Clearly the radical changes Broadsword implemented brought in a host of new players. Mad action everywhere. /s
In all seriousness, the only changes I liked were the potions (Supp pots and Omni pots) and Bountycraft since BS took over. You know, QoL stuff. The campaigns, seasonal event items, even DF revamp, and class balance changes were too much. They know they screwed up. We didn't even get an April Fool's day patch this year. Yet, their approach remains the same.
Betting on EC to fix the population issue caused by unfavorable patches that are still in place is a tall order. There may be some players who come back that haven't played during the BS era. However, I strongly doubt players who left during the BS era will come back for any appreciable length of time as the reasons they left remain unaddressed. BS can revert all they want but the damage has been done. Maybe a new server will spark hope.
"The grab bag isn't for explaining every single class change decision or reasoning or that's all we would ever do." - John_Broadsword
"The type of of dev communication of 30 mins a day updates mentioned here just isn't feasible." - Carol_Broadsword
"Our Studio. Our Rules." - http://www.mythicentertainment.com/
I have never heard someone complain so damn much about a RR5 ability. Did you play Buffsteria BEFORE there were RR5 abilities? I did, doesn’t bother me either way. I can live with or without them.
I am not in favor of locks getting 425 pbaoe, or bains, or necros. The classes I want to compare should be locks vs bains and necros given they all have some ability to UI. Instead, I believe because of the way the specs work on lock, the 325 should have the snare component on the level 45 pbaoe and not require 50 spec. If you are going to go moc on a pbaoer on mid you would go SM or nothing, because it's 30% more damage.
Also I would be remiss if I did not add that actually Bain is by far the most dps heavy pbaoe class since your premise assums a moc PB'er.
Bains do have a somewhat slower pbaoe than a 392dex pbaoer but remember it casts at 100% damage even with moc up, so actually the DPS for 343 bains assuming they also quick cast one aoe body debuff/dd is on par with 325 pbaoer moc5'ing over a ten second period. Now, if the bain also mocs, it's an amazing amount of dps.
Bains can do 50PW + moc = 343 pulse 350 radius 2.5 sec pulse + don't forget you can cast a second spell at the same time 141 aoe 350 radius 10% body resist decrease. Spam that body aoe on top of your pulse, and just eat things up. Or even better pbaoe on a pile and aoe the healers elsewhere.
Charge V for free was a huge buff. This resulted every light tank invest heavily in other dmg RAs, and Reflex attack been nerfed because of that. Too bad, reflex attack was fun, and free Charge killed it. Maybe figure something else out, reflex attack used to be unique.
Short test on epic armor WL (46 curse) on lvl 50 Dummy
150 Range away with Purecast: 315 dmg
150 Range away with Critical Range (115%): 362 dmg
Which is almost 15% bonus damage in this case that would equal a 373,75 delve PB even with 46 Curse. With 120% range, moc, and 425 delve PB the warlocks PB damage would be insane, so I guess thats the reasoning behind it. Once there is a minimal distance from caster, the range bonus is amazing.
Edit, some bonus numbers:
100 Range away with Purecast: 442 dmg
100 Range away with Critical Range (115%): 476 dmg (7,7%)
200 Range away with Purecast: 207 dmg
200 Range away with Critical Range (115%): 268 dmg (29,5%)!
It's fairly rare to sit constantly on 0 range from enemies. Warlocks should just go MoC too like all other casters if they want really high PB dmg.
that's just not how it works. warlocks received special mechanics to compensate for other restrictions. baseline spells on warlocks ? low dex ?
pbaoe has always been always about getting up close and personal to your target to get max damage, i you stand 150 units away from your target you are not doing the good damage. you have to stand ON TOP of the target(s) you want to kill. why do you think the pbaoe casters sit at the very edge of the entrance of the lord room to defend it ? you place yourself at extreme danger to maximize your damage output. at 200 + range, you are not going to kill stuff with pboae.
right now most pbaoe caster doing moc will do equal damage up close and personal to warlocks doing normal casts and do +-40 % more damage than warlocks doing uninterruptible casts. i'm not even going to comment that warlocks doing the uninterruptible casts are out of power in +-5 casts and with the current powerdraining they will not be able to use more uninterruptible casts after going OOP in 1-2 secs in a lord room. the decrease in radius for powerdrain will not change this as pbaoe casters are bound by there efficiency to still be in range for the powerdrain effect.
necromancers, bains and warlocks got a really bad deal from this pbaoe change.
when it look it from the perspective of my ice wizard, then wow. my tests on pendragon on my ice wizard, wtf. if i could play my ice wizard as a midgard character, he would become my next rr 13.
