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Codename Entertainment Forums > Shards of Titan > General Discussion > Class balance analysis

Class balance analysis
40 Posts	Link to post - Posted March 12th 2015 at 11:47 AM dansonage For a while now I have noticed a lot of players (mostly wizards) complaining about imbalance between the classes. So I have decided to do a semi in depth analysis of the classes. I created a spreadsheet that details all of the skills in the skill books for each class, and states the damage and effects of each one. for the damage calculations i have assumed each skill is level 10 and wizards have AP=10000, Warriors have AD=10000, Rangers have AP=AD=5000. I have not taken armour or MR into account. Due to formatting issues I can't paste the whole sheet here. Highlights are - Maximum 1 turn damage: (no aim/furious) Wizards=36285, warriors=37230, Rangers=38275. - Maximum 2 turn damage: Wizards (double flame laser)= 72570, Warriors (furious impale)=94937, Rangers (aim piercing arrow) = 97601. - Maximum 2 turn (0 energy at start): Wizards (phase flame laser)= 36285, Warriors (furious overpower) = 66797, rangers (aim rapid reload) = 59262. It is clear that in a sustained fight a warrior and ranger can deal significantly more damage than a wizard. However when we look at the effects gained from skills a wizard using phase and freeze has a very good chance of winning any pvp match. This is because the 2 turn 55% slow, stun chance, chance for taking 0 dmg and increased armour are very strong pvp bonuses. the stun can wreck warrior and ranger aim/furious combos and the slow gives a massive speed bonus. I personally believe that should an improved pvp mode come out then wizards would be the strongest class. The problem now is that the only reference for comparing players is in mission scores where the higher damage of rangers and warriors makes a difference. A few people have mentioned that phase shift should get a double damage bonus added to it. however if that happens for the game to be balanced then the extra secondary effects that a wizard gets would have to be nerfed. doing this runs the risk of making all classes the same. this was mentioned by Dave in a different thread "It is intentionally that warriors have more armor than wizards. It's our intention that classes be as equal as possible but also different from each other - not just copies of skills and stats with different names and graphics - this, while a greater challenge for us, should make a less boring game for our players overall. Class balance will continue to evolve as we update and add more content. But we will continue to give wizards less armor because...... they are wizards!" I agree with this. I think that the solution to balancing the classes is in reworking the skill book. I mentioned this in a previous post. I think that the skill book should become a skill tree. Each class should get two trees, one that deals with passives like Hp, speed, armour, loot chance, crit chance etc.... this tree would be common for all classes, the second tree would be specific to each class and would deal with skills, secondary effects on skill use, damage boosts etc.... This kind of skill progression gives much more control over how you build your character and will help to balance things out as each class will have damage/utility builds.
40 Posts	Link to post - Posted March 12th 2015 at 12:10 PM dansonage Also as it stands at the moment there is almost no difference between the warrior and ranger classes, wizards have a marginally different skill set that results in less damage but more utility but they are still so similar to the other two classes.
273 Posts	Link to post - Posted March 12th 2015 at 2:24 PM TsukasaWM It's not really surprising. Everyone threw a fit that wizards were to strong so they nerfed them. They just nerfed them too much.
221 Posts	Link to post - Posted March 18th 2015 at 4:42 PM Elharith My biggest issue with the current skill set for wizards overall is that wizards are traditionally strong in the aoe (kill all) skill, and at the present levels, what is supposed to be their strongest skill is their weakest. Firestorm is pitiful. The comparison above is for single target damage. I am more or less ok with my single target damage. What I want back is my firestorm.
40 Posts	Link to post - Posted March 18th 2015 at 11:29 PM dansonage for the three classes related skills (same assumed stats as before) firestorm does 6450 to all enemies with a 20% chance to slow for 2 turns. Hail of arrows does 5700 (including 20%AD), and whirlwind does 4805 +20%AP. wizards have the strongest ability here.
