Weekly Community Discussion (11/10/2019) - Tiers And Mana

Disagree, Agree.
Mana steal shouldn't be random.
Mana steal should be on more items.

 

Props to you for going out of your way to do all that calculations and stuff, definitely some interesting stuff to hear. tbh I still stand by my opinion that mana steal should be buffed to either have a 100% consistency rate, by making it work in a similar way to poison. The only downside with mana steal that I think is unreasonable the %chance.

 

Life steal should activate on hit and enter a cooldown for 4 seconds. It should only activate on one successful hit, not for each mob. Consistency and balance. Not "chainL and aoe melee make it work".

 

Personally, I find the unreliability of mana steal to be more interesting than it just being a consistent amount.

 

Okay, i have had a good few days to think through my opinion on these topics

Attack Tiers:
Currently they're really what makes melee viable, as sad as that is raw and/or heavy melee just consistently under-performs with every build i've tried making, the health and support stats really aren't there either, not unless crafted items are used but let's not get into that.

An item like Taurus could be made to have 10 times the melee damage stats and still not be used, heavy melee is suffering that much. this is the same reason why obsidian-framed helmet will be dead on release.
Obviously rainmaker would need to get destroyed to properly facilitate heavy melee as an archetype. (rest in peace rainmaker)
So no, i don't think tier stacking is too strong, infact i think it needs more support, namely a defense based 1 tier helmet. and as was talked about last week, potentially making black catalyst's 2 set bonus have +1 tier, as the need to cut out dex (breezehands) is what's forcing fire tier builds to be ETFA and struggling to do so.

Druser also brought up the idea to add many armor piece with tiers, to give alot of opportunity and diversity to builders, but i think this may be overkill, not to mention it would oversaturate an already saturated loot pool. perhaps if items are added in the 100-112 range for Dern, this could be a topic of discussion.

I think there's also some background design goal in keeping melee slightly underpowered compared to spells, which makes sense given spells takes effort into inputing the comboes, using another resource in the form of mana, etc, but i wouldn't mind seeing the gap between melee and spell made slightly smaller.

I have my own complaint with melee builds in the form of the need to manually click to make every hit happen, many spells have a slight "breathing room" after you cast them, but melee and especially faster melee doesn't have that, keeping your dps with melee at an adequate level could potentially induce carpel tunnel syndrome. at the very least i would like to see warriors, assassins and mages auto attack at very fast speed similar to what archers do now, but ideally the auto attacking on all classes could be extended to super fast speed aswell. i understand this may be a limitation with vanilla minecraft but please look into if its a possibility.



Mana:
I don't have as much to say on this topic, other than i would like to see mana regen not be monopolized by water items, thunder is obviously more steal based but you could sprinkle in small amounts of mana regen onto earth, air and especially fire items and i don't think anything would break from it. The ele revamp did attempt this to some degree (phoenix crown was awesome) but i think you could push that design goal a tiny bit further.

Steals need to be made consistent, i was personally thinking about putting them on the same system powders specials are on, and have them charge up with their current steal percentages (5.8%/8.1%/10%/12.2%/16.6%/30.1%/49% (possibly with normal, slow, very slow and super slow rounded up to 12.5, 16.7, 33.4 and 50 respectively)) and that would work nicely.

 

Regarding this, there's no need to add items - simply repurpose existing items with no real purpose. Consider Bottled Sky - it's sitting there doing literally nothing right now (especially since The Queen's Headpiece exists) and could easily be repurposed into a +tier item. Not to mention something like Mountaintop, which became a +tier item in revamp. Keep the walkspeed penalty and give it tankiness attributes, giving it a use distinct from the generic "+1 tier, some walkspeed, some damages" - that sort of trend is how we get one or two items dominating the entire +tier pool for each slot, as happened with Mountaintop and Horizon in revamp

I'd say 10x would be more than enough to make Taurus viable. Looking at Stinger, and assuming that it's boosted slightly by being ranged, I'd think a baseline for heavy raw melee values at about 10 times the fast raw baseline would work out. So, perhaps 4-5x boost to Taurus' raw melee. I shared a concept earlier on Discord that shows the sort of raw melee values that I think would make heavy melee viable - I think you were on at the time but for the benefit of others: https://wynndata.tk/s/fyvsir

 

Also, this is somewhat related to the topic at hand so I thought I'd post it here: https://forums.wynncraft.com/posts/3109606/

 

One quick note since thread closing is soon, after doing some research I revised my dps numbers for "high skill spell warrior" upward a bit.