Stor Hurfru Muylasav, wildly swinging arms around. Vicomte Muylock, calling curses on enemies. Baron Muylaetrex, Undead guy. Baronet Muylaetrix, calling upon winter storms. Baronet Facetothewallmuppet, support type standing with his face to the wall most of the time. Baronetess Yovonne, taxi. some other chars with names starting with Muyl.
I think its too late to revert as we have gone too far with updates but i truly think this all could have been avoided if the class balance patch would have never happened.
I want to point out i think change is good and classes like the necro needed to be updated. The vision was great but not executed correctly. As i always say less is more and i think when you look at changing classes or items it is better to not go so dramatic especially in a old game like Daoc.
i couldn't agree more.
i have advocated for 5 years to get rid of the necro pet mechanic and make it a morph. they did that and got rid of all the buggy mechanics. great. but they changed the rest of the class too and fucked that up so badly...
the recurring patern :
they change something over the top and then either change other mechanics in the game, breaking up more stuff, then they change more mechanics in the game, breaking up more stuff, ... or they nerf the initial change over the top. often they compensate for the initial change by more changes that don't allow them to revert the initial change they did.
Stor Hurfru Muylasav, wildly swinging arms around. Vicomte Muylock, calling curses on enemies. Baron Muylaetrex, Undead guy. Baronet Muylaetrix, calling upon winter storms. Baronet Facetothewallmuppet, support type standing with his face to the wall most of the time. Baronetess Yovonne, taxi. some other chars with names starting with Muyl.
I do get, that warlocks are unhappy not getting the 425 delve PB.
Lets be exact then, the damage of warlocks PB now standing on top of your target will be ~31% lower then SMs. I get that it upset most of the warlocks. In theory yes, you would love to get as close to your target as possible, but in reality thats the opposite of what the enemies want to allow PBs to do. You likely hit many targets in various range, as they move, so the snaring effect might come handy, so is the range bonus of the primer, which allows outer ranges deal more damage either.
We can argue all day about it, but with range bonuses warlocks PB would greatly outperform any other PBer with the 425 delve as soon they leave the desired 0 range which is hardly achievable on many targets for multiple casts.
I was merely given an argument why I think warlocks didn't get the 425 value, but instead the snare one. We see how it turns out, maybe snaring PB will get a little boost (like 360-370ish) too later on.
Regardless of the value change, I think WLs are in deep denial with a sub-spec freecast. Range bonus primer clearly affects PB damage as soon target is not 0 range away, and the ability to spec MoC is there. Yes, if you don't spec it, you will run out of power fast, but for gods sake, spec it then, if you wish to be a bomber on a WL. Every class has different utilities, narrowing it down to 2 abilities (pb, freecast) argument is just pointless, especially with an ability thats barely specced on.
I think we still going to see some Bomber action with a mix of SMs and Warlocks for snare + AoE stun - which is mid exclusive - in the future. I would still get a WL in a bomber team, but hope they spec MoC.
@Gavner you are asking Muy to be objective about a change affecting a class he plays? Nah, warlocks should get a 459 delve pbae in curse and witchcraft specs that shears con and str/con, 90% snares the target (unbreakable) and that diseases, imho.
Also, people just forget that locks can dump their pbae chamber and 20% crit chance chamber while pbae'ing? That's 20% more chance to massively increase your damage for 25 seconds and that's in the best way possible, spike damage. You add ypur WP on top and it looks fairly easy to cap 49% crit chance. On top you get less damage drop off from the range primer?
I do get, that warlocks are unhappy not getting the 425 delve PB.
Lets be exact then, the damage of warlocks PB now standing on top of your target will be ~31% lower then SMs. I get that it upset most of the warlocks. In theory yes, you would love to get as close to your target as possible, but in reality thats the opposite of what the enemies want to allow PBs to do. You likely hit many targets in various range, as they move, so the snaring effect might come handy, so is the range bonus of the primer, which allows outer ranges deal more damage either.
