Classleads 2019
Felt like we need a thread to discuss classlead reports.
So, uh - Someone's submitted a bunch of big buffs for Summoner. The class was powerful and had plenty of utility even after the nerfs it got last time, which it needed, but some of these reports are ridiculous. Make the pathfinder and doppleganger tankier? Killing those is the counter to them. Buff Danaeus, so the victim can't move when launched into the air? Again, ridiculous - The few seconds of chaos it causes is already pretty strong, making it stick the person in the air unable to move, or any of the other buffs, would just make it too good.
And there's a slew of reports like this - "Give us the ability to deliver a toxin", "Let us know exactly when hellsight is cured", etc. I'm sure I'm not the only one looking at some reports and wondering if the ability to file classleads should be restricted again.
In the interests of transparency, here's a list of my reports this round:
Most notable are the fitness and totems ones, especially the latter, since it would effectively remove totems as they currently exist. I have yet to think of a matching report for Shaman, but intend to.
So, uh - Someone's submitted a bunch of big buffs for Summoner. The class was powerful and had plenty of utility even after the nerfs it got last time, which it needed, but some of these reports are ridiculous. Make the pathfinder and doppleganger tankier? Killing those is the counter to them. Buff Danaeus, so the victim can't move when launched into the air? Again, ridiculous - The few seconds of chaos it causes is already pretty strong, making it stick the person in the air unable to move, or any of the other buffs, would just make it too good.
And there's a slew of reports like this - "Give us the ability to deliver a toxin", "Let us know exactly when hellsight is cured", etc. I'm sure I'm not the only one looking at some reports and wondering if the ability to file classleads should be restricted again.
In the interests of transparency, here's a list of my reports this round:
829 S (Galt) Fitness Fitness has no cooldown, nor does a
830 U (Galt) Flaring Runeguards have to sometimes wield
831 U (Galt) Circle
848 S (Galt) Enhance The enhancements across the 3 knigh
849 U (Galt) Totems Totems are fun, they're scary, but
Most notable are the fitness and totems ones, especially the latter, since it would effectively remove totems as they currently exist. I have yet to think of a matching report for Shaman, but intend to.
2
Comments
Yes, the counter to doppleganger is to kill it - even with the suggestion, it will still die ridiculously fast against a coordinated team, as will the pathfinder. The counters to pathfinder are numerous, including, but not limited to, any afflictions that stop or delay movement.
Danaeus is literally instantly countered with a tentacle tattoo.
And honestly - I looked at your reports and thought the same thing? Nerf fitness into near literal uselessness? Make DK an essentially dead class because all its strength is in its enhancements? Punish anyone who attacks the RG, on top of their already strong offense? Hilarious.
On top of which, it's likely a bug that swapping weapons resets the cooldowns, allowing people to use enhances every combo. Of the 3 knights, RG is currently the weakest - With stricter requirements and cooldowns on the enhancements and long cooldowns on flares. As for Summoner, no. It's fine as is. Maybe it could do with a tweak to damage - but I'm talking a slight tweak here, not an outright buff - but other than that, it's fine. It doesn't need more ability to escape, or hamper people, or stronger range.
EDIT: Also, oh no a coordinated team can counter the ranged strip/ranged attacks of a class. Whatever will we do! That can't possibly be balanced, that one summoner should be able to pick off defenses and let his or her team get the ranged summon even when the enemy is organised and has the numbers, right? Haha.
Quick addition: If Runeguard offense is strong, and DK has better enhancements, then isn't DK the better class? Yes, DK enhancements are tuned around them not having a rune tablet or rites to flare, but they've had creeping additions over the last few rounds - like chill every combo and buffs to their enhances - that have gone too far. You can't reasonably think 5-6 affs, plus 150~ damage every combo from a class as tanky as a DK is fine. Also, as for fitness, if you don't grasp why it should likely change then you probably shouldn't be writing any reports in the first place.
If weapon swapping resets the cooldown - that is a bug, not a class issue.
As for the rest of it? You've obviously made your mind up on which knight class is better and needs buffs, and which doesn't, but I will ask you a question anyway - when is the last time you saw a Runeguard using scimitars, as opposed to just using longswords?
Oh. They do. Woops.
Edited to add: Naturebinding roots have practically the same ranged offensive abilities as doppelganger and take significantly more damage to kill.
Back to IRE, though:
Yes, tentacle beats it. That was a response by the enemy. A reaction to your action. You may react by recasting Danaeus and changing targets to the tentacle user. There's nothing really stopping you. Don't blame game balance for bad strategy.
Love you guys, have fun with 2019 classlead!
Teeth probably could get 2-3 seconds added on to its cooldown now that dk gets secondary aff pressure,. Its better in the early stages of a fight but inferior to both rg and templar once haemophilia is being consistently stuck in my view. I think making it go to ten would be a mistake though. You could make an argument that gravehands + rending + chill is too much salve pressure, I haven't done the math but I do have suspicions.
I don't think you can compare doppy to roots because roots are terrible.
I kind of liked the hecate report tbh. Didn't seem overpowered and would give the class some flexibility. You could argue that introducing slow bal/eq into the pipe pressure might be extreme, I suppose.
