QA May 2023

[Undone]

The skill falls way short of what it should to be currently. The combat speed of this game with respect to skills, threat, aggro transfer, number of available skills is relatively low and slow. To force gameplay which requires perfectly coordinated timing of a full group within a small radius without consideration of many other factors, not the least of which is the lack of threat modifiers on marshal skills and you just have to wonder how the use of the skill after changes is possible. It is not that the skill is impossible to use, it is just that it is more than a pain in the ass to use and not worth the effort. The skill was gutted to put it simply.

This is where you and I disagree. @Drindin typically plays a Marshal in our weekly dev test sessions and he uses halt on nearly every pull with great success. And as I've mentioned before we're all pretty bad at the game when compared with everyone else in the community. We've also done a fair bit of observing different groups using Halt with plenty of success.

Halt's description is "Forceful move which stops enemies in front of you in their tracks" is a pretty accurate description in my opinion. The recent changes to NPC targeting while rooted is entirely logical and is in line with just about every MMO out there that I can think of. It's what one would expect from a rooted mob. The previous behavior was abnormal and made Halt basically an AoE stun as long as the player with the most threat was out of their combat range. There are only 3 types of primary CC in the game (stun, fear, root) and they all have their pros and cons. If you don't find the ability to root multiple mobs useful then by all means don't use it.

To force gameplay which requires perfectly coordinated timing of a full group within a small radius

Make the content difficult. Many of us are all for it. But give us the tools to make it possible. Even if that means a much higher player skill cap.

I also find it a bit contradictory that you ask for more difficult content with a higher player skill cap while also asking that Halt be reverted so that it requires a lower skill cap to use effectively.

 

[Tulach]

This is where you and I disagree. @Drindin typically plays a Marshal in our weekly dev test sessions and he uses halt on nearly every pull with great success. And as I've mentioned before we're all pretty bad at the game when compared with everyone else in the community. We've also done a fair bit of observing different groups using Halt with plenty of success.

Halt's description is "Forceful move which stops enemies in front of you in their tracks" is a pretty accurate description in my opinion. The recent changes to NPC targeting while rooted is entirely logical and is in line with just about every MMO out there that I can think of. It's what one would expect from a rooted mob. The previous behavior was abnormal and made Halt basically an AoE stun as long as the player with the most threat was out of their combat range. There are only 3 types of primary CC in the game (stun, fear, root) and they all have their pros and cons. If you don't find the ability to root multiple mobs useful then by all means don't use it.

The skill prior was worth the sacrifice to AC, threat, and defensive abilities compared to the knight tool kit. After the changes the sacrifices to those areas does not justify playing a marshal vs a far superior tanking class. Unless there are plans to upgrade or change other marshal abilities and Juggs for that matter the sacrifices made to simply root a mob are no longer worth it. There are a handful of Marshals over level 35, and even fewer Juggs. I honestly try to be as objective as possible before bringing something up. And although many times I do not agree with your direction I will still happily supply the feasibility using the math of an encounter.

Im sure a few of us would be happy to join you guys and demonstrate some of our observations. If not next week go try the Drolsc camp in Grimstone canyon with your group. Pull three or four mobs at a level appropriate group, then have him halt the pull and drag one back. Coordinated or not someone is going to die.

 

[BamRenatus]

Screech is stacking

If screech is the grub bat confuse, it has always stacked.

 

[Tulach]

I also find it a bit contradictory that you ask for more difficult content with a higher player skill cap while also asking that Halt be reverted so that it requires a lower skill cap to use effectively.

So things like making halt have a 12 meter range vs a 5 meter range would change things to be more player skill based vs being force into grouping mobs before casting. That would allow positional coordination of the tank (requiring higher player skill cap) without making the skill any stronger.

Or lowering the cooldown of the ability. Considering the DR on the skill and the stamina cost it is not possible to continue to cast the ability, but that would again allow more creative use of the ability to place mobs in positions where the group healer for instance is not immediately fragged when you AOE halt a mob.

Or Make halt a frontal cone with a massive range instead.

