@Kryss That's the problem. I never said anything about winning or losing. I was specifically saying that dying in two rounds of combos is so counter to my enjoyment, that I HAVE to go RG to even live long enough to have fun. I enjoy actually participating, but if I'm in Hunter instead of RG, I don't last long enough to do anything productive. Even Hunter can't prep and fire a kill that fast. If I'm in RG, however, I'm no longer target #1, I'm no longer stuck with such miserable resists, and I can actually use Defend to help lengthen the lives of other members. The increase in the length of time I stay in a fight is so worth it that if I had to play as Mage or Bard for that kind of tank, I'd do it. =/
@Khizan I know Hunter has never been a super tank, but every class lived much longer than they do now. Fights were longer. That's what happens when everyone isn't doing 300+ damage combos. As a side-effect of not dying so fast, you sip more, eat more toadstool, and have more opportunities to shield, prismatic, shardheal, commit, touch crystal, and escape, all of which further your ability to live. A slight adjustment in damage dealt could(and hopefully will) have a larger impact than what might seem obvious on paper, just for those reasons.
@Garryn Thanks! I feel like that's going to make a big deal and I love it!
To elaborate a bit on that Reave change, I've ran the numbers and this is the lowest I'm willing to go - which could mean that the attack may be a bit too weak now (I doubt that, it's still the second highest damaging attack for Knights), in which case we'll re-tweak again, or maybe there are still problems, in which case we'll need to look at the tankiness of some professions, as I can't feasibly reduce Reave more.
After complaining to Kryss for about an hour (sorry @Kryss), I guess I am curious as to why reave needs to be changed now...
I mean, it's not like we weren't complaining about the output from day 1. Yet it's been four three months and nothing happened... @Elokia finally says classleads is 1-2 months away so I figure I could at least join in the game for that amount of time after holding back on buying because I thought it would be too ridiculous not to be hotfixed. Four days after I buy it, it gets hotfixed. What changed between then and now? I'm very miffed and I would actually like my money back to be perfectly honest.
Here's what my best combo (Templar) looks like with no hindering, no affs (and no rebounding) to slow me down. L1 axe heavy and sharp, (regular) whetstoned. Realistically, I almost never get into lionstance in a real fight, either. I removed a lot of cures and sipping and such so it would post. My understanding is that while Reave is important itself, it's also really important to consider how Reave interacts with RG's, DK's and Templar's enhancements, and that Reave should not be considered in a vacuum, but I am sure other people can address that. I am swimming in tanking artifacts, so it's true there would be more damage against someone unartied (obviously) but yeah, it tickles, heh. Also, note that I have some stuff gagged and as you can see I tally the damage I take per combo (I don't handle spam well and am always looking to reduce it).
You have lost the anti-weapon field defence.
You rub some strychnine on a truesilver battleaxe.
You reave yourself furiously with a truesilver battleaxe.
Your hearing is suddenly restored.
You have lost the deaf defence.
You rub some strychnine on a truesilver battleaxe.
You reave yourself furiously with a truesilver battleaxe.
A prickly, stinging sensation spreads through your body.
You are afflicted with sensitivity.
Balance Taken: 3.98s
Raising your arms in a beckoning gesture, you cause the Rite of Cleansing to burst into flames and
I don't think Reave was ever supposed to be used as the only skill you need to win in 1v1, it's just that highly artifacted knights were able to do just that. These changes have mostly just made Templar an even worse 1v1 class than it was before. Lacking any option outside damage is never that great; the profession really needs many things redesigned and their affliction game stepped up.
Yeah, I was asked to post a log, so there it is That said, with afflictions, I do know that other IRE games eventually removed the +2 balance bonus, specifically to address super affliction/hinder speeds that dramatically outpace all curing.
So that it can be broken down more fully (in case people need that for some reason), here's a couple combos untallied for reference. I chopped out most of the herb cures again:
You have lost the anti-weapon field defence.
You rub some strychnine on a truesilver battleaxe.
