Media [ Wynncon ] Pvp Showcase And Balancing ( Updated As Of Jan. 16th, 2020 )

Hello and greetings folks!

(The Showcase obviously shows the wins and not the losses. Trust me, I died a lot more than I show. This is basically a montage...)


As some of you may know, Wynncon will be importing Wynncraft PvP. However, we do know that Wynncraft PvP isn't exactly balanced at the moment, so we took this opportunity to try and make the playing field as even as possible.

Now, I know some of you may agree with these changes and some of you won't. We completely understand that as of right now, PvP changes are sensitive and we are basically walking on a tight rope. As such, we have put extensive testing into all of these, factoring in skill and possible builds. We are, of course, opened to suggestions and feedback on these changes.

Keep in mind that these are NOT final, but there is a Wynncon Stress Test you can participate in if you wish to try out these changes. Or you can just watch the showcase video above.

These changes ONLY take place while tagged for PvP (ie. when you're in the FFA arena or in a duel)

(Updated as of January 18th, 2020, 9:00 AM U.S. Central Time)

Changelog of changes:

Spoiler: Changelog

Update 1 (January 15th, 2020): Initial Post
Update 2 (January 16th, 2020): Health Regen changes, Agi Nerf, Intelligence Buff, Mage nerf and buff
Update 3 (January 18th, 2020): Damage Calculations accurized more (They were inaccurate before). Damage Reduction slightly lowered. Totem buff, Aura nerf, Meteor nerf, Jump Height cap, Agi nerf, and Health Regen softcap

Core
- All Damage taken is reduced by 74% (Final damage is reduced, not base. Includes Poison)
- Walk Speed is capped at 100%
- Jump Height has been capped at 4
- TOTAL Health Regen has been softcapped at 2,500 health/10s. Everything beyond that is reduced by 75%. (Brought up to my by @JaydonTheWarrior)
- Health Potion Healing is reduced by 25% (There's only 1 healing potion, and that's +4500 HP. It's amount is reduced to +3375 HP)

These are the core and most important changes that we've made. Most of the changes after this would not matter or work well without them.
Damage Taken is reduced to prevent one-shot PvP. I.e. 1-hit Uppercuts, Bomb Arrows, Meteors, Spin Attacks, Auras...
Jump Height builds allowed for players to jump over entire spells and hippity hop around to kill everyone from above. This was mostly effectively on caster classes likes Shaman and Mage. To prevent this, it has been capped.
Walk Speed was capped to prevent super-fast builds dodging everything and weaving in and out of combat like a roadrunner. Especially paired with an Agi build, they were always extremely deadly, annoying, and one-sided.
Extreme Health Regen builds are nearly invincible combined with loads of Agi and Defense. However, we do know that it's very much possible that they cannot damage as well. So, instead of a hardcap, a softcap has been introduced. This is so that way high HPR builds are at least somewhat killable with enough dedication.
Health Potions were nerfed because pot spamming in PvP was busted with the reduction to damage taken. This makes it much more of a "breather" potion and not a mid-combat "pop-it-in" potion.

Skill Points
- All skill point "functionality" cap has been lowered to 120 points. You can still get the additional elemental damage from going to 147 points, but the functionality/bonus of that Skill Point is limited to 120 points, resulting in slower growth!
- Strength's damage bonus is capped at 60%
- Dexterity's Crit/Double Damage Chance is capped at 35%
- Intelligence's Spell Cost Reduction is capped at 60%
- Defense's Damage Reduction is capped at 45%
- Agility's Dodge Rate is capped at 37.5%

These are probably going to be the most controversial.
In testing, fights were extremely one sided and supported high Intelligence, Agility, Defense, or Dexterity. If you don't know, Skill Point percents in Wynncraft are capped at 80%, which is quite a lot. The reason the skill point growth is capped at 120 instead of just having a solid hard cap at that specific percentage is because rainbow builds would be empowered, and the playing field would not be as leveled. So, growth will be reduced, but you will still get the additional damage from that element as a Skill Point above the "functionality cap".
Dexterity was capped because double damage was quite absurd, and serves as an indirect nerf to thunder Mythics. Even with a 72% reduction in damage, they hit like a truck.
Intelligence is to prevent major spell spam, however this was also indirectly nerfed with the changes to the other Skill Points.
Defense to prevent invincibility. It seems hard, but keep in mind there is no health cap, so it's quite possible to get a 20k+ tank build.
The Agility hit may seem hard, but in testing it is still quite useful to still have 50%. And if you want to dodge stuff, just speed around to avoid it.

Class Changes

Warrior:
- Uppercut now deals 300% + 100% + 100% (from 300% + 50% + 50%)
- War Scream now gives 10% Resistance (From 20%)
- Base Defense reduced to 110% (from 120%)

Warriors were actually very weak in testing, but also seemingly invincible regardless of build. We gave Uppercut a very nice buff so that way it deals damage, but we also nerfed its overall defense a bit. Even then, Warriors are still very enduring and can take a lot of hits before having to bail out.

