everything except the most meta builds. there's rarely any experimentation. It's rarely actually any harder so much as more RNG based.

as for the potions, let me ask you a question; have you ever considered Mechorrupter of worlds a threat? probably not, because you can basically shrug off all of his damage with potions. you basically chug a potion and get back to fighting him because his damage is essentially inconsequential. Have you ever had any sort of health besides full health or 0 for more than 6 seconds? again, probably not, because you never have to care about anything besides the one shot. There's never those clutch moments where you're on half health, dodging bullets to get to safety or clutch the weak boss. That's really not good design. There's basically no downtime while fighting him because his damage doesn't really affect anything. it also renders chip damage basically useless, like I said. And while, yes, you could keep the current method, you can say that about any change. Why have the element system? why change vitality to intelligence? why add powder specials, or major IDs?

except the Wybel and Cybel are the exception, not the rule. Every other boss has practically no downtime besides maybe Qira, who sort of forces it with the cobwebs. Idol, for example, is a giant bullet sponge with little to no downtime, and it has multiple phases where it can one shot. but because I know I can't do anything if it does one shot me (fuck flamethrower), the best I can do is constantly damage the dude until it dies. It doesn't force you to think because he can kill you pretty much instantly without a way to counter it. It's just either a boring fight where agility carries me through the game or a fight where I die immediately. There's no in-between or real challenge. It isn't engaging or do anything to keep my interest. And in every other phase where it doesn't one shot, I don't care because I heal off all of the chip damage with potions immediately. There's no risk to chugging potions, which is something I'm trying to introduce.

The telegraphing on attacks is also really bad since mob spells don't have unique telegraphs and the telegraphs all take the same time, so every mob with multiple spells has to be treated the same; blind them when they cast a spell, hope it's not the dangerous one, and continue to DPS.

Multihit forces teleported and charged mobs back to the position the player is looking at and spin attack forces all airborne, non levitating combatants to the ground.

Honestly I don't care. I wrote a 5000+ word essay on the topic of Wynn's issues, it's pretty obvious I like my long-winded rants. It's mostly the swearing I'm worried about since that's probably gonna lead to a flame war.

 

It's cool man, I'll reply tmrw gonna go to sleep

 

Same and also school

 

Spin attack does not force airborne opponents to the ground - it only cancels their momentum.

Actually full stunlocking with Assassin is very difficult. Any boss that's immune to crowd control would instantly be rendered extremely strong against Assassin, minimal difference to Archer and Mage (unless you want to count Ice Snake as crowd control), and probably easier to beat as Warrior honestly.

 

Just saying this here instead of quoting 50 different messages, but Wybel/Cybel's oneshot wonder isn't a problem because of heavy charge not being televised (similar to things like burst fire, multi-hit, meteor, etc.). It is a problem because of pull/push. There is absolutely no way to avoid push/pull once it is cast by the mob if you were within the aggro range (sometimes even out of it), meaning you just have to pray to the almighty rng gods that they didn't give you the middle finger. This is most prominent with Cybel just because he's flying around like he's drunk anyways, but it can happen with other bosses, such as Death Metal, Matrojan Idol, Redbeard, etc. You'll survive with good enough defense of course, but the damage is unavoidable unless your agility decides to bless your soul.

CC specifically is incredibly strong on two of the four classes, being archer and assassin.

Archer has a huge ass AoE with escape that blinds along with a shield that blinds once it hits the target, both of which can be spammed and can followed up with arrow storm/bomb spam (which, if done at far enough range, will also negate the ability to charge out of it as well). Sure, if you're a campy archer who hides in a corner spamming bombs, you're technically a lot more safe, but in terms of damage, CC is a hell of a lot stronger, and sometimes even safer due to blind depending on what you're going up against.

Assassin is entirely built around the idea of stunlocking due to spin attack being arguably the best spell in the entire game due to both high damage, spammability, blinding the enemy for 2-3 seconds, clearing any negative effects you may have (excluding fire and, for some reason, it clears jump boost), stealing positive effects from the enemy, and locking the enemy in place for one second. If you ever need to get close to the mob(s), you just vanish over, spin attack, and proceed to spam smokes/spins/multi (really only this last one if their in a corner or you need to position them) to your hearts content. The only time this really doesn't work is against mobs which spam flamethrower so much to the point where they essentially have a fire aura around them (a.k.a Phase 1 Doctor Legendary).

What do both of these classes have in common? The ability to spam blind enemies. Warrior and Mage CC is lacking due to the inability to due this, as blinding an enemy is good in quite an overwhelming amount of scenarios. Sure, you can make it work, especially in enclosed areas for Warrior and melee mobs for Mage, but it's not nearly as potent as Archer/Assassin's stunlocking. It's not necessarily that CC is too strong in every form of it, but the ability to spam blind is.