We can argue all day about it, but with range bonuses warlocks PB would greatly outperform any other PBer with the 425 delve as soon they leave the desired 0 range which is hardly achievable on many targets for multiple casts.
I was merely given an argument why I think warlocks didn't get the 425 value, but instead the snare one. We see how it turns out, maybe snaring PB will get a little boost (like 360-370ish) too later on.
Regardless of the value change, I think WLs are in deep denial with a sub-spec freecast. Range bonus primer clearly affects PB damage as soon target is not 0 range away, and the ability to spec MoC is there. Yes, if you don't spec it, you will run out of power fast, but for gods sake, spec it then, if you wish to be a bomber on a WL. Every class has different utilities, narrowing it down to 2 abilities (pb, freecast) argument is just pointless, especially with an ability thats barely specced on.
I think we still going to see some Bomber action with a mix of SMs and Warlocks for snare + AoE stun - which is mid exclusive - in the future. I would still get a WL in a bomber team, but hope they spec MoC.
tbh, i'm not asking for 425 delve. i just think that the snare pbaoe is stupid and no warlock is going to spec 50 curse and be left with a worse uninterruptible primer. most of us are still sore about the nerf to the uninterruptible primer from august 2017. most of us are sore about the uninterruptible primer's function being more and more eroded over time. the warlock mechanic of only having one baseline spell line compared to other casters having 3 baselines means warlocks are pretty much stuck with the specline they have and getting very little except for the primer mechanic from their sub spec. if we have to spec for moc, then what do we get from the sub spec ? warlocks now are a shade of their former self, and yes, first incarnation of warlocks was a monster. a slam your head into the keyboard and rofl at the dead target's type monster. when they completely revamped the warlock class i though they were fine. it doesn't seem BS agrees with that though so they nerfed the class a bit more since.
i think i'm more worried about how devastating pbaoe will become with the 425 delve pbaoe than that i'm worried/upset about warlocks not getting that. i wonder if a nerf will come in the near future to the 425 delve...
Stor Hurfru Muylasav, wildly swinging arms around. Vicomte Muylock, calling curses on enemies. Baron Muylaetrex, Undead guy. Baronet Muylaetrix, calling upon winter storms. Baronet Facetothewallmuppet, support type standing with his face to the wall most of the time. Baronetess Yovonne, taxi. some other chars with names starting with Muyl.
@Gavner you are asking Muy to be objective about a change affecting a class he plays? Nah, warlocks should get a 459 delve pbae in curse and witchcraft specs that shears con and str/con, 90% snares the target (unbreakable) and that diseases, imho.
Also, people just forget that locks can dump their pbae chamber and 20% crit chance chamber while pbae'ing? That's 20% more chance to massively increase your damage for 25 seconds and that's in the best way possible, spike damage. You add ypur WP on top and it looks fairly easy to cap 49% crit chance. On top you get less damage drop off from the range primer?
It still has great potential to be a good bomber.
if i take away your sarcastic undertone then i have to say you nearly describe mana eldritches or ice wizards tbh.
ah, the crit chamber, first it's not 20 %, it's 10 %, secondly, most of the high rr warlocks don't even bother putting it up due to the little effect it has on warlocks with capped wild power. even at lower RR, i don't see a lot of warlocks using it due to the reuse timers on chambers. if you use it, then you can't use another chamber shortly after it.
Stor Hurfru Muylasav, wildly swinging arms around. Vicomte Muylock, calling curses on enemies. Baron Muylaetrex, Undead guy. Baronet Muylaetrix, calling upon winter storms. Baronet Facetothewallmuppet, support type standing with his face to the wall most of the time. Baronetess Yovonne, taxi. some other chars with names starting with Muyl.
Dont forget the warlock is the only class in game with a free moc .
Instead of there being only one class in the game, I'd rank the "free moc/UI" type class abilities like this:
Bain>BD>Lock>Necro>Tic
All that's situational of course, but Lock is in the middle of that list because effective levels of UI require a significant dps tradeoff. If you want Bain style effective/use anytime UI you are basically left with a pbaoe that hits for 110 or an AOE that hits for roughly 135. One comment from this patch is that it will be interesting to see how/if the change from 30s to 15s for the bain pulse impacts anything. My experience is that a ban wants to move after 10-15 seconds in any case, but this could make a difference as it's not long enough for your QC to come back up.
