U48.4 Preview 2: Balance Changes: Combat Styles

[Stravix]

Disclaimer

Everything seen on the preview server, Lamannia, is not final and is subject to change or removal before live release.

This is the BALANCE CHANGES: COMBAT STYLES portion of the release notes.

Preface
When looking at the spread, popularity, and usability of combat styles, we came up with a few concrete goals. We wanted to boost the DPS and versatility of SWF, expanding its usage outwards to better cater to hybrid builds. We also wanted to tone down the DPS of THF slightly while leaving the AoE capabilities top-tier, as that niche is part of what makes THF so compelling. We also looked at the DPS of TWF, and found that while we think it's in a balanced place offensively, the companion feats for TWF needed a lot of help to become more compelling defensive options. We ran through several iterations of Two Weapon Blocking before we decided to simply remove it entirely, merging it with Two Weapon Defense, and we also wanted to further incentivize it by adding a MRR cap boost. Natural Fighting needed adjusting to match THF, but it also needed some extra special incentives at the top so that both Bears and Wolves would be happy switching their feats to the new Perfect combat style feat. Finally, we wanted to add more compelling combat options for Shield Fighting. Its Perfect combat style feat is very defensive, but that's Shield's niche, and we wanted the style to retain its defensive elements at the top end. These are also coupled with some buffs to the Vanguard tree's T5 options, to help make that tree more of a competitive choice versus Kensei or Knight of the Chalice, and you can see those in the Balance Changes: Enhancement Trees/Misc Post.

Single Weapon Fighting
New Feat: Offhand Versatility

• Req: BaB 8, Single Weapon Fighting
• Your offhand item modifies your main hand:
  
  • Runearms and Orbs now grant: when you vorpal strike, your next spell automatically crits. This has an internal cooldown of 20 seconds (lasts for 20 seconds).
  • Nothing in your offhand increases your ability score modifier to damage by 25%.
• Fighters may select this feat as one of their Fighter Bonus Feats.

Perfect Single Weapon Fighting

• Now also increases your ability score modifier to damage by 25%.
• Now also grants an additional +10 combat style bonus to Melee Power.

Two Handed Fighting
The Two Handed Fighting, Improved Two Handed Fighting, and Greater Two Handed Fighting feats now increase your ability score modifier to damage by 25%.

Perfect Two Handed Fighting

• Now also increases your ability score modifier to damage by 25%.

Natural Fighting
The Natural Fighting feat now increases your ability score modifier to damage by 25% while in Bear or Dire Bear form.

New Feat: Perfect Natural Fighting

• Req: Level 26, maximum experience in one Primal sphere Epic Destiny, at least one copy of Natural Fighting.
• If in Bear form, your Two-Handed ability mod increases by .25, and your Bear form's bonus to Armor Class is increased by 5%.
• If in Wolf form, +15% competence bonus to maximum hit points, and you gain +2d6 sneak attack dice.

Shield Mastery
New Feat: Greater Shield Mastery

• Req: BaB 13, Improved Shield Mastery
• You are exceptionally skilled with the use of a shield, and your physical resistance is increased by 10 when using a buckler or small shield, 15 when using a large shield, or 20 when using a tower shield. Your doublestrike chance while using a shield is increased by 2% to 10%. Your Combat Style bonus to Melee Power is increased by 4 to 10.
• (These bonuses do not stack with previous feats, so this is a net gain of 5 PRR with each type of shield (5 -> 10 for buckler/small shield, 10 -> 15 for large shield, 15 -> 20 for tower), 2% doublestrike, and 4 Melee Power.).
• Fighters may select this feat as one of their Fighter Bonus Feats.

New Feat: Perfect Shield Mastery

• Req: Level 26, maximum experience in one Divine sphere Epic Destiny (same as other Perfect Combat Style Feats), and Shield Mastery.
• You are the paragon of shield usage, able to effectively leverage all types of shields in close combat. Your shield gains +1W, and you gain +20% Shield Armor Class and +5 PRR.

Two Weapon Fighting
Two Weapon Defense

• Now grants everything that Two Weapon Blocking did, as well as its original +1 AC and +5 PRR.
• Now also grants +10 MRR Cap.

Two Weapon Blocking

• No longer a feat! Should no longer be trainable!

Misc Combat Style Changes

• Shield Mastery feats now contribute to Epic Defensive Fighting (including the new ones).