You reave yourself furiously with a truesilver battleaxe.
I'm not a massive fan, because most of the damage support from runeguard and dk come either from the enhancements or from cure denial/higher than comparable mechanics comboable damage (sowulu). Templars damage is pretty much all built into reave (I am eliminating flare as the comboable +30 damage is pretty much par for the course across the board for knight now).
This change pretty much still leaves rg as the DoT king (half sip for 2 rounds, eliminate toadstool for a round, etc) and retains dks brutal burst (unartied dk still hits me in my tankiest prof with maxed out mitigation for > 260). Templar doesn't really have a high end viable strategy now (the affliction build is far too slow in today's meta, and emblazing isn't really useable given its conflicting pre requirements.
I agree something needed to be done about the frontloaded burst, but this leaves templar pretty toothless while leaving dk/rg with pretty much the same potency as previously. I'm pretty religious about trying to make my preferred profession work, but I would not touch templar for single combat and would be pretty reluctant for teams now, and I am maxed out for it.
I still (obviously) haven't mastered Templar yet, so I am very reluctant to switch to one of my other profs I've picked up, but it sounds like I may really need to. I am guessing that it would also suck for us to lose more people who can put up Block with both magick and demonic vortexing the hell out of us lately. And vortex is just basically awesome.
I think you're exaggerating a little bit there, but if there really is a need to push up reave damage so it's super viable in 1v1 again, at least we should consider moving the damage into the momentum bonus or lionstance. The front-heavy damage was terrible for team fights, and this will lessen some of the pressure to use a knight class to be useful in combat, which is a good thing.
Just Reave shouldn't be viable 1v1 though. That's dull. Winning off one skill isn't fun or good design. Templar was simply poorly thought out, their affliction options are sorely lacking and could stand to be increased in strength considerably.
The problem is not Reave so much as the problem is everything else attached to the Reave.
This change to Reave has made Templar Garbage while really not hurting the deathknight and the runeguard. The Deathknight can still pull out 160+ damage out of nothing but soulquench+negate or 240+ damage out of fleshburn+soulquench+negate, without even going into the soulstorm. That's enough damage to make Reave/Reave viable as a burst attack even if the Reave itself did zero damage. Which is fortunate for them, since that's about what Reave does now.
Runeguards are also sitting pretty right now, tbh. Toadstool denial, shield denial, half-sips, cure denials, and sowulu as a huge unblockable typed damage flare. And that's without even getting into their ability to tie a cool 100+ damage worth of enhancements into the combo pretty easily.
Templars got the shaft here, though. Flare does garbage damage with Faithroot, and if you choose to consume a rite the damage upgrades from "garbage" to "rubbish. Their passive damage tick is consumed by their full-damage flare as well as their prismatic breaking, and it sometimes hits the mana the opponent has no use for, which is basically the same thing as the tick missing altogether in any kind of 1v1 situation. Emblazing has a combined health and affliction trigger, so that it never gets to go off, and Burning has a 50% health trigger, which is lower than the trigger on any comparable enhancement. Also, Flare and Emblazing and Burning all do fire damage, which is the most commonly resisted element in the game.
The change to Reave should have been a change to basically everything BUT reave.
"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."
Right, I'm not saying reave needs to be buffed. I'm saying templars affliction options for single combat are practically nonexistent when compared alongside the other knight professions, and both of the other knight professions have still retained said problematic frontloaded burst. Furthermore, reave is still 100% viable (and is still the most potent option) for both dk and rg, for the reasons I specified in the previous post.
That aside, the damage option needs to be viable in 1v1 because there's a very small population of people who have any interest whatsoever in developing affliction combat routines, largely because of the difficulty imposed by coding the tracker.
"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."
Hrm, not sure if "I hate" is the best place for this conversation, but ah well.
Getting rather negative feedback about the Reave change, unless there's some better idea, I'm going to partially revert it, so that the damage is about halfway between the current and the original state.