Those type of changes force higher player skill cap but allow for more creative use without changing your vision of the skill. Making a skill have low range with a long cooldown forces the skill to be used in only one way. Let groups be more creative with skill while allowing player skill to rule rather than cooldowns. We are already starved as tanks for stamina and limited by that give the flexibility how to use whatever skill we want until we run out. That results in player choice, more engaging gameplay, and rewards higher player skill

 

[XerWolf]

Its an ability that causes disadvantage on attacks. The ability should replace the last instance if a new instance is applied.

 

[Undone]

The skill prior was worth the sacrifice to AC, threat, and defensive abilities compared to the knight tool kit. After the changes the sacrifices to those areas does not justify playing a marshal vs a far superior tanking class. Unless there are plans to upgrade or change other marshal abilities and Juggs for that matter the sacrifices made to simply root a mob are no longer worth it. There are a handful of Marshals over level 35, and even fewer Juggs. I honestly try to be as objective as possible before bringing something up. And although many times I do not agree with your direction I will still happily supply the feasibility using the math of an encounter.

The grass is always greener. Specs will continue to change and evolve as we develop the game. Chasing "the best" is likely going to lead you to respecing frequently. None of our specs are intended to be the best in every situation. The knight for example is designed to excel in one-on-one combat so it's not all too surprising that you might find their kit far superior - but the key here is that their kit is superior in some situations, not all.

If you find Marshal fitting to your play style and feel that the kit is lacking in specific areas then I encourage you to focus on providing that feedback. Asking us to revert bug fixes because you enjoyed the previous functionality is not pushing the spec forward. Identify specifically where you find the kit lacking and propose reasonable changes that you feel would move things in the right direction.

 

[Torthur]

1. What stats are getting capped?
2. What is the cap going to be?
3. What are the flanking changes?
4. Any chance you could push the lay of the land speed increase?

 

[Lethal]

Berserker:

• Fury and Assault no longer reduce in stamina cost as part of their progression
• Wind Up and Fury no longer stack

• Fury and Assault no longer reduce in stamina cost as part of their progression

This can be seen as nothing other than a nerf to the Berserker Class.

Assault is our Main Attack and often our ONLY attack ability we can have on our bar due to 6 of the 8 slots taken up by buffs + secondwind... If we are pulling add in Intimate 7 of 8... If we are not pulling and want to control aggro then Fading Strike needs to be on the bar again 7 of 8.

At level 50 Assault pre-nerf still cost a WOPPING 15 percent stamina..
After the nerf that changes to an even greater number of 20 percent stamina..
At 50 Pre-Nerf Fury cost 5 percent stam.... After nerf that changes to 10 percent stamina..

The Berserker class already has stamina issues and now that problem is made worse while drastically reducing our dmg potential.

Wind Up and Fury no longer stack

This actually goes as far as to change the rotation of the Berserker Class. Stacking Windup, Follow through. and Fury is a fundamental part of the Berserker class rotation.

Adric even recognized this himself when he stated,

"Things are a bit annoying already having to use Wind-up, Follow Through, then Fury to really hit that peak Berserker mode"
According to this Berserker will no longer be able to reach "Peak Berserk mode" if these changes go live.

When the new skills were added Adric even made the rotation he wanted the Berserker to use clear when he said this :



Now suddenly we are getting a patch that makes it impossible to do said rotation. Our New Skill Eye of the Storm had the purpose of being the buff we popped for using our Attack abilities/Abilty (Assault Spam). We used Windup with our followthrough and Fury. Eye of the Storm will lose its purpose if these changes go live then the rotation will change to just using Windup for Attack abilities, then using fury/follow through... rinse repeat.

Berserker has one Job in a group. One. That job is to deal Damage. Now in this patch you buff the Damage of other strikers that have real group utility like rez through heals, run speed, loong range lull, and amazing Crowd Control skills but decide to completely neuter the Berserker damage profile.

I have 0 issues with wanting to buff classes, which makes them more enjoyable to play in process.

However, this nerf to the Berserker is unacceptably excessive.

 

[AdricLives]

Just checked Mark in QA. I made a brig skill post a while back which i'll reference here:

"Its a static damage value that deals more or less the same damage as 1 auto attack hit that takes 5% stamina and 2 seconds to cast. I think that says enough about how good it is.