I still like warlocks, as I didn't play them alot I still find them interesting, however like Witchcraft more which is special, and also can be sub-specced. BTW, Bainshees also have 1 baseline.
425 Delve might really end up being OP, I wish they were given the existing PB lines like 10-15% resist debuff instead of delve, this damage cap upping became the new norm of balancing, which also punishes more with less resist, and already debuffed targets.
I also wish if they wouldn't remove currencies based on "being complicated", find it much harder to explain new players what are those currencies that can't be achieved, but still exist in game. Or even if they go down BP route, make the old ways (killing in dragon zone, toa zone) drop BP token instead of auru/scale. This BP only thing just limits options for PvE right now as is.
Will see how things turn out, and give feedback on it as we go on.
Have to break the coffin to remove the nails at this point =P
"The grab bag isn't for explaining every single class change decision or reasoning or that's all we would ever do." - John_Broadsword
"The type of of dev communication of 30 mins a day updates mentioned here just isn't feasible." - Carol_Broadsword
"Our Studio. Our Rules." - http://www.mythicentertainment.com/
@Muylae it is 20% using the ch9 set, there is no reason not to use the set.
Why would you not use it? You could get wp9 + 10% chamber caps you at 49% crit.
Or, you can save some points in WP, use the set, still get 49% crit chance and reinvest points in MoM and aug acuity. I see a win win there.
I don't see why you think locks are suddenly crap when you didn't see supp SMs as much as locks in this current patch setting.
Curse locks still get great tools other than the pbae, and can still dish out great damage
uhm, cloth casters have 10 % base chance to crit, wp 9 adds 39 %, so that's 49 % ANYTIME. not going to waste a chamber timer to get 1 % increase in crit chance. not going to avoid wp 9 because then, with a chamber i can sometimes reach the same crit rate. and ok, i'm talking out of the luxury spot of having a rr 13+ warlock.
and it's a bad argument to include the set bonus on any class in the ability list of that class as standard.
and don't you think it's ironic they nerfed uninterruptible chamber and then unnerf it a bit with a 3 piece gear set, so after the nerf and with the 3 piece gear bonus, warlocks are still in a worse place than they were before while other classes actually got a bonus out of the the 3 piece set ? oh, i'm not sour, no...
Stor Hurfru Muylasav, wildly swinging arms around. Vicomte Muylock, calling curses on enemies. Baron Muylaetrex, Undead guy. Baronet Muylaetrix, calling upon winter storms. Baronet Facetothewallmuppet, support type standing with his face to the wall most of the time. Baronetess Yovonne, taxi. some other chars with names starting with Muyl.
Comments
In all seriousness, the only changes I liked were the potions (Supp pots and Omni pots) and Bountycraft since BS took over. You know, QoL stuff. The campaigns, seasonal event items, even DF revamp, and class balance changes were too much. They know they screwed up. We didn't even get an April Fool's day patch this year. Yet, their approach remains the same.
Betting on EC to fix the population issue caused by unfavorable patches that are still in place is a tall order. There may be some players who come back that haven't played during the BS era. However, I strongly doubt players who left during the BS era will come back for any appreciable length of time as the reasons they left remain unaddressed. BS can revert all they want but the damage has been done. Maybe a new server will spark hope.
"The type of of dev communication of 30 mins a day updates mentioned here just isn't feasible." - Carol_Broadsword
"Our Studio. Our Rules." - http://www.mythicentertainment.com/
Good. That Melon Farmer campaigned hard to get old Hunter RR5 removed. I think my opinion of him is clear.
You should have seen Gaven when he complained about us HAVING the old Hunter RR5. I would seem timid in comparison.
I'd buy it. Not even kidding.
@Gavner sorry on the gaven.
I am not in favor of locks getting 425 pbaoe, or bains, or necros. The classes I want to compare should be locks vs bains and necros given they all have some ability to UI. Instead, I believe because of the way the specs work on lock, the 325 should have the snare component on the level 45 pbaoe and not require 50 spec. If you are going to go moc on a pbaoer on mid you would go SM or nothing, because it's 30% more damage.