Don't give me that "but Shots Mage tp has blind though" crap by the way. It's only a one second blind and teleport is so unreliable due to the "you can not teleport here" or whatever message and teleport deciding to straight up go through blocks. You really should only use teleport in combat if you need to adjust your position relative to the mob(s), such as escaping from an attack or catching up to them when they decide to launch themselves to another continent.

 

Agree on Cybel's push/pull.

I think you're overrating Assassin's stunlocking capabilities. If you can actually get a boss stunlocked that works, but it's no easier than facing the boss with any other class imo - I've had no troubles against the first 8 bosses of LI while never really using blinding spells and fighting at pretty close range, at least. Especially with the bosses that have rapid ranged or spam spells, if you miss the stunlock even slightly (or let a spell leak) you're getting punished hard for that.

Escape blindness is too strong, agreed. Shield is alright imo because you have to get so close to use it.

 

You're not really going to get that punished. Really, the worst that will probably happen is just them going over to another corner with a movement spell and that's about it. I've found it tremendously easier than mage and warrior, since spin will guaranteed lock them in place at least for a time, although that may just be because of assassin's inherent good dps compared to the two anyways.

 

Ah yes

Televised multi-hit by Hashr

Move away but then he charges towards you and kills you in a good multihit


Yeah I hate that, which happened to me during my no-spell archer run if I remember
How am I supposed to counter that now

wonder if they nerfed him

 

Been thinking about some of these things for a while so I'm gonna lay my 2 cents.

I think this is largely agreed upon, but I'd argue that how to best or even whether to deal with the skill is highly disputable due to there being 3 or more schools of thought related to this idea:

1. "Intelligence's primary problem is its ability of spell cost reduction is the reason why spell builds are so powerful and certain classes are favored within spell builds."
2. "Intelligence's primary problem is that it is practically necessary for spell builds due to its inherent ability as well as the associations to spells its items have."
3. "Intelligence's polarizing effect on spell builds is a necessary evil because the spammability Intelligence brings enables the current way by which spell builds play, and even if Intelligence's effect was replaced, the value placed on Mana Regen/Steal by players would indirectly heavily increase due to the idea of the Build Equilibrium Theory*, causing other problems."
4. Some combination of 1 and 2
5. Some combination of 2 and 3
6. Something else entirely

(*A term I’ve coined to describe the idea of an inherent supply and demand placed on certain build capabilities, varying by build type. In this case, there might be a relatively unchanging demand for spammability on a spell build for players. The supply of spammability would then be Mana Regen/Steal along with Intelligence.

If Intelligence were nerfed, under this theory the following would happen:
People would have lower access to the supply of spammability, but they would still have a certain level of demand for spammability to make their spell builds work efficiently. Therefore, to satisfy this demand, players might invest more into Mana Regen/Steal to partially make up the difference. Certainly, players would adjust their demand for spammability because investing into Mana Regen/Steal more heavily would place certain costs on their build, but that investment into Mana Regen/Steal would still be higher overall, causing negative effects on items without Mana Regen/Steal.)

A common proposal to fix Intelligence often suggested is to replace its function with a less overpowered ability.

• A #1 or a #2 who largely agrees with #1 would likely completely agree with this as it is.
• A #2 who empathizes with the point raised by #3 might agree to this idea but ask for spell costs across the board to be heavily reduced at higher tiers of spells.
• A #3 might agree with the above conclusion, or they might argue that there shouldn’t be a change to Intelligence as a skill and maybe even suggest something akin to this idea raised by @Golfbawl instead.

(I should note that I'm a #2 who empathizes with the point raised by #3, which might bias my understanding of these viewpoints)

That said, I think all of these schools of thought would agree that reducing the direct tie to Mana Regen water has by adding more Mana Regen/Steal to the other elements inherently would be helpful.

I agree to a certain level, but not to the point where it is as strong as that statement.

Firstly, I'd argue that by and large, spell builds (barring spell-steal hybrids) are largely unaffected by this barring 2 exceptions:

1. The greater penetration afforded to slower weapons and greater weakness abuse afforded to faster weapons. I'd argue however, that this could and should be easily resolved in the future with a tweak to the element defense formula (for spells).
2. The greater benefit to DPS faster weapons get from powders. However, this can be accounted for in balancing weapons (at level) I'd argue.

Secondly, the ability of -Tier and +Tier to create many distinct playstyles among Melee and Hybrid builds, I'd argue, is a huge benefit:

• The use of -Tier to minimize melee downtime for gathering Mana Steal/Life Steal on Spell Steal builds certainly elevated hybrids to the forefront of buildmaking discussions.
• Similarly, I'd argue that Heavy Melee would not even be considered in many of these discussions if Super Slow wasn't rewarded via -Tier items with huge damage boosts.
• In the case of Tier Melee, while increasing attack speed to raise DPS is certainly the end goal, other factors that go into buildmaking like survivability and other damage boosting factors like % dmg (whose effect is amplified by +Tier) means that going to Super Fast isn't necessarily the best idea for optimizing one's build, especially if they are starting with a much slower weapon. That said, I do see your point with Raw Melee.