(Hi Sarrius)
What do we have here?
- Around 80 damage, to a stoneskin'd mage.
- Four afflictions, all of which are useful.
- Torso to trembling in one combo.
- 16 bleeding from the one combo.
And this is similar to almost every single combo from a DK right now. Some do 3 affs, some instead do 6, most do more damage than the above.
Here's a few other combos, for reference:
Here:
- 164 damage
- Four affs. Asthma, shivering, broken arm, numbness.
- 15 bleeding
- Torso to trembling, again, in one hit.
This gives you a rough idea of how hard DK is hitting right now. Can RG do similar combos? Yes, but it cannot do them repeatedly, as the cooldowns on RG equivalents are 10-20 seconds, instead of 4~ seconds with a way to halve the cooldown.
This kind of offense might be fine, on a class that didn't have any tanking or self-healing abilities at all. It might be fine if it could only happen irregularly, every 4th or 5th combo, with the combos between being weaker. It is not fine when every combo is like this or even worse, on a class that's very tanky.
Report 860 is basically "Give back radiance pls" with the alternate options being "give us a super OP skill".
Solution 1 is ridiculous, and would make a monk unkillable in teams, whilst solution 2 is... not necessary. Solution 3 is the one that makes me disregard the whole report, though, because it makes the intent clear - they just want radiance back.
How about instead we continue to implement and bring back changes to monk that were postponed for the rework, removing the cheese and the skills that are considered silly, etc.
Brutality:
Rending, Soulquench, Teeth, Draining, Agony, Negating, Fleshburn
Cooldowns:
Rending - 8 seconds
Soulquench - 5 seconds
Teeth - 4 seconds
Draining - 6 seconds
Agony - 8 seconds
Negating - 10 seconds
Fleshburn - 4 seconds
Chivalry, RG
Flame, Bolt, Lightning, Knife, Snowflake, Hawk*
Cooldowns
Flame - 5 seconds
Bolt - 10 seconds
Lightning - 4 seconds
Knife - 10 seconds
Snowflake - 3 seconds
Hawk - N/A, allows beckon weapons.
Chivalry, Templar
Emblazing, Purification, Purge, Resonate*, Burning, Mirroring
Cooldowns
Emblazing - 5 seconds
Purification - 6 seconds
Purge 10 seconds
Resonate - N/A
Burning - 5 seconds
Mirroring - 6 seconds
As per the above numbers, RG and Templar both have 5 enhancements that work in combat, with cooldowns ranging from 3 to 10 seconds. Deathknights have 7, with cooldowns ranging from 4 to 10 seconds, but notably have negating to reduce the cooldown on the others once per 10 seconds. In addition to this, the requirements on the enhancements are fairly similar, but Templar and RG both have higher pre-reqs compared to DK enhancements. RG can flare runes, Templar can flare rites, DK can use chill every combo. In terms of overall affliction rate, RG, Templar and DK are comparable, but chill every combo beats out rune flares (Which have a cooldown of 20 seconds per, though they have a few to use not all afflict) and rites (Which are consumed when flared? and don't seem to afflict as well, hence mirroring).
Then if you factor in enhancements, the difference is evident again: DK has 7 enhancements vs the 5 other knights get, and the cooldowns on them are slightly shorter on average. The key thing here is that DK has negating, which reduces the cooldown further, and has more enhancements to pick from. Additionally, teeth means a DK is able to more easily proc the bonus toxin from AB WEAPONMASTERY SHRED.
Yes, Runeguard can do similar combos. So can Templar. They cannot do them as often as DK, nor can they afflict as reliably as DK - And this is where the problem lies. A number of relatively minor differences - a couple more enhancements, slightly lower average cooldown and the ability to reduce the cooldowns - all add up, allowing DK to proc enhancements on almost every combo, whereas if memory serves, for other knights it's about half of their combos which proc enhances.
As per your own log, Pellerin is averaging slightly above 2 afflictions per combo, including rune effects - Which each have something like a 20 second per-target cooldown. You, on the other hand, average 3-4 afflictions per combo in a similar situation. This quite proves my point - Runeguard and Templar both afflict more slowly than Deathknight, even factoring in rune flares and rite flares.
Also, linking earrings with yourself is pretty blatant bug abuse, and was announced as fixed months ago so why you're still doing it is beyond me.
Hellsight 3p messages would expand beyond Summoner. If you have that and the aeon 3p, it becomes a little too easy to shotgun madness and never fail an enlighten.
Moon change is okay.
Golgotha debuff removed would be nice. Just not enough value in 1/20s v 1/40s when you give up another potential positive poss effect for what should amount to a net equal exchange.
Hecate buff would probably be too much with the other aff buffs Summoner has gotten, and formaldehyde is at least a little slow from a diag even if the aff ends up being useless (which it might not! yayrng).
Timewarp idk. Almost wish it was something like an aeon cureblock.
Even without crits, 216 hp is a one-shot for touch tail/scepter point.
I get why whoever posted Wall wants it to change, but it's situationally really powerful in groups and great in 1v1.
Most people before last round: DK is definitively the worst Knight.