My suggestions
- Make it 3 charges to really be in line with the level its obtained, or triple the amount of damage dealt in a single hit, possibly adding a 4th charge(or quadrupling the damage) when it levels up to Mark II at level 46.
- If that won't do, then I'd say replace the skill entirely. This was originally added to replace Paralyzing Strike so i just assume you have other ideas for skills, and i'd love to see something that is more exciting and fun to use that really compliments Brigand's kit."
What we got is a mild increase to Mark's damage. Mark level II went from 70 to 77. I can't stress enough what i stated in the first sentence quoted above. This ability is way undertuned if it expects to exist in Brigand's arsenal at al. The worst part is the 2 second cast time to deal damage equal to 1 auto attack. I've discussed it with 3 other brigands in the 30s and 40s and we are all on the same page about it.

My suggestions above remain the same.

This was part of moving Brigand/Warden up towards Berserker in damage, this was not part of refactoring Mark to make it more useful. Improving the ability is still potentially on the table, but was not part of this pass.

Its an ability that causes disadvantage on attacks. The ability should replace the last instance if a new instance is applied.

Thanks, yea I can see why this is, will try to get this one fixed.

I could understand if auto attacks weren't paused but the sword and dagger swap comment definitely looks like a mistake? I'm completely basing it on speed and it makes sense if Hatchets got the lowest increase because theyre the slowest, but next fastest is swords, then daggers, but swords gets the higher bump?

Yea I think a case of lack of sleep, thanks for bringing it up.

1. What stats are getting capped?
2. What is the cap going to be?
3. What are the flanking changes?
4. Any chance you could push the lay of the land speed increase?

1. Most everything will likely be getting a cap as they are currently not capped at all outside of things that are naturally capped like PEN. The goal of the caps is allowing high value stat items without causing issues. It's somewhat counterintuitive, but say we want to give you a max of 200 +HIT, and 8 items give you +HIT. With no cap each item can only ever give you +25 max. Which is the current itemization. If we want to open that up and allow items with +30 +40 +50 HIT then we need to cap it at the original target cap so you can use less high +HIT items instead of trying to get mediocre +HIT across all your items.
2. TBD
3. The goal of the flanking changes is multi-faceted. We want to balance the flanking types, expand the flanking stat dynamic range, and promote weapons having more specifc primary/secondary flanking bonuses.
4. 1000gp

 

[AdricLives]

However, this nerf to the Berserker is unacceptably excessive.

The goal was to try to keep the Berserker's damage spike capability, but peel back the ability to also out-sustain other strikers. So the choice to address this as an adjustment to stamina costs rather than damage to try and keep the berserker competitive although more tactical with their abilities.

As for the rotation change, the change was because Fury is +HASTE/+DMG and Windup is +DMG meaning they both have an overlapping bonus of the same type (self buff). We generally have been identifying these cases and preventing stacking of the same stat and type. I'll consider this as a special case with more testing needed however, since Eye of the Storm was specifically created to fill that gap.

 

[Torthur]

Adric,

I'd like to suggest making the stat caps:
whatever the current items give max + abilities

That way there's **no** nerf and it allows you to create these more powerful items?

 

[AdricLives]

Adric,

I'd like to suggest making the stat caps:
whatever the current items give max + abilities

That way there's **no** nerf and it allows you to create these more powerful items?

There's still some details to iron out but the discussions are around the caps being for equipment blue-stat contributions only so ability/flanking bonuses/consumables would not be capped.

 

[Tulach]

There's still some details to iron out but the discussions are around the caps being for equipment blue-stat contributions only so ability/flanking bonuses/consumables would not be capped.

What the heck is a blue stat contribution??

 

[Torthur]

What the heck is a blue stat contribution??

Mouse over a weapon it's the stat in blue that essentially affects everything. Ie if has blue +10 hit that is added into the calculations for the relevant abilities while the hit from flanking (white bonus i guess?) does not affect abilities.

 

[Undone]

Stat caps would only apply to equipped gear. Buffs will allow you to go past the cap. Some of the challenge here lies in how we convey that via UI.

