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Improving Imperian Combat

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  • edited August 2014
    As a second post, because the phrase, "high cutting leather" deserves to be admired on its own and not cluttered with other thoughts...

    Without discounting some of the valid concerns in this thread, the fundamental driver appears to be less "how dare a druid can do this to me" than it is, "how dare Ifreann can do this to me". 
    “We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant."
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  • Monk with blocks up isn't as untanky as everyone tries to make it out to be. It won't be winning any awards, but its not quite that bad (disclaimer: with a surcoat).
  • Just to cover that, I used Ifreann as my example strictly because he'd been used previously in the thread. Your dps is actually higher going by my logs, but I attribute that to you being fast.
  • One of the things about Druid is that the more they hit you, the more they hit you for because their earth Imbue builds up and they have nothing to spend it on. By the time they have stabbed 9-10 times(or if you've given them setup time), they have +20% damage bonus rolling. This is roughly equivalent to giving every druid an extra L2 staff. Feather also builds up if they aren't spending it, and this makes the stab much faster.

    This is stored on the staff and they maintain it between targets. So if Ifreann switches to you after hitting me and Ultrix, he's going to be rolling full Imbue/Feather and his DPS is going to be massively higher than it would be if you just walked in and caught him cold.

    One change I would like to make is having earth have no passive effect and requiring earth to be spent to increase damage. They'd no longer be able to just hit 100% Imbue and set the cruise control for +20% damage; it would be build and spend and build and spend.

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • edited August 2014
    I don't think this is a bad idea, and it is consistent with how build-and-spend has been addressed with other classes. That said....

    If you want to understand afflictions, you go to someone like Kryss, or Azefel, or Septus. If you want to understand how to win with a dash of cunning and Black Dow-esque tactics (knee caps and exposed backs are never off-limits), you would go to someone like Khizan or Ahkan. If there is one schtick I have a good track record with in Imperian, it's figuring how my skills/artifacts will most quickly deliver maximum damage to get me from Point A to Point B (known as zero health) with little reliance on affliction support. Is that the most efficient way to do things? Not really (see: Brainmelt, see: health-pressured enlightens, see: sabre-infused cirisosis). But I am an old dog. Will changing earth mechanic to something like taint impact the damage being done by high-end druids? No. Will it add a layer (no matter how superficial) of thought on how to use your offense? Probably. But as I am drawn back to a comment Septus made, ("but there's a distinct difference between a friendly learning curve/low barrier to entry and what druid currently is") maybe it's a step in the right direction.

    “We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant."
    image
  • AhkanAhkan Texas
    edited August 2014
    I will admit, one thing I'm sort of a fan of in Imperian's current meta game is that there's sort of a low buy in entry point where you can be reasonably successful. Luckily, this syncs pretty well with "Where do I invest my bad decision making?" For non-artifacts, it's the easiest to resist because it's just a matter of tank. Once I'm looking at 3 level 3's worth of investment, it's an equally high buy in to push through and endure. Honestly, I'm ok with that.

    Afflictions get pretty weird. On one hand, it's harder to track (mental) afflictions. On the other, I could get 2 really good free trackers, or cough up a minor amount of credits and purchase 3 equally good toxin trackers. With the incorporation of G-bot into the meta and the nightmare of classleads (paired with the "meh" that are some new classes), we've streamlined afflictions and actually ENDORSED the repetitive use of the same skill to achieve a toxin strategy. Afflictions aren't really the high skill end game they used to be. They've really been boiled down to Spam A to B, Spam B to C, try your instakill. No? Push to D. Teams? Blind Overload is king. Templar + anything is just bad.

    A good example of this is cirisosis. That skill does all the work for me. It's pretty freaking ridiculous. Did it work? No. TOXINS. Did it work? TOXINS. Did it work? OH HEY IT WORKED. You don't need to track. You just need to food fight your way through ab toxicology and really just hope for the best. It's going to work out eventually. Skills like trigger, cirisosis, lartosis, annihilate, brainmelt are actually much 'dangerous' in design than any amount of front loaded druid damage. Druid is just a matter of tweaking the overlapping % modifiers.

    Edit: I changed a few words to soften the message (progress)
  • IniarIniar Australia
    Things I would like to know:

    Earthsong - I assume Strength? What is the 'reset' timer on Earthsong/Imbue's wearing off?
    Wisp Poison - how long does it last?
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • Here's the thing about wisp poison without any of Iniar's stupid math that doesn't explain the point.