That said, I think there a few problems here and there that could be resolved:

• Quake and Chain Lightning: Make Life Steal/Mana Steal activation as well as Hit Damage consistent across attack speeds but give a greater multiplier. Not only does this give these powder specials more use in faster weapons, but it has some positive implications for Heavy Melee long term, I'd argue. In Heavy Melee, there is currently the problem that Heavy Melee builds are restricted to weapons that have 2 powder slots (preventing powerful weapons like Flameshot Hilt and Big Arm from use) and that actual Heavy Melee hits are nowhere near as useful as actual Quake and Chain Lightning damage. Thus, the problem that arises that in trying to increase the power of actual Heavy Melee hits, you make their Quake and Chain Lightning hits overpowered. If you were to then reduce the power of Quake and Chain Lightning's multipliers, you would then have room to boost the power of actual Heavy Melee hits.
• Disadvantages of Very Slow and Slow weapons in Heavy Melee: The primary reason for Very Slow and Slow weapons being so heavily disadvantaged is that in Heavy Melee builds where -Tier is guaranteed to bring you down to Super Slow attack speed, Very Slow and Slow weapons start off with huge base DPS decreases. This wouldn't be as problematic, I'd argue, if Heavy Melee items with -Tier gave way more Raw Melee Damage, which does not depend on base damage, than % Melee Damage, which benefits weapons with higher base damage and thus Super Slow weapons. The problem with that idea, of course, is that Rainmaker exists, so it depends on what you do with Rainmaker.

I agree 100%, but I'd also argue mechanical changes to how Melee plays would be needed as well to make Melee builds actually fun.

I'm gonna skip talking about the other stuff until a later time since I want to go to bed, but this is the thing that I most agree with on a fundamental level. Health Potions are the reason why player builds often stick to health intervals that are specifically designed to let them live a certain amount of hits from a boss. Speaking from experience as someone who's worked on making mobs for Corkus during the Economy Update, this is the number 1 reason why chip damage bosses either suck or aren't added.

That said, I don't think extending potion duration with damage interruption would be the best way to limit the power of potions because it still does mean that by backing off chip bosses are still hurt.

I think instead, nerfing mage's Heal's power and establishing built-in limits on the number of potion charges you have in a boss fight would be better, as chip bosses would then be able to kill players by reducing the potion charges they have over the course of the battle, actively threatening the player's health supply.

Obviously, Health Regeneration and Life Steal would need to be looked at, but it shouldn't be too big a problem.

 

I agree that all bosses are just hp sponges with minor mechanics that dont really influence the fight, this has been something I've hated for awhile, but I don't think all they need is some dynamic arenas and spots to take cover from 1 shot attacks. giving the player more dynamic combat abilities would allow bosses to have unique attacks that can be dealt with in multiple ways. say the player could have a shield in a future update that reduces 50% of the damage taken, but also takes mana, but they also have a parry with the shield that holds them in place, requires precise timing, and doesn't use mana if successful; now a boss is able to use a strong attack that you can either hide from, reduce the damage, or null the damage completely while staying in the flow of the fight. point being more options for the player and more ways to kill you for the enemy is what wynncraft needs combat-wise right now

 

I absolutely agree with this as well

 

I like the name "Build Equilibrium Theory" - it's something that gets discussed often but never really got a good name, so that's nice.

Regarding spell builds, for #1, I'd say this is (for the most part) a benefit. Slow speeds get high penetration but minimal weakness abuse, while fast speeds are hit hard by elemental defenses but also abuse weaknesses easily. I do think that high elemental defenses (e.g. over 400 or so at endgame, excepting rainbow defenses where even half that is too high in my opinion) make this a problem. With generally lower elemental defenses like that, we could have a sliding scale where, at the fastest attack speeds, lower base damage weapons are affected more heavily as a percentage of their element damage by elemental defenses, but this is balanced by raw spell - so overall, each class ends up affected somewhat similarly. And, for tank builds where up to 400 might be too much to penetrate, spell conversion can still allow for damage*.

* this would need, at least, every class to have spell conversion for every element. It would also be nice if Teleport/Ice Snake/Charge weren't so weak in damage.

Agree on adding more raw melee -tier items. This would also help level the distance between the classes. Honestly though, even if Rainmaker had 25k dps it wouldn't be broken - single-target and aiming is such a big limiter on melee Archer's viability.

 

That would also be a great idea, albeit probably hell to code for.

Also, bump, and Part II Here