 

[Trust]

Hunt log is the good one. It needs it's own menu and progressive addition of the information about mobs. More kills -> more info, for example about abilities and rare drop

 

[MarcusFromOz]

Stat caps would only apply to equipped gear. Buffs will allow you to go past the cap. Some of the challenge here lies in how we convey that via UI.

One suggestion is to make the numbers green when they are at the stat cap and red when they are over it.

So say the equipment stats caps were: Hit 15, Penetration 10, Flanking 10, 1H Weapons 7 then it would be:

Offense
Hit: +16
Penetration: +1
Flanking: +5

Damage
Hit: +7

-------------------------
A buff would temporarily lift the cap, so a +1 Hit buff would make it

Damage
Hit: +8

Zero change to the UI.

 

[Undone]

One suggestion is to make the numbers green when they are at the stat cap and red when they are over it.

I think the cleanest way to convey the info is going display it as VALUE/CAP along with some similar color coding as you described. Then obviously expand the tooltips.

 

[Tulak]

From a numbers perspective the proposed stat caps make zero sense if you plan to add gear that is much more powerful. The only thing it really accomplishes is the removal of build diversity.
A few things that seem pretty far off.
1. I can go to farm low level mobs that are 20 levels lower then me and I still take loads of damage. The reverse is completely not true. At a certain point I do Zero damage to a mob if he is very red.
2. The difference in HP from level 10 say to level 50 is too small. You remove the ability to tier damage properly because there are only so many whole numbers between 100 and 300 say. It steps difficulty way to much because it is unable to be fine tuned enough.
3. Because the numbers are so small to work with Gear upgrades, Buffs, Damage doesnt see an impactful change over the course of progression
4. Mobs at level ten and level 30 say are not enough difference in HP

Super restrictive cooldowns, timers, caps all dont make much sense. You already have a huge restriction on resources for all classes. Every class no matter what the role is limited by stamina regeneration. I can see very powerful buffs, or ultimate abilities with cooldowns or if/then requirements but otherwise you limit gameplay style and diversity after already limiting the resources to spend.

Currently stats are a give and take system. If you want to spec heavy into damage you have to give up AC for instance because you cant get high flanking and high AC without running into weight issues. That forces a build choice, which then requires sometimes 50+ hours of farming for a specific drop sometimes longer. Pushing the envelop and going all in on a give stat requires sacrifices to be made in order to accomplish whatever you are trying to do. The addition of stat caps and stronger gear just makes it so those of us who are willing to grind hundreds of hours for perfect gear are just all going to be sitting at stat cap in every stat. In doing so you removed all of the build diversity from the game and at the same time made everyone super powerful or super weak depending on the threshold you set for the stat cap. This seems like an incredibly lazy way to do itemization changes.

I am happy to share thoughts on possible implementation of a more balanced easier to manage gear progression system if interested.

Tulach Smertnik

 

[AdricLives]

From a numbers perspective the proposed stat caps make zero sense if you plan to add gear that is much more powerful. The only thing it really accomplishes is the removal of build diversity.

Here is an example. Currently we have +healing on 6 potential slots. +healing we do not want going higher than a certain %, let's say that's 60% for simplicity's sake here (actual is higher). That means each slot we need to restrict to 10% +healing max. We cannot add more slots with +healing, we cannot exceed +10 healing, even if players cannot find the items or the quests are too hard to complete, it would exceed our targets and be bad generally to balance.

We could instead of doing it this way, have a cap of 60% healing, and give you items with 10, 15, 20 +healing or add healing to every slot and let you decide which piece is best based on their other stats and your available gear. The overall power, the amount of that +healing is determined by level and presence of other stats on the item, so it's not so much "power" increase, but shifting numbers around to allow for more targeted itemization. Like comparing an item with +10healing/+10stam regen vs +15 healing vs +20 stam regen. Their relative power and value could be similar depending on your spec and what you value. Ideally there is increased flexibility in the items that we can offer without "breaking the bank".

Yes we purposely keep the numbers low and don't go into exponential scaling. Content remains dangerous especially group content. This does shrink our dynamic range, but this is what we are aiming for in terms of relative power across the level ranges. Damage isn't exponentially increasing, but people definitely feel those bumps and players hitting for 100-200+ at higher levels and that feels good.