    Druids do so much damage that you cannot effectively sip mana; if I am managing to stay ahead of druid damage I am doing so by the skin of my teeth. Combined with wisp poison, this means that my sole effective means of regaining mana is my passive regeneration. Note that, because I am not an idiot, I disable toadstool on wisp poison application. Wisp poison is not damaging my mana, but it is completely blocking off access to a source of mana. 

    When you combine that with Oppression's extra drain, you get a situation where any class with mana costs attached to the offense or a reliance on passives puts themselves in a great deal of unavoidable trouble very quickly. 

    Oppression is one of those things I'd also like to address somehow, because the effectiveness varies so much from class to class and ranges from 'trivial' to 'crippling'.

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • IniarIniar Australia
    edited August 2014
    Dirt Trap
    Unnecessary as a petskill. Lots of hidden bugs. Tagline - "Why fight when you can dirt-trap?" 
     
    Suggest: Reporpoise dirt-trap
    When cast, dirt trap allows your pet to trap another pet in the ground, initiating a mini Pokemon battle. 
     
    Suggest 2: Delete dirt-trap
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • edited August 2014
    Dirttrap and flood synergy has absolutely no place in Imperian. I didn't realize it was still around until Wys posted a log about it, and because Wys is too nice of a guy to raise hell, it probably still exists.

    Dirttrap in and of itself can be thrown into the current mix of CC. Everyone hates CC..because..well...no one likes being stuck under a dart, constantly webbed/transfixed, sitting in time, impaled on a lance, or stuck on the current of a danaeus gust (aka - why fight when you can..). On the CC spectrum, it is rather tame because, while on-demand*, I am not incapacitated AND four other people are hitting me as I watch helplessly. Plus, the front-end target balance loss was recently removed from the skill, so a simple trigger allows me to return to the fray with recovered eq/bal faster than the dirttrapper. Who may very well dirttrap me again (see: pindown, web, transfix, joust...)

    What frustrates me with the current use of the skill by my side, and probably the reason AM doesn't use it much, is that unless the pet belongs to someone who won't be able to meaningful contribute to the outcome (known historically as the "web person"), it is generally not an efficient use of balance. Why use 3.5 seconds to slow you down for 2, when I can use those same few seconds to do 20-30% of your health or a handul of meaningful afflictions? At least if Karyn blows a balance on pindown or Khizan a balance on joust it is being used towards a meaningful goal (usually butchering a kind-hearted druid). A dirttrapping level three mage just isn't a good use of tactics.

    * Dirttrap isn't really on-demand per se. It is meant to be conditional. Copy and paste: "BUG TAMING DIRTTRAP. Per the help file, a condition for dirttrap is that the pet needs to be buried (burrowed), and not simply possess the burrowing ability. While this appears to function as intended for normal pets (Eldreth's note - might want to test if this still holds true as I haven't owned a hedgehog for a while), artifact pets have the ability to dirttrap -without- burrowing first, which appears to be contrary to the design of the skill. Please look into and fix. Thank you."

    If nothing else, this makes the first dirttrap (unless they are prepped) even more inefficient. And then you have a foundation come classlead time to reduce the equ cost of pet burrow (slightly) and uncover a pet that successfully dirttraps, so both steps would need repeated to use the skill again (making it something akin to the circle requirement for a druid's submerge on non-allies). This is a lot better than talking about Pokemon.
    “We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant."
    image
  • IniarIniar Australia
    Yeah I never got round to teaching my ferret dirt-trap because it is hideously inefficient. As you say, 
    (1) prep time
    (2) pet and all the disadvantages that go with that: kill the pet, pet not in room, shard terrify the pet, no horse

    I forgot about the prep part, having not thought about it for the longest time.

    Thank you. Your bug has been submitted in report #56995.

    Thanks Eldreth.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • You are welcome. Now quit please running to this thread and posting about some apocalpyse because it impacted you just moments before in-game. Thank you.
    “We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant."
    image
  • IniarIniar Australia
    Hehe, this last comment about dirt-trap came from a discussion on Bellatores between a few people :P but yessir. :D
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • AhkanAhkan Texas
    edited August 2014
    Alrighty, so I've been showing up to some shard falls and pk shenanigans excepting to a scrum and once I get there it's really Shallah's Symphonic Symposium. I went to the playbook to investigate ways that I could bypass prismatic barrier and came up with bupkiss (Thanks Obama). I debated using incinerate because sustained dps, right? Then I remember that Elrith spearheaded the push to get it nerfed because it did too much damage. This got me to thinking.../End awesome preface.

