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\| Page 1 2 3 Minor Class Balance Adjustement - Freeze & Overpower
886 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 2:30 PM David Whittaker (CNE Dev) Hi Everyone, It was brought to our attention before the Jungle was launched that the higher levels (10+) of the skill Freeze, and the skill Overpower are significantly more powerful than they should be. Freeze at level 15 reduced target speed by 80% resulting in a reduction of speed of 5x on that target. It lasts for 2 turns so effectively the caster gets 10 turns before the target gets another attack. Overpower at level 15 reduces an enemy attack by 80% for 2 turns resulting in 5x less damage for 2 turns. The issue with these skills being they are a percent reduction. Percent reductions quickly turn in to a large multiplier once over 50%. 50% is 2x, but 90% is 10x. As such we have set the maximum value on both Freeze and Overpower to 50% reduction of Speed and Damage respectively. This change will become live sometime before the end of today. Please feel free to follow up with any questions, comments, feedback in this tread. -David
52 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 3:03 PM Annie How about doubling the damage that flamelaser does then? Give me something to kill stuff with!
	Post by Elharith deleted June 4th 2015 at 6:20 PM
232 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 3:42 PM Andaho Well, since wizard require freeze to be able to beat strong enemies, that warrior and ranger can kill, or at least come close to killing, with a furious/aim, this is a MASSIVE nerf for wizards... This is going to seriously mess up the character balance. As I've said before many times, you guys obviously don't have the time to spend on working out a good balance between the classes... so just give all classes the same skills already! - You have your hands full trying to balance the characters vs the mobs, so you obviously don't have the time to work on the character balance properly. Does this mean to get 50% slow with freeze, we're going to need to waste a whole 15 points in it? This will effectively make it a completely useless skill... Because rather than freezing an enemy by only 50% with 15 points (being worse than it used to be at level 10), it would be better to put those points in Intel and do >80% more damage to it instead.... although, wizard damage is puny, compared to what rangers and warriors can do :S You can't just keep doing these bodge fixes all the time! >:( "Weeks of programming can save hours of planning" -- unknown
8 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 4:16 PM Dave Buckingham You speak of the target not being able to attack back until several turns.... then explain this to me. I am fighting 6 spiders and hit my fury, all 6 attack me, then my fury kicks in and all 6 attack me again, by this time I am down to 1 hit of dying. This is on normal or T1 so tell me how my 15 OP is over power????? I really am getting upset over all these changes.. In BH I have worked my ass of to get speed up to almost 20 only to have it killed last week (yes I know that was fixed) but before it was then I began to work on other powers/skills to make up for that only to have those items reduced the following week. All these up and down changes has really tested me about remaining with this game, I admit I'm an addict of SoT but sometimes enough is enough.
793 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 4:18 PM Justin Stocks (CNE Dev) Balance isn't just about damage output in a single turn. You also have to consider damage input, damage done per enemy turn, etc. With Freeze you have an ability that can prevent your enemy from attacking, letting you get free attacks in before they attack again. At 80% speed reduction your enemy only gets 1/5th as many attacks. At equal speeds, that means you get 5 attacks for every 1 they get. Thinking of it this way, Freeze could and should be considered a 4-5x damage buff against a single enemy, since after using it you get 4+ free turns of damage while your enemy sits there. Let me show you what I mean: Before the change: Using Furious/Aim you do a 0 damage attack (when activating Furious/Aim), then your enemy attacks, then you do an attack of up to 2.8x damage (with 15pts), then your enemy attacks (if it's not dead). You take one hit of damage in exchange for 1 hit of 180% more damage. That's 1 hit worth of damage in, and at most 2.8 hits worth of damage out. With Freeze you do big freeze damage (it's comparable to a non-furious impale), then your enemy attacks, then you attack 4-5 times, then your enemy attacks (if it's not dead). You take one hit of damage in exchange for 5-6 hits (1 of freeze damage & 4-5 other spells). That's 1 hit worth of damage in, and 5-6 hits worth of damage out. That's MASSIVELY better than Furious/Aim. After the change: Freeze still does its big damage, then your enemy attacks, then you attack 2+ times, then your enemy attacks (if it's not dead). You take one hit of damage in exchange for 3+ hits (1 of of freeze damage & 2+ other spells). That's 1 hit of damage in, 3+ hits of damage out. That's much more comparable to Furious/Aim. Overpower was similarly overpowered when you consider damage in vs. damage out. Your enemy hits you for 20%, while you hit it for 100%. Spread out over 5 attacks each, that means you'd deal 5 turns worth of damage before it dealt 1 turn worth. TLDR: Freeze is the wizard analog of Furious/Impale. Similar, but different in its own way. It's also worth noting that it still has a 30% chance of nullifying the 1 hit in with its stun component, meaning you can do 3+ hits of damage in exchange for none taken.