DK: *gets one extra salve aff per combo with a 10% essence cost*
RG:
Lol. This will be fun.
In which you don't use chill, you don't seem to be using teeth to make shred proc and you count all the effects Pell gets from runeflares as an aff, even when some of them don't actually do anything or require a separate balance to set up, like sketching a ground rune before being able to use wunjo each time.
If you're getting 2.72 per combo vs 2.68 or 2.77 for RG, when you're not even using chill, then again you've highlighted the problem. You can throw chill on every combo and bump that to 3.72, and you could further increase it if you were using teeth and actually landed your tendoncut, like you usually do. I'm not sure I've noticed everything you're omitting in that log, but either you've edited out parts of your offense, or you were simply not using parts that you normally do use.
Factor in what you normally do with shred and chill, and you'd hit somewhere around 3.8 to 4 affs per combo comfortably.
I'm willing to bet in that log, Eochaid was wearing limb armor and Pellerin wasn't.
That's 100 afflictions over 37 combos (including the one that rebounded) with 0 chills included. That's an average of 2.7 affs per combo without chill, and I'm pretty sure I missed a couple of limb breaks in there too. There were also multiple failed tendoncuts, which would have pushed the average over 3 affs/combo if they'd succeeded. There's also a helpful echo - "Not being chilly!" spammed in bright red - that indicates you were not, in fact, using chill. I see an actual chill attempt once in that log, though I may have missed more.
So that's 2.7 afflictions per combo, even with failed tendoncuts and me likely missing a few enhance induced breaks, and not including non-aff enhance effects. If you factor in any of these things - Teeth, quench flares and so forth - it'd be higher, but those aren't affs though still relevant.
Let's do a quick breakdown:
2.7affs/combo rate shown in log
If tendoncuts worked, it'd have been 2.97 per combo
If chill was used on every second combo with tendoncut still failing, it would have been 3.1 per combo
If chill was used on every combo, with tendoncut failing, it would have been 3.7 per combo
If chill was used on every second combo with no tendoncut fails, it would have been 3.4 per combo
If chill was used every combo and tendoncut had not failed, it would have been 3.94 per combo.
These numbers are quite different to your claims - And no, you don't use chill or track it in the log, as we can clearly see you toggling it off.
As for combo speed, I'll have to pester Pellerin for exact numbers, but your combos seem to hover around 2.72 balance per, giving you an affliction rate a bit over 1/second at the low end, up to about 1.45 afflictions per second, not including bleed, non-aff enhances, etc.
In the same span, Pellerin averages fewer afflictions - He has less affliction rate from enhancements and his rune flares have significant cooldowns, often of 20 seconds or more. Your numbers for Runeguard are pretty correct - About 2.7 affs per combo or just shy of, including flare effects.
This begs the question - DK has an affliction rate notably higher than RG, with more regular damage enhance procs and more stackable (breaks/chill stack) afflictions from enhances and combo moves. Why is this? It's because DK enhances and combos got buffed too much.
Edit: Also @Lachlan Lol what limb armour for... the torso? Okay champ.
E: Also, you can't straight compare it. APS/CPS is easy when you're attacking one balance. 2 herbs+2 salves ~= 4 herbs, sorry.
15:22:49.835 Ice You are chilly!
15:22:49.835 Ice You are chilly!
15:22:49.970 You cannot move that fast, slow down!
15:22:49.970 H:700 M:415 <eb db>
15:22:50.522 (6 - up)(5 - ne)
15:22:50.822 Crumbled path leading down. (inside).
15:22:50.822 An elephantine clockwork bunny is here, homing in on a signal.
15:22:50.823 You see exits leading northeast and down.
15:22:50.823 H:700 M:415 <eb db>
15:22:51.004 (4 - n)
15:22:51.004 South of a broken archway. (road).
15:22:51.005 You see exits leading north, northeast, and southwest.
15:22:51.005 H:700 M:415 <eb db>
15:22:51.146 Not being chilly!
15:22:51.146 Not being chilly!
15:22:51.146 Not being chilly!
15:22:51.185 You cannot move that fast, slow down!
She toggled it off before even getting to Pellerin, and as far as I can tell, left it off for most of the fight. She uses chill ten times (But didn't track or highlight it, so I missed it, woops), so once I factor that in her affliction rate increases to 2.97 per combo.
So, 2.97 affs/combo vs 2.7 affs/combo, despite messed up tendoncuts and longer cooldowns on the afflictions Pell used. Had Eochaid used chill every combo, that would have been 3.7 affs per combo, average. As I've seen it used every combo through long team fights, it's safe to assume that's the norm...
Edit - To save this argument going back and forth even more...
Deathknight was balanced around not having a combo move, like flares, or chill. This is why you've got more enhancements and teeth synergy with shred, which bumps the affliction rate up to match Templar and RG. However, creeping adjustments to Deathknight enhancements led to this working slightly too well, bringing their affliction rate above that of other Knights. Then last round chill got made comboable, and it made the problem even worse.
This means the aff rate for DK needs bringing down somehow. That can be achieved by nerfing the enhancements (Either by upping the cooldowns or removing the teeth-shred thing) or removing chill as a combo move.