    Prerequisites:
    Incinerate requires me to have 60% taint. <--achieved at same rate if I build entirely for taint by sacrificing damage spells for taint spells and pyradius for damage unleashes.
    Fire circle requires 3 fire attunement. <-- achieved faster just doing your fire thing

    Upkeep:
    Incinerate: blows 15% taint every 3s.  The better damage spells provide 10% taint. There is no health modifier here.
    Fire circle: Uses 2  attunement every 3s. This is free when the target is at 2/3 health.

    Damage output:
    Ahkan: 18 int, level 2 collar, hecate (+10%) (Intelligent)
    Mathiaus: 14-17 int, level 2 collar (I think) (Wise statpack)
    Incinerate: I do about 71 fire damage reduced to 62 on every 3s tick which consumes 15% of my existing taint (thus locking out many of my other tricks)
    -Important note: Damage ticks on incinerate remain the same throughout the duration.
    Fire circle: Does about 107 damage reduced to 86 (source: mathiaus, which is level 2 I think).
    -Important note: The longer fire circle ticks, the more damage it does.

    You can see here, that fire circle is putting out more damage than a more powerfully built Summoner. Fire circle is also consuming 2 attunement every 3s while Mathiaus is providing 2 attunements every 3s. Summoner on the other hand is consuming 15% taint while only producing between 10-20% taint. Sacrifices are made on the summoners end to keep fueling the fire (choosing nerveburn/nervewrack over soulburn/soulwrack/flash/quicken). After a victim hits 2/3 health, which is likely with fire circle rolling, the fire circle is self sustaining costing 0 attunement and allowing a mage to invest that 5 attunement into higher damage bursts while under sustained dps. Summoner on the other hand is denied cashing in on high damage burst because there is no similar mechanic for incinerate. You spend your 50% to blast and you're left over with a 15% tick in the next round and the round after that.

    Simply put, flame circle is self sustaining and bears it with 0 opportunity cost rewarding the mage with high sustained damage and high burst damage potential, whereas incinerate is riddled with opportunity costs which end up sacrificing burst for mediocre sustained burst.

    Mage side change:
    1) Fire circle ticks consume two attunement every 3s and the 2/3 requirement reduces it to 1.
    -May need to reduce the 2/3 requirement to something like 80% to facilitate an actual finisher.
    2) Wys idea: If certain afflictions are present on the victim, fire circle will consume them before consuming attunement. (Not sure about team combat)

    Justification: A skill that does damage should not be sustainable by doing damage. Enter positive feedback loop (Thanks Wys!)

    Noctu side change:
    1) Fiddle with the numbers to make incinerate more practical to use. With the low end damage, you could justify a 5-7% reduction in taint consumption.
    2) More thematically, allow incinerate ticks to provide free intensify effects (This is all added affliction output).
    2a) Incinerate ticks apply stacking 5% fire maluses, capped at 20 or 30.

    Give this a cool in room message. Additionally you'd have to look at some of the intensify effects and maybe add a few to low damage spells.

    Actually, we'd have to look at nerveburns intensified effect since it's +33% damage and puts out 20% taint. It would be a fire circle issue all over again.

  • Ahkan said:
    Lots of stuff

    Important things to consider:
    • Summoner is considerably tankier than mage
    • Mage need not be a affliction class on both fire offense and water offense <-- this is per class design.
    • Spending crystal charges is costly for the mage due to the high cost (both health and mana of the Mage) that are spent to charge the crystal to sustain offense (especially FC > 66%), but building taint costs Summoners nothing except a little hit to DPS. <-- this is why Mathiaus kills himself.
    • Crystal system was converted to be taint-like, not taint-equivalent
    • Garryn keeps reiterating that the crystal is only supposed to be for burst offense and not something sustained throughout the fight ((though this wasn't how it was beta tested and balanced)).
  • 1) I'm not sure this is even true. Honestly, with reflections, blink, drain tanking combined with not-stupid use of crystal charge, mages are quite tanky.

    2) I'm also not sure how this is relevant to the issue at hand. Fire spells give afflictions on both classes. There are always play style choices based on statpack, profession, weapon, spec.

    3) I'm not sure you understand how taint generation works which makes it hard for you to compare flame circle to incinerate. You generate more attunement faster on average than a summoner generates taint. I can burst up taint, but I sacrifice dps, afflictions. Mage does not sacrifice this.