Archer:
- Arrow Barrage now deals 20% damage per arrow (from 10%)
- Escape now gives Speed II (From Speed III)
- Bomb Arrow has a radius of 2.5 blocks (from 5)
- Arrow Shield's Arrow Rain now deals 100% per arrow (from 250%)

Archer mains, please don't kill me...
Bomb arrow is an extremely powerful ability due to its low risk, high reward archetype. However, nerfing the damage wouldn't solve this problem and would probably cause more backlash than expected. So instead, the radius of the blast is now smaller to reward accuracy, so you can still get those high-damage bombs off as long as you can hit them.
Escape was also nerfed in terms of Speed to prevent speed Archers from being rampant.
Arrow Shield's Arrow Rain was nerfed to prevent mass AoE. Keep in mind that 100 arrows rain down from Arrow Shield and multiple can hit a target, which happens quite often.
Arrow Barrage was actually really weak in PvP. If you watched the showcase, the buff to it wasn't present at the time, but after recording we decided to buff it so that way up close it's very dangerous and actually serves out damage really hard.

Mage:
- Heal now heals for 9% + 2.5% + 2.5% Health.
- Teleport now has a range of 12 blocks (from 20)
- Meteor falls faster

Heal combined with Teleport is insanely strong. With Teleport being one of the strongest, if not THE strongest movement skill in the game right now, Mages could very easily TP out of mid combat and re-heal themselves back to full health with a few clicks. This is obviously insanely unfair and annoying, as no other class can re-heal themselves this quickly.
So, both Heal and Teleport were nerfed to prevent this sort of cheesing. However, we did make it so Meteor falls faster to help Mages get some hits in.

Assassin:
- None Spin Attack now deals 130% damage, blinds for 1 second, applies Slowness IV for 2 seconds, and has a radius of 4 blocks (from 5)
- Vanish now gives 65% damage bonus (from 80%)

Please don't hurt me. Understand that Assassin is my main class too!
Spin spam is obviously busted, which is why nerfs were in order. These changes were to promote more risky closeup gameplay, as it was fairly easy to just spin from a fairly safe distance and freeze everyone in place. However, Spin Attack is still powerful combined with Vanish, even though it was nerfed, and the Slowness is now 2 seconds instead of 1. Keep in mind Multihit is still extremely useful and wasn't changed at all...

Shaman:
- Totem healing is capped at +800/s
- Aura's Prison function is disabled, radius decreased to 12 (from 15), but the growth speed of Aura is faster.

Yes, the prison being gone is obviously a huge hit, but in testing, Aura's Prison was so ridiculously broken that entire fights were wiped clean with 1 Shaman spamming Aura. However, we compensate this with a faster growth radius to make hitting Aura much quicker. While they may not hold up strong in single-target combat, they are excellent in multi-target combat, and they are extremely anti-assassin (Meaning they can wipe them off the globe).

We know that the majority of these changes are nerfs and it's likely you may disagree with some of them. These were necessary as even with the core changes, all the classes still had some level of "Busted" to them. Keep in mind that what's on paper and the experience in game are two different spheres. Of course, we are open to your thoughts on these changes and would like to see what you think! Let us know!

Feel free to also join the Discord to talk about this stuff with us more directly.

Thanks for reading! And as always, CONSTRUCTIVE feedback is appreciated!

(Please don't hurt me, I know PvP is really sensitive right now but I'm trying my best here man!)

 

the first comment belongs to me
mortals

 

Yes! Damage reduction across the board! No more oneshots!

Does effort mean anything to you D:

 

yes it does
but the first comment is still mine

 

I suggested quite a few of these changes. 100% balanced. Definitely.

 

also reminder all of the archer nerfs occurred because i kept on raining infinite death on novalescent even though he quadrupled health to avoid 1 shots

 

REEEEEE :'(

 

no fast fast :(

________________________________

@TurboStratus should be alerted

 

Time to make anti-wynncon propaganda

 

O_O

 

Aledar Cart boss fight is in the makings, don't worry

 

It better be some sort of moving boss fight around a race track where you need to use speed boost pads and jump pads to keep up with him

 

Poison reflection thorn build would like to say hello

 

Actually, Reflection and Thorns have yet to be implemented as functional IDs...

And even if they were added, I'd probably nerf Reflection and Thorns too. Also, Poison is affected by the Damage Reduction.

 

Honestly if this isn't Wynncon's main draw I don't know what is. It looks amazing, as is usual of your work - Personally I would've taken it further and just made custom armor sets that specify into certain niches/playstyles and balanced around them, but having an open library to all items ingame (If I'm reading correctly) is really cool too.

Speaking of, how would one make a build for this? It's a different server, right? So would people just choose items beforehand? Would love some clarification on how that works.

Besides that, thank you Nova, very cool.

 

Thanks for the reception. Honestly, I was super worried about the backlash as I know the community seems to be fairly divided in PvP balancing. Of course, the team and a good friend (@StarDraco123) helped me out with deciding some numbers.

And yes, people will be able to choose their own items from the normal Wynncraft Items list. There's this really cool guy called "Venrodier" who will give you any item(s) you ask for.

 

Int capping at 50%? What about ducking RAW spell cost especially something like ~~anime~~anima infused cuirass, and %reduction like hephatus forged greaves?

 

Those won't be capped. If the %reduction on spell costs turns out to be too much, we'll either cap those, cap Int more, or do something else.

 

Stack 2 draoi 50%int reductions and boom, 1 mana spin...

 

True, but that doesn't mean you'll be OP with all of those other nerfs to damage, skill points, and Spin ;)