Reave damage itself was fine, it's all the other crap that gets to go along with the Reave that's the huge problem. It's honestly probably an issue for a small beta phase now that we've got a few months of experience with it under our belts.
"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."
Yeah, but are we talking "We'll do that in 6-8 months" or "We'll do that in a couple weeks"?
Most of the knight changes would not be hugely complex things. Remove negate, limit enhancement flares to one per DSL, change pithakhan to only hit 1 sip, etc.
"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."
I want to clear something up, also be sure if you're going to put words in people's mouths, you get it right!
This is a direct quote from my post, so please read it correctly. I did not state that we -will- be having classleads in 1-2 months. What I stated was this:
Classleads may happen in a few months. Garryn will post before he gets them rolling, as he is working on something else at the moment.
This means, Garryn -may- do classleads in a -few- months. Generally few means at least 3, could mean more. Garryn will decide when those are going to happen, I just stated the fact that they were a few months away, as when said post was made Wardancer was not public knowledge. He will not be doing these classleads till after the revamp (MOST LIKELY-I don't know, depends on how much work HE wants to do).
We understand you guys are frustrated, just remember, we have one person who works on balancing classes, and who listens to you guys on both the positive and negative side of all classes. So sometimes things take time, and sometimes it takes a few tries to get it right. Be mindful of those who work to make this game rock for you.
Yeah, but are we talking "We'll do that in 6-8 months" or "We'll do that in a couple weeks"?
Most of the knight changes would not be hugely complex things. Remove negate, limit enhancement flares to one per DSL, change pithakhan to only hit 1 sip, etc.
Couple of things to note about buffing knight damage enough to let Templars over-whelm people 1v1 with damage.
-First, the current meta isn't really balanced around 1v1, and any damage that works with basically no prep to overwhelm everyone in 1v1, breaks group combat.
-Second, Templar is far from useless in group combat as a class:
-- Combined with Defend, they might be the best healers in the game.
-- They're also nearly impossible to escape without flippy boots or a band.
-- They provide useful area effect with rites.
-- They are some of the healthiest, of not the healthiest, folks around (Bloodsworn).
-- They can reduce the health of a target, with absolutely zero counter (Damnation).
-- They have two lives, the first of which offers no reward to the killer.
-- Can resurrect fallen allies instantly.
-Finally, Reave damage is still near the top of the damage charts, and in group combat will still delete focused targets nearly instantly.
Templar is perfectly viable with lower damage, as a very very strong support class that dishes out plenty of damage in group combat. Should it gain a decent 1v1 option? Absolutely, is longsword really that bad for them? I have no idea. But i'm 100% on board with fixing a class's lack of 1v1 options. But the fix for no reason at all should require making 4+ OTHER classes completely useless.
I mean, look at Mage. You guys destroyed firecircle, and mage no longer has any viable serious attack goals. Its also completely destroyed by the current knight damage. (Although I can survive three combos now, thank you Garryn!) Hunter is a functioning proper version of a water mage, but suffers from being soft. It is completely made non-functional by knight damage. I hear Diab has the same issues, but I don't know first hand.
If templar has 1v1 issues, I hope its looked at and solved, the same as I hope mage is made viable on any level, and hunter is allowed to enter the combat stage once more. Lowering knight damage is healthy for our game. It introduces a broader variety of viable class choice, which supports a broader player base, which is just plain good for everyone.
It sounds like your implication is that you want templars to have more than just longswords but you are under the impression it required the nerfing of 4 classes, then you list one change that was made before the new knight stuff even hit.
I guess my real question is, what are you talking about dude? @Aakrin
He's saying that in the post-reave world of Imperian, classes that cannot tank reave are functionally irrelevant. The man may be wrong but he is not wholly incoherent, geez.
I swear... I still wish every circle just had exactly the same mechanics. Like, literally, magick and demonic would have templars, outriders, monks, etc... Or, AM and magick would have summoners, wytches, diabolists... and each circle would just call them something different and put different skins on them, but all of the ablities would be EXACTLY the same I realize it will NEVER happen because it's "boring", but if it did, we could have these discussions from such a different place, because if something was ridiculous, everyone would be feeling the pain. You'd still have bigger groups, groups with better leaders, but any discussion about whether or not X is OP or just bad game design would come from a place of everyone being on both the dishing out and receiving end of it. Ugh.