Also I would be remiss if I did not add that actually Bain is by far the most dps heavy pbaoe class since your premise assums a moc PB'er.
Bains do have a somewhat slower pbaoe than a 392dex pbaoer but remember it casts at 100% damage even with moc up, so actually the DPS for 343 bains assuming they also quick cast one aoe body debuff/dd is on par with 325 pbaoer moc5'ing over a ten second period. Now, if the bain also mocs, it's an amazing amount of dps.
Bains can do 50PW + moc = 343 pulse 350 radius 2.5 sec pulse + don't forget you can cast a second spell at the same time 141 aoe 350 radius 10% body resist decrease. Spam that body aoe on top of your pulse, and just eat things up. Or even better pbaoe on a pile and aoe the healers elsewhere.
that's just not how it works. warlocks received special mechanics to compensate for other restrictions. baseline spells on warlocks ? low dex ?
pbaoe has always been always about getting up close and personal to your target to get max damage, i you stand 150 units away from your target you are not doing the good damage. you have to stand ON TOP of the target(s) you want to kill. why do you think the pbaoe casters sit at the very edge of the entrance of the lord room to defend it ? you place yourself at extreme danger to maximize your damage output. at 200 + range, you are not going to kill stuff with pboae.
right now most pbaoe caster doing moc will do equal damage up close and personal to warlocks doing normal casts and do +-40 % more damage than warlocks doing uninterruptible casts. i'm not even going to comment that warlocks doing the uninterruptible casts are out of power in +-5 casts and with the current powerdraining they will not be able to use more uninterruptible casts after going OOP in 1-2 secs in a lord room. the decrease in radius for powerdrain will not change this as pbaoe casters are bound by there efficiency to still be in range for the powerdrain effect.
necromancers, bains and warlocks got a really bad deal from this pbaoe change.
when it look it from the perspective of my ice wizard, then wow. my tests on pendragon on my ice wizard, wtf. if i could play my ice wizard as a midgard character, he would become my next rr 13.
i couldn't agree more.
i have advocated for 5 years to get rid of the necro pet mechanic and make it a morph. they did that and got rid of all the buggy mechanics. great. but they changed the rest of the class too and fucked that up so badly...
the recurring patern :
they change something over the top and then either change other mechanics in the game, breaking up more stuff, then they change more mechanics in the game, breaking up more stuff, ... or they nerf the initial change over the top. often they compensate for the initial change by more changes that don't allow them to revert the initial change they did.
https://divoxutils.com/users/user_2ZTPHy8tjVF9LWMgujSZfCY9Mos/characters
Lets be exact then, the damage of warlocks PB now standing on top of your target will be ~31% lower then SMs. I get that it upset most of the warlocks. In theory yes, you would love to get as close to your target as possible, but in reality thats the opposite of what the enemies want to allow PBs to do. You likely hit many targets in various range, as they move, so the snaring effect might come handy, so is the range bonus of the primer, which allows outer ranges deal more damage either.
We can argue all day about it, but with range bonuses warlocks PB would greatly outperform any other PBer with the 425 delve as soon they leave the desired 0 range which is hardly achievable on many targets for multiple casts.
I was merely given an argument why I think warlocks didn't get the 425 value, but instead the snare one. We see how it turns out, maybe snaring PB will get a little boost (like 360-370ish) too later on.
Regardless of the value change, I think WLs are in deep denial with a sub-spec freecast. Range bonus primer clearly affects PB damage as soon target is not 0 range away, and the ability to spec MoC is there. Yes, if you don't spec it, you will run out of power fast, but for gods sake, spec it then, if you wish to be a bomber on a WL. Every class has different utilities, narrowing it down to 2 abilities (pb, freecast) argument is just pointless, especially with an ability thats barely specced on.
I think we still going to see some Bomber action with a mix of SMs and Warlocks for snare + AoE stun - which is mid exclusive - in the future. I would still get a WL in a bomber team, but hope they spec MoC.