50 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 4:19 PM Jomale I am just so pi$$ed beyond belief right now. I finally get to the point after all the other nerfs to feel I am playing on an equal playing ground with the rest of the players and now i am going to go back to weinie status again. That is it for putting any $$ toward this game. I did a 2 day marathon of buying special packs and running 15-20 MPS a day to reach lvl 45. I feel i have wasted my time since alpha testing this from the beginning.. Go forward one step, go 10 steps back. It is SOOOOOOO frustrating.
1 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 4:37 PM Bryhannah Just came back after the alpha... kinda glad I skipped "wizard" so far, I guess? Maybe taking a break while all the tweaks went on wasn't a bad idea, lol.
40 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 4:54 PM dansonage The way I see it your damage comparison is for single target 1 on 1 battles. The thing is there are not very many 1v1 fights in this game. the hardest fights to beat are wave battles or rounds with many enemies. in these situations freeze and OP are not very effective anyway. OP because it has a cooldown and freeze because you can only slow one of them. to quote your numbers back. using freeze at 80% slow against 4 equal speed enemies you freeze one the other three hit you, you freeze another, you are hit by the remaining two, you freeze again hit by the last one, freeze again. you have taken 6 hits and given four. this assumes you have energy to use pure freeze too. in wave fights this tactic doesn't work if the enemies deal any damage. And often the enemies are faster so get more hits in still. Reducing it to 50% will just increase the damage taken by a couple of hits in 4 turns. The way the classes work is this Rangers deal fast sustained damage, this makes us very effective at completing SP's, however we have little utility in MP's as we have no debuffs to apply. Wizards are debuff masters with shock and freeze and the ability to absorb rounds of damage, this makes them much stronger in MP fights as there are other players who can take advantage of the debuffs. However they miss out in SP's as they lack the ability to easily one shot a lot of enemies. Warriors are in between as they have a debuff skill (with a cooldown) yet can still deal high single target damage. This nerf really weakens wizards as it heavily weakens their most useful function. If you were worried about how it effects pvp combat in the arena adjust the spell so that it does a 50% slow vs players yet still 80% vs AI monsters. this way they can still be beaten in the arena and are still as strong as other classes in PvE.
	Post by Elharith deleted June 4th 2015 at 6:20 PM
52 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 4:58 PM Annie That's exactly what I was thinking, danson.
50 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 5:22 PM Last Edited June 4th 2015 at 5:22 PM Jomale Stop the tweaks....stop the nerfs!