Comments
@Khizan I know Hunter has never been a super tank, but every class lived much longer than they do now. Fights were longer. That's what happens when everyone isn't doing 300+ damage combos. As a side-effect of not dying so fast, you sip more, eat more toadstool, and have more opportunities to shield, prismatic, shardheal, commit, touch crystal, and escape, all of which further your ability to live. A slight adjustment in damage dealt could(and hopefully will) have a larger impact than what might seem obvious on paper, just for those reasons.
We'll see.
I'm not a massive fan, because most of the damage support from runeguard and dk come either from the enhancements or from cure denial/higher than comparable mechanics comboable damage (sowulu). Templars damage is pretty much all built into reave (I am eliminating flare as the comboable +30 damage is pretty much par for the course across the board for knight now).
This change pretty much still leaves rg as the DoT king (half sip for 2 rounds, eliminate toadstool for a round, etc) and retains dks brutal burst (unartied dk still hits me in my tankiest prof with maxed out mitigation for > 260). Templar doesn't really have a high end viable strategy now (the affliction build is far too slow in today's meta, and emblazing isn't really useable given its conflicting pre requirements.
I agree something needed to be done about the frontloaded burst, but this leaves templar pretty toothless while leaving dk/rg with pretty much the same potency as previously. I'm pretty religious about trying to make my preferred profession work, but I would not touch templar for single combat and would be pretty reluctant for teams now, and I am maxed out for it.
@Garryn
The problem is not Reave so much as the problem is everything else attached to the Reave.
This change to Reave has made Templar Garbage while really not hurting the deathknight and the runeguard. The Deathknight can still pull out 160+ damage out of nothing but soulquench+negate or 240+ damage out of fleshburn+soulquench+negate, without even going into the soulstorm. That's enough damage to make Reave/Reave viable as a burst attack even if the Reave itself did zero damage. Which is fortunate for them, since that's about what Reave does now.
Runeguards are also sitting pretty right now, tbh. Toadstool denial, shield denial, half-sips, cure denials, and sowulu as a huge unblockable typed damage flare. And that's without even getting into their ability to tie a cool 100+ damage worth of enhancements into the combo pretty easily.
Templars got the shaft here, though. Flare does garbage damage with Faithroot, and if you choose to consume a rite the damage upgrades from "garbage" to "rubbish. Their passive damage tick is consumed by their full-damage flare as well as their prismatic breaking, and it sometimes hits the mana the opponent has no use for, which is basically the same thing as the tick missing altogether in any kind of 1v1 situation. Emblazing has a combined health and affliction trigger, so that it never gets to go off, and Burning has a 50% health trigger, which is lower than the trigger on any comparable enhancement. Also, Flare and Emblazing and Burning all do fire damage, which is the most commonly resisted element in the game.
The change to Reave should have been a change to basically everything BUT reave.
"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."
Confusion says hello!
That aside, the damage option needs to be viable in 1v1 because there's a very small population of people who have any interest whatsoever in developing affliction combat routines, largely because of the difficulty imposed by coding the tracker.
"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."
Getting rather negative feedback about the Reave change, unless there's some better idea, I'm going to partially revert it, so that the damage is about halfway between the current and the original state.
Reave damage itself was fine, it's all the other crap that gets to go along with the Reave that's the huge problem. It's honestly probably an issue for a small beta phase now that we've got a few months of experience with it under our belts.
"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."
Yeah, but are we talking "We'll do that in 6-8 months" or "We'll do that in a couple weeks"?
Most of the knight changes would not be hugely complex things. Remove negate, limit enhancement flares to one per DSL, change pithakhan to only hit 1 sip, etc.
"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."
I guess my real question is, what are you talking about dude? @Aakrin