Bug Fixes Since Preview 1

• Lamannia only Bugfix: Hand-and-a-Half weapons now properly get their ability score modifiers to damage (both at base and with THF feats)
• Lamannia only Bugfix: Two Handed Fighting's baseline +0.5 to ability score modifier to damage now properly applies regardless of whether or not you have the first THF feat
• Lamannia only Bugfix: Perfect Natural Fighting now applies regardless of how many times you've taken Natural Fighting
• Lamannia only Bugfix: Natural Fighting now gives the proper amount of ability score modifier to damage when you have 2 and 3 copies of the feat (was not giving you the cumulative bonus).
• Lamannia only Bugfix: Two weapon blocking feat is now hidden on the buffbar and doesn't fall off on death.
• Lamannia only Bugfix: Two weapon blocking feat now works with Handwraps.

Any chance we could get "Main hand double strike applies to shield bashes" somewhere on one of the shield feats? Even if it is just as a stopgap until the animation issues can be resolved?

Or is that also not technically feasible?

[Malusny]

Any chance we could get "Main hand double strike applies to shield bashes" somewhere on one of the shield feats? Even if it is just as a stopgap until the animation issues can be resolved?

Or is that also not technically feasible?

Please don't allow that for bards.For paladins ok because the vanguard is really bad right now but bards with swashbuckling are too strong already.

[Seph1roth5]

Please don't allow that for bards.For paladins ok because the vanguard is really bad right now but bards with swashbuckling are too strong already.

Lol ya alchemists, fire sorc, and swashbucklers public enemy #1

[Stravix]

Please don't allow that for bards.For paladins ok because the vanguard is really bad right now but bards with swashbuckling are too strong already.

Swashes, to my understanding, don't have the passive bash chance or +[W] to shield bashes to truly capitalize on that. It would technically be a buff, but not by a large margin. It would mainly buff those who actually utilize bashes in their damage

[hit_fido]

For offhand versatility; there's no way a melee or ranged artificer is going to use the empty offhand option for +25% stat damage when it means they give up any/all of the enhancements they've taken that require a rune arm to work:

- up to +40 universal spell power (Battle Engineer cores)
- 10% doublestrike/shot (BE tier 4)
- 20 MP/RP (BE tier 5)
- 10% run speed (BE tier 5)
- Mighty Slam (RM tier 2 stunning blow replacement)
- Battlefist (RM tier 3 knockdown attack)

That leaves the option that grants a single autocrit spell cast at a rate on once every ~20 seconds, which seems really underwhelming at the cost of one feat slot. What am I missing? If you're relying on vorpals to proc the autocrit trigger then you're probably not a build that relies on spells for damage - does this boil down to just being able to rely on a critical repair/cure at about 1/20s? But on a build with a critical chance that could be 30, 40, 50% to begin with... I don't see the value. Does anyone else?

[o2t4f]

Did anyone else notice that Dire Charge damage is lower than a regular hit?

Tested on various helpless and non-helpless mobs with various 2h weapons. Damage is visibly smaller than regular hits, regardless of having extra dice. Not sure why yet. Maybe not calculating the melee power properly on use.

Just remembered to test it on live to see if it already happens there but servers are down.

[Malusny]

Did anyone else notice that Dire Charge damage is lower than a regular hit?

Tested on various helpless and non-helpless mobs with various 2h weapons. Damage is visibly smaller than regular hits, regardless of having extra dice. Not sure why yet. Maybe not calculating the melee power properly on use.

Just remembered to test it on live to see if it already happens there but servers are down.

Yes, also things like Eldrich Tempest is now not giving the X3 crit multiplier but a little less. I know it was nerfed but it feels that is is nerfed a lot more than the description says.
I really think someone just doesn't want melee builds to be strong.
I am just surprised that when you play the game, you see very few melee players and tons of blasters casters or ranged...

That is so unfair.
Right now probably only tank builds work well.

Reaper teams usually look like that :
A bunch of casters and ranged or a tank + casters + ranged.

Really not many melee DPS builds because they still cannot survive the hits.
And other builds simply run away while nuking...

Devs, please reconsider your balancing ....

[SpookyNoodle]

Hello adventurers, tis I, the Spooky Noodle, here to lay bare some statistical analysis:

So, the upcoming proposed Lammania changes make some adjustments to the Single-Weapon and Two-Handed Fighting styles, and so I wanted to do some (relatively) imperical testing, to compare and contrast the three fighting styles (SWF, THF, and TWF) against in each.