	Post by Jomale deleted June 4th 2015 at 5:22 PM
232 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 5:31 PM Andaho ^^ good points you raise there, Dave B... Of course I can see how freeze/OP is a big issue vs 1 strong opponent, but when there are multiple enemies, being able to freeze/OP one of them, to take less damage, is essential to beating them! * Refreshing to see new post, and replying to that also * "With Freeze you have an ability that can prevent your enemy from attacking, letting you get free attacks in before they attack again." ----- With high damage skills (aim/furious), you have a skill that can prevent your enemy from attacking PERMANENTLY - because it can kill many enemies in one hit - hence, preventing them from attacking again. "Using Furious/Aim you do a 0 damage attack (when activating Furious/Aim), then your enemy attacks, then you do an attack of up to 2.8x damage (with 15pts)" ----- Using Phase you do a 0 damage attack (when activating Phase), then your enemy attacks, on the occasion that phase actually shields you, the enemy often hits someone else/one of your companions anyway, making the shield count for nothing, then you do an attack of up to 1x damage (with 15pts). "With Freeze you do big freeze damage (it's comparable to a non-furious impale)..." ----- With a wizard freeze build, you don't use intel, because you don't have the spare skill points to put in it when you're using a viable freeze build, so you do not get anything near comparable damage to impale at all. "...your enemy attacks, then you attack 4-5 times, then your enemy attacks (if it's not dead). You take one hit of damage in exchange for 5-6 hits (1 of freeze damage & 4-5 other spells). That's 1 hit worth of damage in, and 5-6 hits worth of damage out. That's MASSIVELY better than Furious/Aim." ----- This assumes that we have skills that do big damage, which we don't... or if we did use flamelazer at level 15, then we wouldn't have any points to use freeze. Again, this is assuming you are fighting 1v1, where most of the game isn't 1v1... for example, when fighting 1v6 (1 because the companions are just meat shields that are good for only 1-2 hits in a hard mission) freeze was a viable solution because of it's ability to neutralise one of the mob. "Freeze still does its big damage, then your enemy attacks, then you attack 2+ times, then your enemy attacks (if it's not dead). You take one hit of damage in exchange for 3+ hits (1 of of freeze damage & 2+ other spells). That's 1 hit of damage in, 3+ hits of damage out. That's much more comparable to Furious/Aim." ----- Again, this logic doesn't account for all the other enemies in a battle that aren't frozen - where a high-damage build with furious/aim can kill one of them in one-hit. ^^ Basically, you're ignoring too many variables when you are looking at these adjustments. - Getting balance right needs to you look at ALL the possibilities, and it's looking at the big picture. It will take a LOT more time than you are spending on it - A lot more time than you want to spend on it - that's why I say: just give everyone the same skills. I completely agree that freeze/OP are making things easier than you'd like them to be... but this had always been known for several months... looking at the skills at level 15, when we were unable to assign more than 10 points, we would look at them and say "wow, that's gonna be so useful when it's at level 15!"... Now: Freeze is useless above level 10 (because putting those 5 extra points in intel would give more damage) - so the comparison and balance with other class' skills gets even more complex... Different classes having different skills adds loads of complexity to the game, and makes it more interesting, for sure... but you're not investing the required time to get the balance anywhere near appropriate... If you spent the time to work out how these changes affect everything in the game, you'd find results like this: http://gyazo.com/200fdc012ba9e0dca107597f3933876a Many replies since I started writing this... but posting before I go to read them *
23 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 10:06 PM Last Edited June 4th 2015 at 10:09 PM Farflier I do agree that the 80% on freeze was a bit much. Though I completely disagree with your way of thinking about damage in/damage out, see Dansonage's post for a much more realistic and reasonable way of conceptualizing class damage balance. That being said, this was pretty much the worst possible time you could've chosen to implement another change like this. Think about your order of operations with these changes. Try not to push everything that's going to piss off your playerbase all at once. Why was this even being worked on today? You have so many other things that should be taking a much higher priority. As for overpower, I am no warrior but.. that skill was already weaksauce. Nobody takes overpower unless it is required to kill a MP boss that will otherwise crit us for 500k, and even then there are many cases in which impale is still better because of the accelerated damage. Perhaps attempting to play the game would provide you with a better idea of how these mechanics actually work out, rather than just looking at the numbers. More and more people are quitting every day. Almost everyone I knew and played with regularly are gone, and they all left between jungle release and now. This should be a major indication that you need to change your development and/or implementation strategy. I'm still hoping you'll come around, but I gotta say, it does not look promising. Cheers
7 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 11:06 PM Steendorian "Freeze at level 15 reduced target speed by 80% resulting in a reduction of speed of 5x on that target. It lasts for 2 turns so effectively the caster gets 10 turns before the target gets another attack." I can't even...do you even math? Sure, there are numbers in there, and everyone with an elementary understanding of math can see how you arrived at your "10 turns," but your reasoning is utter nonsense. Give us an example using actual numbers for speed, then give us another example using numbers with a different ratio. I'd give examples, but I don't actually know how speed relates to turns. I could guess, but that'd be a waste of everyone's time. Suffice it to say that "10 turns before the target gets another attack" only applies to a very small subset of possible combinations of speeds.