 

Hey! I just wanted to pop in to keep you guys up to date as we've been silent for the thread so far.

First of all, we really appreciate the feedback and contributions you guys have made here. Even if we haven't responded we're definitely reading what you guys have said. The topic is fairly massive as the state of mana regen, mana steal (and to an extent lifesteal, and its consistency [more on that later from me]) and attack tier shape the game the most out of any other IDs in the game. Due to that, having an open topic for discussion is important and so this topic will be extended for another week.

The reason we've been silent is that all of us IMs have our work cut out for us at the moment. There's work to be done for the next update so that's currently our focus. That being said, just closing the discussion threads seemed like a bad idea because so far these threads have been a great way to gather focused feedback on certain aspects of the game and a chance at an open conversation. The positive response thus far to our threads is fantastic so thank you all again.

But for tonight, that'll be it. Thanks again, we really appreciate it =)

 

Alright I guess since stuff in this thread is supposed to be easier to track than in Discord,

I would like to note that the contribution of raw to the build's overall damage is pretty similar to how fast raw melee items were in revamp* - about 75-90%, depending on the class you use and the amount of effort you put into pure damage stats vs. utility stats like lifesteal or walkspeed. This is in response to Major's concern on Discord that having raw melee values that high for heavy melee-oriented items would necessitate the use of such items for a viable build. Comparing the heavy melee build concept I posted versus existing raw melee builds, you can see that this applies just as well to existing raw melee fast builds - raw melee items are no less indispensable (to the extent that they may be) on fast melee as they would be in the heavy melee model I outlined in that build concept.

*I realize that using current items, the percent contributions of raw in fast melee are lower, but that is primarily because of the lack of powerful raw melee items in chestplate and boots at current, which existed in revamp - and at least one of which will exist in the next update.

 

Alright I suppose ill give my opinion on mana vs melee.

1: Intel is not to powerful but rather hybridizing it is to difficult.
Lets say you are making a spell build that's thunder or air. that's generally easy enough as most of the items have some mana and raw/% spell ids to stack with elemental damage ids. However this poorly translates to fire and even worse to earth making spell builds very difficult for these leading to people to use aquarius+all elemental items for damage and a spell build with 110 intel. I myself have a Pisces alka build on my archer that only has 60 intel but because i've used other items to carefully stack enough mana so I have 11/4 mana regen i'm perfectly fine with this amount of intel. When making my hellstrand build however I found myself unable to do this without giving up large amounts of damage/defense/or lifesteal (and before you say defense doesn't matter on archer i'm a warrior main so shut up :)) and because of this opted for a generic hamseys/aquarius+elemental sanctuary slap. Now if I had access to items that give small amounts of mana regen (say 1/4 or 2/4) with various ids that generally work with different elements like lifesteal, health regen, other elemental defense % rolls, ect with varying skillpoint reqs (like dual elemental) I could have more freedom in not stacking massive amount of intel. This is similar to the elemental revamp but in the revamp the reqs in my opinion where way to high and sacrificed way to much for mana rather than getting mana to coexist with the rest of the build's ids.

2: melee/spell hybrid builds almost always suck.
building off what I had said before hand of hybridizing intel having melee/spell mixed can be extremely difficult. while for obvious reasons spell and melee damages should both be less on a hybrid build than pure spell and melee builds respectively. while generally if we take warrior for example having at least 8k dps (with sustainability) or 11k without is what is usually wanted with melee and around 9.5-11k uppercuts for spell. Now having the ability to say hit 7-8k dps with nice 9k uppers would be really good and make hybridized builds much more viable in pve.