    4) I'm using them as combat currency. My buy in for incinerate is x. My buy in for fire circle is y. The value of Y is less than the value of X. You get more bang for your buck with flame circle, despite the similarity in mechanic with incinerate. It's not a direct comparison for taint/charge/attunement mechanics.

    5) Garryn says a lot of things. The actually game play also says a lot of things. Sometimes they agree. Sometimes they don't. 

    At the end of the day, I did consider those things and they had 0 bearing on my interpretation of Incinerate v. Fire circle. Fire Circle is rolling at damage extremes that exceed old-incinerate, which was hot nerfed outside of a classlead. It is also a positive feedback loop in which high damage sustains the dps which allows for higher damage which sustains the dps which allows for hire damage. Positive feedback loops are bad. Incinerate is not a positive feedback loop.
  • Ahkan said:
    1) I'm not sure this is even true. Honestly, with reflections, blink, drain tanking combined with not-stupid use of crystal charge, mages are quite tanky. <-- Reflection is nice, yes. Blink is easily defended against for many classes. Drain got nerfed hard. Clarify what non-stupid crystal uses you are talking about (infuse/mirroring)? The only tanky mages are the overly artifacted ones.  @Iniar and I were actually just discussing it this morning.
    You failed to mention summoners comparable abilities: distortion/magician/priestess/hermit/pathfinder/danaeus/universe/several buffs on possession.

    2) I'm also not sure how this is relevant to the issue at hand. Fire spells give afflictions on both classes. There are always play style choices based on statpack, profession, weapon, spec.  <--Merely pointing out the fire offense was not meant to require affliction tracking, which is what your proposed solution would require.

    3) I'm not sure you understand how taint generation works which makes it hard for you to compare flame circle to incinerate. You generate more attunement faster on average than a summoner generates taint. I can burst up taint, but I sacrifice dps, afflictions. Mage does not sacrifice this. <-- Mage sacrifices their own health/mana if they do this.

    4) I'm using them as combat currency. My buy in for incinerate is x. My buy in for fire circle is y. The value of Y is less than the value of X. You get more bang for your buck with flame circle, despite the similarity in mechanic with incinerate. It's not a direct comparison for taint/charge/attunement mechanics.  <-- this is true in some cases and false in others, mainly dependent on target health.

    5) Garryn says a lot of things. The actually game play also says a lot of things. Sometimes they agree. Sometimes they don't. <--Agreed.

    At the end of the day, I did consider those things and they had 0 bearing on my interpretation of Incinerate v. Fire circle. Fire Circle is rolling at damage extremes that exceed old-incinerate, which was hot nerfed outside of a classlead. It is also a positive feedback loop in which high damage sustains the dps which allows for higher damage which sustains the dps which allows for hire damage. Positive feedback loops are bad. Incinerate is not a positive feedback loop.
    Beta testing continues...
  • MathiausMathiaus Pennsylvania
    edited August 2014
    1. Drain's requirements and cooldown are less than ideal now, but for good reason.

    2. Yep.

    3.True

    4. Compared on their own, yes, this is true.

    5. It's not just Garryn.

    Summoner is very good at outpacing healing. It's why we were trying so hard to tune it down, and only incinerate was looked at. Mage is in the same boat now since it also scales incredibly well with artifacts.

    Difference is summoner doesn't deal with crystal management or mana issues currently, but those can be fixed in time.
    image
  • It's okay if fire offense doesn't require affliction tracking - the problem is that fire circle is a self-fulfilling condition. In a 1v1 setting, this is probably fine and makes sense as a mechanic, since the cost of fire circle is very high to begin with. You're required to build up to 5 attunement and get someone below 2/3rds health, and then use fire circle as a bridge towards a finisher. This seems fine.

    However, the health condition is the underlying problem, because it's such a simple condition to fulfill in a group, and everyone contributes to it. It's the same issue that's brought up with cirihosisisohsis - everyone is contributing afflictions, everyone is contributing damage. These work to sustain towards a kill that becomes inevitable.

    My suggestion for having the ticks consume fire-related afflictions is just an example of moving the escalation towards something that doesn't build on itself. Alternatively, I would suggest reducing the cost AND upkeep of fire circle, and just outright remove the condition that perpetuates it. Have it cost 2 fire attunement, drain 1 per tick, and instead of ramping the damage up, have the ticks become more frequent.This both increases the DPS and increases the upkeep, making it unsustainable over time - exactly the balancing rationale for incinerate.