221 Posts	Link to post - Posted March 19th 2015 at 8:01 AM Last Edited March 19th 2015 at 8:05 AM Elharith Dansonage, my point is that each class should have a comparable maximum damage that is roughly appropriate to their type of attack. For wizards, I contend that their maximum damage attack should be in the aoe skill rather than in a single opponent. Therefore, if the maximum attack for a ranger single opponent is 38275, then the maximum attack for a wizard aoe attack should be at least roughly equivalent or higher, not 1/6 of it (38275 for rangers' single attack, cited above, compared to 6450 for wizards' firestorm). I am assuming total damage, where the 38275 would be divided across the number of wizard opponents. In this particular case, the only way a wizard would approximate total damage, assuming the 6450 is per opponent, would be if every use of firestorm were for six enemies or more. Most of the mobs are not that size, so it is still better for wizards to use single attack. However, with the traditional use of wizards for aoe, I would submit that their one turn mob damage should be closer to a maximum two turn single opponent damage score since they are, in effect, combining as many as six turns into a single turn. Which is close to where firestorm was before it was nerfed (it was reduced by 40%). At the moment, given a choice of fellow players in a multi-player mission, wizards are the least popular partners because they are consistently underperformers compared to the others. Why take a wizard when they are notoriously underpowered and glassy if you can get a ranger or warrior who are, in order, fast with high damage, or armored-up and hard to kill?
221 Posts	Link to post - Posted March 19th 2015 at 9:20 AM Last Edited March 19th 2015 at 9:43 AM Elharith Oh, and Dansonage, there is one problem with your speadsheet calculations. At the current levels, there is no way that the damage skills could be anywhere what you have figured because to have level 10 flame laser means you could not use it unless you had 30 previous autoattacks (building mana 1 at a time) because it requires 30 mana, and wizards either need fireball at 1 to build mana at 6 per attack, or phase at 5 to build mana at 30 per use, and with only 30 skill points available, you can't skill laser at 10 along with INT and Health at 10. And due to the glassy nature of wizards (less armor and speed on gear), they have to have INT and Health at 10 each or they die. So, while the projected damage looks similar, the reality of it in play is something else entirely.
40 Posts	Link to post - Posted March 19th 2015 at 1:09 PM dansonage While I agree that it would be good for greater class diversity and an improved AOE for wizards would make the class more appealing to play, It won't help to breach the score gap on the scoreboards. sure you will complete missions faster but your overall damage would be far below. I am aware that it is unlikely for a wizard to have 10 points in laser, it was a purely hypothetical max damage analysis. even as a ranger i use 5 aim 5 rr which deals significantly less damage than the maximum possible. the differences in HP and armor between the classes are quite small to be honest, at least by late game. my armor is about 30% reduction of both, comparable wizards to me have at least 50% MR and 10% physical reduction. though admitted most of the damage in game is physical at the moment so MR isn't as useful. health wise though there is little difference. As far as I am aware it is rangers that miss out on secondary stats of equipment as we can only get +75AD/AP whereas warriors and rangers can get up to +150AP/AD. So to sum up. Max damage analysis is hypothetical, just to show that for high score runs wizards will miss out (cause by late game you could run heroics without and points in HP). Increasing the wizards AOE would be good as it would help to distinguish between the classes. Now we just need something to make rangers and warriors more diverse! Also where do you get less speed on gear? is it the boots? or secondary stats?
221 Posts	Link to post - Posted March 19th 2015 at 1:35 PM Elharith When we get speed, it appears to be comparable, but it seems to show up less on our gear than on ranger gear. I was speculating on what might diversify ranger and warrior skills. I think rapid reload at a level between where it was broken and where it is now would diversify rangers, and better stats on cleave for warriors. thinking of what kinds of skills each class has in literature featuring those character types
40 Posts	Link to post - Posted March 19th 2015 at 1:55 PM dansonage Fair enough, personally I have had difficulty getting speed stats on my HoT gear. and it too quite a few reforges to get my speed stats on my rings. that would be a start, my main problem with the diversity the classes is that each class has essentially the same skills. each have a spell/ability to hit all enemies, a spell to hit 1 row, 1 high damage nuke, 1 energy gain, the same base stat bonuses, and a couple of lower damage effect driven skills. with slightly varying damage and secondary effects of course. I really think that new skills need to be introduced that are unique to each class, and there need to be different ways to build the characters. at the moment there are really only 2 effective builds for each class, 10 HP 10 Primary damage stat and one/2 of your skills for damage. or the high damage build, 10 primary stat 10 aim/phase/furious and laser/pierce/impale. obviously the damage skill is a matter of preference but the build has the same purpose. I would like to see a large range of builds, i.e. loot chance builds, tank builds, damage builds, secondary effect builds, increased exp builds, etc... and for this we need more skills to choose from.
221 Posts	Link to post - Posted March 19th 2015 at 2:27 PM Elharith That would be wonderful, Dansonage. Then we could diversify even within classes. I really want to be a battle mage, combining warrior and wizard skills.
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