3: melee lacks the build freedom spell has.
raw melee builds absolutely suck right now. granted from the test with the revamp we know the buffing of raw melee was one of the few things that everyone liked. This would be the first step to fix this problem but realistically spell just has more items than melee. If I asked a classbuilder to name all the spell items they could think of off the top of their head I would expect alot of answers. But if I did the same with melee id likely get alot less, because there are far fewer melee items in the game and then even fewer that are viable. When building melee we need the highest dps possible as unless we have really good lifesteal and defenses we can really last to long in fights without that dps. To get the highest dps possible we need to use tier stack effectively. By effectively I mean centi+coi/thanos plate+accelerator/burnout+breezehands. Then we need a super slow/very slow weapon with high base damage and no -melee. THEN we need to make sure the weapon and the filler armors/accessories have minimal -lifesteal or -mana steal. AND THEN FINALLY you need to balance out skillpoints for it all to work. I hope I made my point here...

4: melee will always be weaker in pvp.
It also should be noted alot of people make builds for pvp rather than pve. And in pvp unless you are either a vanish abusing ninja or a rainmaker archer spell is basicly always going to be stronger than melee with the current way movement spells work as well as slowing attacks from spells like ice snake or arrow shield, knockback attacks like uppercut and arrow shield, and blinding attacks like smoke bomb and arrow shield...wait a second.
THIS IS A CRY TO NERF ARROW SHIELD!!!
Back to pvp melee it just is the simple fact that regardless of how much you nerf intel or spells the fundamental design of spells will make them stronger than melee.

5: There is nothing wrong with having 19 mana regen with 10 mana steal on a full intel build.
Ready for the hate on this one...but let me state my case. builds with 19 mana are always fully intel based. If you are not abusing crafted items you will always have to give up tons of defenses, likely have to rely on agility. You often give up alot of damage as well having to only use the damage ids that are on the mana regen items. you then also often give up other ids like lifesteal, hpr, and sp bonuses. Mana regen like anything else is a playstyle that people enjoy and isn't totally overpowered.

6: What I think should be nerfed
I know this sounds nuts but i honestly think Aquarius should look like this https://wynndata.tk/ci/283313479
The issue isn't mana or anything but rather that alot of mana items come with way to much damage. Personally I think capri and third eye are really well balanced mana items. Aqua and memetoes I think are on the slighty to strong side but regardless the main issue is rather the fact that these items are the only way to have sustainable mana currently. We need to buff mana on other elements/dual elemental items as I said before which would be an indirect nerf to these items.

Now that i'm done rambling i'm sorry that I was so late to this ._.

 

I do feel that Druser has a more valid point about Aquarius than this suggestion:

Aquarius's already high int req and -thundef are already punishing weaknesses associated with it, and regardless of that adding -agi is only going to restrict its usage rather than curb its power. On the contrary, inverting the spell damage does address the issue that he outlined, which I prefer.

 

Yo is it me or would removing attack tiers as an identification make it way easier to balance melee builds?

 

Removing attack speeds entirely would also make it easier to balance melee. Just as removing powder specials would make it easier to balance heavy melee. This applies to a lot of things. But removing things also makes the game less interesting.

Regarding your thoughts on what appears to be hybrid with fast melee, I largely agree with your approximate numbers. Although ideally, I'd want to calculate dps for various skill levels.

Regarding melee in general, it's interesting to note that the current setup of melee that people are sometimes willing to play looks something like Warrior with significant lifesteal at 8-10k, or without at around 13-17k, with around 100-150 defensive skill points. Perhaps this is an example of what raw-based double defensive melee should look like, while single-defensive melee (likely tierstack, though I would argue it doesn't have to be) should be doing more damage than that.

*I use the terms "double defensive" and "single defensive" as shorthand for roughly that, alongside an implication of perhaps 100-150 defensive sp vs. 50-90 defensive sp. It's just an adoption of a useful Revamp paradigm so I don't have to type the numbers out all the time.