Also, people just forget that locks can dump their pbae chamber and 20% crit chance chamber while pbae'ing? That's 20% more chance to massively increase your damage for 25 seconds and that's in the best way possible, spike damage. You add ypur WP on top and it looks fairly easy to cap 49% crit chance. On top you get less damage drop off from the range primer?
It still has great potential to be a good bomber.
tbh, i'm not asking for 425 delve. i just think that the snare pbaoe is stupid and no warlock is going to spec 50 curse and be left with a worse uninterruptible primer. most of us are still sore about the nerf to the uninterruptible primer from august 2017. most of us are sore about the uninterruptible primer's function being more and more eroded over time. the warlock mechanic of only having one baseline spell line compared to other casters having 3 baselines means warlocks are pretty much stuck with the specline they have and getting very little except for the primer mechanic from their sub spec. if we have to spec for moc, then what do we get from the sub spec ? warlocks now are a shade of their former self, and yes, first incarnation of warlocks was a monster. a slam your head into the keyboard and rofl at the dead target's type monster. when they completely revamped the warlock class i though they were fine. it doesn't seem BS agrees with that though so they nerfed the class a bit more since.
i think i'm more worried about how devastating pbaoe will become with the 425 delve pbaoe than that i'm worried/upset about warlocks not getting that. i wonder if a nerf will come in the near future to the 425 delve...
if i take away your sarcastic undertone then i have to say you nearly describe mana eldritches or ice wizards tbh.
ah, the crit chamber, first it's not 20 %, it's 10 %, secondly, most of the high rr warlocks don't even bother putting it up due to the little effect it has on warlocks with capped wild power. even at lower RR, i don't see a lot of warlocks using it due to the reuse timers on chambers. if you use it, then you can't use another chamber shortly after it.
Instead of there being only one class in the game, I'd rank the "free moc/UI" type class abilities like this:
Bain>BD>Lock>Necro>Tic
All that's situational of course, but Lock is in the middle of that list because effective levels of UI require a significant dps tradeoff. If you want Bain style effective/use anytime UI you are basically left with a pbaoe that hits for 110 or an AOE that hits for roughly 135. One comment from this patch is that it will be interesting to see how/if the change from 30s to 15s for the bain pulse impacts anything. My experience is that a ban wants to move after 10-15 seconds in any case, but this could make a difference as it's not long enough for your QC to come back up.
I still like warlocks, as I didn't play them alot I still find them interesting, however like Witchcraft more which is special, and also can be sub-specced. BTW, Bainshees also have 1 baseline.
425 Delve might really end up being OP, I wish they were given the existing PB lines like 10-15% resist debuff instead of delve, this damage cap upping became the new norm of balancing, which also punishes more with less resist, and already debuffed targets.
I also wish if they wouldn't remove currencies based on "being complicated", find it much harder to explain new players what are those currencies that can't be achieved, but still exist in game. Or even if they go down BP route, make the old ways (killing in dragon zone, toa zone) drop BP token instead of auru/scale. This BP only thing just limits options for PvE right now as is.
Will see how things turn out, and give feedback on it as we go on.
Why would you not use it? You could get wp9 + 10% chamber caps you at 49% crit.
Or, you can save some points in WP, use the set, still get 49% crit chance and reinvest points in MoM and aug acuity. I see a win win there.
I don't see why you think locks are suddenly crap when you didn't see supp SMs as much as locks in this current patch setting.
Curse locks still get great tools other than the pbae, and can still dish out great damage
"The type of of dev communication of 30 mins a day updates mentioned here just isn't feasible." - Carol_Broadsword
"Our Studio. Our Rules." - http://www.mythicentertainment.com/
uhm, cloth casters have 10 % base chance to crit, wp 9 adds 39 %, so that's 49 % ANYTIME. not going to waste a chamber timer to get 1 % increase in crit chance. not going to avoid wp 9 because then, with a chamber i can sometimes reach the same crit rate. and ok, i'm talking out of the luxury spot of having a rr 13+ warlock.
and it's a bad argument to include the set bonus on any class in the ability list of that class as standard.
and don't you think it's ironic they nerfed uninterruptible chamber and then unnerf it a bit with a 3 piece gear set, so after the nerf and with the 3 piece gear bonus, warlocks are still in a worse place than they were before while other classes actually got a bonus out of the the 3 piece set ? oh, i'm not sour, no...