  • Wysrias said:
    It's okay if fire offense doesn't require affliction tracking - the problem is that fire circle is a self-fulfilling condition. In a 1v1 setting, this is probably fine and makes sense as a mechanic, since the cost of fire circle is very high to begin with. You're required to build up to 5 attunement and get someone below 2/3rds health, and then use fire circle as a bridge towards a finisher. This seems fine.

    However, the health condition is the underlying problem, because it's such a simple condition to fulfill in a group, and everyone contributes to it. It's the same issue that's brought up with cirihosisisohsis - everyone is contributing afflictions, everyone is contributing damage. These work to sustain towards a kill that becomes inevitable.

    My suggestion for having the ticks consume fire-related afflictions is just an example of moving the escalation towards something that doesn't build on itself. Alternatively, I would suggest reducing the cost AND upkeep of fire circle, and just outright remove the condition that perpetuates it. Have it cost 2 fire attunement, drain 1 per tick, and instead of ramping the damage up, have the ticks become more frequent.This both increases the DPS and increases the upkeep, making it unsustainable over time - exactly the balancing rationale for incinerate.
    I don't disagree that the conditionals on FC could be tweaked some, I just think it should be something other than affliction based conditionals to not upset the masses who can't deal with afflictions.  The water side of things is already highly dependent there anyway.  The other thing to consider with FC is that it was designed to be a long lasting/sustainable condition for it's interplay with lavablast as a finisher.
  • edited August 2014
    I agree with that role in its design, I just don't think the condition is fair. It's perpetual when taking high damage, and it itself does more damage as time goes on. I think the price of sustain should be that 1 attunement tick - keep the escalation if you want to make it more of a bridging move, but it can't have both of these effects. This would make it harder to weave in with lavablast, but I would argue that lavablast would be better off alone on its own as a damage finisher - the same role as blowing all of your taint for a duplicate/blast, and the reason that interplay works.

    Having it amplified by the fire circle - while nice in theory, because hey, it's a build-up route for damage, that's what we want! - just ends up being overkill anyway. Has anyone managed to survive a lavablast in conjunction with a sustained (<66% hp) firecircle that has ticked for a few rounds?

    EDITEDIT: I guess what I'm hinting at is that lavablast and firecircle need to work off of different conditions or resource pools. Having both require full upkeep on fire attunement is pretty impossible to conceptualize in a balanced manner, if we're ALSO excluding afflictions from being relevant.


  • The biggest problem with firecircle is that the 66% condition is utterly trivial to reach in groups, since damage requires no complicated tracking and all sources of damage stack effectively without any need for coordination at all.

    This is why Incinerate was removed, it is why attacks based on health percentages have seen so many nerfs over the years, and it is why firecircle will ultimately eat a sizable nerf or change; the effect is too powerful when the pre-requisite is so utterly trivial.

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • It's the common issue of: Needs to be strong enough for 1v1 viability yet weak enough to not be OP in teams.  It's a very small middle ground.

    The good news is, you can only have 1 firecircle :).
  • I don't see how it's not viable 1v1, even with the suggested adjustments.
  • MathiausMathiaus Pennsylvania
    I honestly don't think it should be viable 1 v 1. I've focused fire only in groups lately, as water has been very successful with 1 v 1. It's simple to apply fire without much thought and shouldn't be someone's main strategy all the time.
    image
  • edited August 2014

    It should be viable 1v1 because combat should not become the sole province of affliction tracking.

    This is one thing that never fails to amuse me about you white-knight duelists. You insist you enjoy 1v1, you insist that you want more 1v1, you insist that you want systems that actively encourage 1v1, and then come classlead time you go out of your way to ensure that 1v1 becomes less and less approachable for new players, because if anything can kill you it must be the toxin deltas of the elite alpha PKer instead of something as uncouth as damage. 

    You continually try to raise the skill barrier to entry by requiring more and more offensive coding to even approach becoming viable and then you turn around and grouse about how nobody is getting into 1v1 anymore. You are poisoning your own well. You are pissing in your own Cheerios. You are the source of your problem.

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • For once, I sort of agree with Khizan.
  • IniarIniar Australia
    I haven't beaten any artifacted person in 1v1 as a damage summoner after incinerate went to 15 taint per tick.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • MathiausMathiaus Pennsylvania
    To each his own I guess. Ad hominem.
    image
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