 

Agreed. There are too few items with mana regen outside of water. Considering how important mana regen is, I definitely agree with the revamp's addition of mana regen on more items, not the higher reqs tho, since I'd still need rainbow to make most of those work without BM or Vaward tbh. If mana regen were available on more items than just water and air, I wouldn't resort to rainbow for the SPs to equip those items. Intel+Regen items are just too important for spells right now.

Honestly I start with SPs then work backwards for melee since there are so few viable melee items it's easier to find items that work with X melee item + SPs than just X melee item.

I agree, but just getting the highest mana regen isn't very practical in combat. Sacrificing those other aspects should be the cost of having that many casts of escape/teleport/charge before spell swapping. I actually disagree here. Spell swapping is way more interesting and IMO appears to be the intended way of casting continuously. I think we'd have more problems with players could cast 10+ bomb arrows AND have

and

I do think that would be problematic.

I agree with having too much damage, but disagree with how you chose to remove that damage. I think given the -100 thunder, it would make more sense to do this: https://wynndata.tk/ci/468505357

I also don't work with melee builds much because I know there is a massive disparity between spell and melee right now. That's why I'm not addressing any of melee right now. It definitely needs an entire rework + buff to compare with spell builds, let alone compete with them.

 

I think attack speed tiers should be found in more items just because of how bad melee is compared to spell, I acknowledge that it is easier to play, but it still should be viable and I have been hearing rumors about trying to pretty much boot fire tier stack again, I don't think it's a good idea to try to shut down an element+play style it's like banning thunder spell because it's too op, anyways maybe nerf mana in items a little bit, but I wouldn't go too overboard just because spell spam builds need high and consistent damage output to make up for lack of survivability as health regen isn't good and life steal is useless on a spell build. Honestly if it's a topic it does need to be addressed, I honestly don't have any issues with the mana currently, but the new Black looks pretty fire, definitely more balanced :)

 

true on attack speed. however i feel that if % and raw melee also becomes better then attack tiers are fine with just a few more items. its one of those things that super difficult to balance

 

My basic view on all of this is that I don't think mana should be reduced to the point it was last time, I think items like moon pool circlet or diamond hydro necklace should keep their mana since they don't have much, and maybe items like Third Eye, Memento and Aquarius should be reduced ever so slightly, I don't really see the issue with mana being easy to come by in spell builds since 97/100 times these builds have no HP sustain and are made to do a lot of damage fast, also items that give mana like the previously mentioned third eye and aquarius as well as capricorn give very bad spell damage and memento even gives negative life steal, and with health regen only activating every 10 seconds now it's only useful outside of battle or if you have an insane amount of it which no offensive build can really get. I stand by my opinion on tier stack, melee is easier than spell, but it's still a bad play style and I don't think nerfing it from what it is right now is a remotely good idea, maybe getting a little buff just so there are more options would be cool, and again, I always say this: Fire tier stack is not OP and I firmly believe that it should not be nerfed, so please do not bring back that centipede from the old ele revamp that had like negative 16 defense lol, apoc is the only fire tier stack weapon that's actually really good, but it better be because it's also a mythic, don't hurt diaminar and ignition users any more than they already are for using a non mythic mediocre weapon that fits with a bad play style. Also on the opposite end of the tier stack spectrum, I don't think atlas and bete noire are that broken either, maybe make it so like -7 is the min attack speed tier and like -3 or -4 is the max, but the only other tier reducing item that's practical and a good item is cinderchain for thunder and/or fire builds, atlas fits into most hybrid builds and hybrid builds trade in the consistency to do damage for a bit more health sustain (sometimes) and a good amount more damage, hybrid is pretty balanced with spell and I believe it's because of atlas. Without atlas or bete noire hybrid builds are usually just not worth it.

 

Tangential, but have you ever seriously used current Bete Noire in a build?

 

Bubble me baby

also I remember this thing in one of the suggestions for spell trees, where as you level up you gain upgrades for spells and you can choose said upgrades, like at level 5 a mage can choose to buff their overall basic damage output by 5% or increase their heals, but at level 15 they can choose to increase damage using their heal spell, increase their heal, decrease blink cost, or increase their base damage by another 5%

also i kno this has nofin to do with wut they askin