17 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 11:37 PM Gaidin While what I have to say is basically already said above, I'm going to post anyway because it seriously needs to be reiterated, apparently. Frankly, I'm feeling much along the lines of what Farflier said above when he said "Perhaps attempting to play the game would provide you with a better idea of how these mechanics actually work". See, I've always been a balance person, and when I volunteer moderated for quite some time, was even brought in to help balance a new content update for a flash fishing game. Prior to this time, I once had to explain to one of the only devs working on the game why X wasn't possible even though theoretically the math said it was. The fact of the matter was, he never really played the game, so factors that actually happen in the game (getting a cast that didn't hook anything, the chance of that happening drastically increasing if you did short casts to increase your bucket speed, etc) didn't occur to him. Likewise, here I believe someone took a look at the raw formulas, but didn't plug these formulas into actual context. Sure, if as a wizard I zap a boss for 80% speed reduction and we're both at 1000 base speed, I'm now going to get lots of hits in on him/her along with my potential stuns. But since when do I get to fight anything by itself? The first few bosses in the Hall of Trials? The final boss in the Jungle who was nearly 1 hitting me when he had sidekicks, much less at the end? Cool, now what about the other 99.7% of the game? For two turns I get 100% damage, not 280% or whatever the actual amount is most people get for whatever level of Furious/Aim is most common. I get 100% damage, and slow on one enemy. This means that I need a lot more of my power stat to kill the enemy. Slowing it isn't all that helpful when I have to spend a 3rd attack to kill it. All I did, as a wizard, was prevent the same enemy from attacking that the other classes did. The difference? I spent 3 attacks to do it, while they spent 2. That extra turn, potentially per enemy, becomes an exponential difference as you add more enemies. There are very few battles where we aren't facing at least 3 enemies, so this whole one on one comparison is just math in a vacuum. The same stuff can pretty much be said about warriors and Overpower, except that Overpower already had a cooldown on top of it. I stopped using it on my warrior because of that (it's pointless in single player scenarios to have any rage saved up when you can't use OP before you can use furious again anyway), and now it's potentially even less useful. Extra points are only good for extra damage. Maybe with Furious this is worthwhile, but I can say that as a Wizard, I'm better off using Int to boost my other damage as well, since what I get from Freeze isn't anything special in the relative scheme of things.
886 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 4th 2015 at 11:58 PM David Whittaker (CNE Dev) Hi Farflier, Timing was tied to a fair number of complaints we received via tickets that wizards were unbeatable in arena. Dansonage's points about how classes are used is fair. Wizards have only had a speed reduction of over 55% for a few days now. For months they have only had 55% at best. While we may have reduced it to 50% max, that 5% reduction from how it has been for months doesn't suddenly make them useless. I don't believe that it is reasonable to suggest that it does. It is a percent reduction, so it scales with the enemy... so wizards continue to have essentially (minus %5 max) the same power they had before the Jungle release. We are certainly concerned with players quitting. But we are more concerned with having an experience fair and fun for ALL players. It is a hard choice when we make fixes that we know are benefiting some players, fixes they will be upset about, fixes they MAY potentially quit over, but fixes we feel are overall are good for the game. Fixes that after the dust settles make it a more fair game, a better game. Steendorian, Actually I made a bit of a mistake there, the enemy does get an attack after 5 not 10. Your battle speed / enemy battle speed is the ratio of turns you get. For sake of argument pretend you are facing yourself in the arena, and you have a battle speed of 500 (pretty average for a level 45 character). So you have 500 and the you you are facing has 500 - lets call that you Alan for simplicity. So you have 500 and Alan has 500. You cast freeze on Alan, Alan now has 100 speed, an 80% reduction. The turn ratio is now 500 / 100 or 5 to 1. So you get to go 5 times before Alan does. So you go, 1, 2, 3, 4,5 ... now Alan gets to go 1! now you go again 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, now Alen 1! and the buff wears off and normal speed resumes! The big issue with this, especially in arena, is those 10 turns is far more than enough time for the wizard to cast freeze AGAIN and forever freeze the opponent. Winning every single time. Which really isn't a fair skill for a class to have, and making arena very frustrating for players playing the other classes. -David
886 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 5th 2015 at 12:14 AM David Whittaker (CNE Dev) Hi Gaidin, I appreciate what you are saying, and certainly with most of my time spend working on making sure everything is working I haven't had a lot of time to get my character up to max. There are absolutely cases where the math and the experience diverge so far apart that it is easy to miscalculate. While those cases absolutely happen, I do not believe this is one of them. In this case we are pulling a percent bonus down to where it was 9 days ago. It is a percent bonus so it scales well with level. Which is why increasing it really doesn't make sense. Specifically with freeze the other classes did not have this level of power. You are also correct that Freeze is most powerful in 1 on 1, getting one enemy down to 1/5 speed isn't super valuable in a 5 enemy fight. Killing it in one shot is often more valuable. It is overpowered on one enemy, and in arena it is so powerful other players are complaining - I think rightfully so. This change returns it to essentially where it was 9 days ago. It is a percent so it does scale with level and power. So increasing that percent doesn't and didn't make sense. -David
232 Posts	Link to post - Posted June 5th 2015 at 2:14 AM Andaho Again, explanations that just raise more concerns over the things you are blatantly overlooking... For starters, arena rank is useless, and means NOTHING... You get the same card rewards if you win or lose... Rank #100 gets only a tiny fraction less reward than rank #1. Wizards obviously haven't been impossible to beat, because warriors have taken #1 off wizards specced with freeze... If a Warrior or Ranger is specced for max damage with aim/furious, they are able to kill me in a single hit. - How is that fair? So, effectively, the only thing arena rank is useful for, is the ego of competitors on the ranking board... wizards have been complaining about the other ranking boards for AGES, how a mission score is based on damage dealt... Why are wizards not allowed to compete for high-scores on missions? Scoreboards made up of mission score count for 3 of the ranking boards... Arena is just 1. "wizards continue to have essentially (minus %5 max) the same power they had before the Jungle release." ---------- When the other classes get 5 extra levels of benefit from damage skills above 10, making the damage gap between wizard and warrior/ranger even larger, where wizards have a stand-still of not getting extra benefit. - I'll say it again... these skills at level 15 have been set at this for AGES and were obviously part of your balance calculations during the last major re-balance of classes. "There are absolutely cases where the math and the experience diverge so far apart that it is easy to miscalculate. While those cases absolutely happen, I do not believe this is one of them." ---------- That's because (from the replies you are giving,) you are looking at it in a very closed-minded way, only thinking about arena 1v1 battles, when arena isn't even an important part of the game... multi-enemy battles dominate the game content. Long before jungle was released, there was always the issue of rangers/warriors being being able to do missions that were impossible for a comparable wizard - mainly because of ranger/warrior ability to kill a target in a single hit... Take 2*sand worms for example... and yeah, just 2... not even talking about a large group of enemies... on a tier where a ranger/warrior, specced for maximum damage, can kill one of them in one hit... that approach is impossible for a wizard, because we can't get anywhere near that kind of damage... so instead we need to spec to a full hp+phase+freeze build, and hence do a lot less damage, from having no points in intel... A wizard of this build was able to beat them with a lot of luck, by alternating freeze between them, but still taking a lot of damage, when only doing about 10% damage (of their HP) to them with each freeze hit, therefore needing to hit them 10 times, when only being able to survive a few of their hits. And this is a poor example, because it's only a 1v2 battle. I fail to understand why a balance issue like freeze/OP being too strong takes immediate priority over all the other unfair balance issues.

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