A Scientific Environment

To conduct these tests, I made a single character, pure fighter, and built it the exact same way for each style, and ran a number of DPS tests on the Kobolds in the Test Dojo. The three builds were all Strength-based, all used the same enhancement in the same enhancement trees (Kensei, with Falconry secondary and a splash of Human Racial), and all wore identical gear, used identical Destiny layouts and twists, were played identically in terms of ability priority and sequencing, they even had identical past lives, as Lesser Hearts were used to TR into each build.

The only thing that was different between each of the builds was the feat-lines taken (for each of the three styles), as well as Knight's Training for TWF and SWF. SWF requires an extra feat compared to the other styles, for Offhand Versatility, and so TWF had 1 extra feat, and THF had 2 (one for KT and one for OV); whenever there were spare feats leftover, they were put into Weapon Focus: X for a bit of extra melee power. I doubt 4 MP makes a substantial difference in terms of overall DPS, so I haven't tried to account for it in these tests.

These three builds will be referred to as the "Standard" for the purposes of test results, because they're meant to represent each of the styles in and of themselves, without any additional benefits from Vistani Knight Fighter, Swashbuckling, the Assassin tree, and so on.

New Challengers

However, I did want to test the effectiveness of other builds, and to observe the ways that certain Enhancement trees or class abilities might interact with the performance for the three styles. Obviously, huge swings for these builds would mean that the power came from them, not the fighting style itself.

The non-Standard builds (as they shall be referred to here) were:

• Fighter Kensei, but moving all AP from Falconry into VKF (Str-Focused, Wis secondary)*
• Tempest Ranger, Tempest Primary with Deepwood Stalker secondary (Str-Focused, Wis secondary)*
• SWF Swashbuckler Bard/Barbarian/Favored Soul, Primary Frenzied Berserker/Swashbuckler, with points in Ravager and War Soul (Str-Focused, Cha secondary)
• VKF Assassin, Assassin Primary, VKF Secondary (Int-Focused)

* Because of the AP split, these builds did not have access to a Battle Trance

Across ALL builds, I used the same weapons: Legendary Syranian X (Longsword/s, Handaxe, Daggers, etc), and I was careful to make sure that I was applying no debuffs which might unduly influence the testing: no PRR reductions, no Vulnerability. Just the weapon dice and the builds themselves would be factors that changed things.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Kobold?

The first tests were done with the Boss Kobolds, which importantly cannot be stunned, tripped, or otherwise made helpless.

The Mean for the Standard builds was 9,029.7 damage per second (DPS), with the standard deviation being 756.8 DPS (8.38%).

The Mean overall, for all builds, was 9,225.1 DPS, the standard deviation being 785.4 DPS (8.51%).

For each of the builds, the first percentage given will be the difference compared to the standard Mean, and the second percentage will be the difference compared to the overall Mean.

• SWF Kensei: 9,903.2 (+9.67%) [+7.35%]
• TWF Kensei: 8,613.8 (-4.61%) [-6.63%]
• THF Kensei: 8,572.1 (-5.07%) [-7.08%]
• VKF Kensei: 8,691.7 (-3.74%) [-5.78%]
• Assassin: 10,302.9 (+14.10%) [+11.68%]
• Tempest: 8,540.7 (-5.42%) [-7.42%]
• Barb Swash: 9,951.0 (+10.20%) [+7.87%]

As the data shows, TWF only really does well in combination with Assassin. Even Tempest doesn't offer particularly exciting numbers. SWF does well on its own, with some improvements from Swashbuckler and Barbarian.

THF's single-target damage is lackluster, but it's important to keep in mind: THF isn't intended to have competitive single-target damage. These comparisons don't account for Strikethrough. While the nerfs certainly effected THF, they have by no means made it obsolete.

SWF certainly beats out both of these categories overall (in terms of single-target damage), with the exception of Assassin. I get the impression, based on my tests, that the strength of VKF lies in a tree that already has synergy with small blades (like Assassin), because switching the feats around and adding it to the standard build made it perform TERRIBLY in all contexts.

Now, maybe SSG wants SWF to be stronger than TWF in terms of single-target damage. I can't speak to intent, only the consequences and the data.

Pick on Someone Your Own Size!

The next tests were done with the minon Kobolds, which CAN be stunned/tripped, etc.

NOTE: THE BELOW CALCULATIONS ASSUME THAT ALL DPS TEST KOBOLDS HAVE 500,000 HIT POINTS.

I couldn't find concrete answers regarding how much HP they have, so if you know that their HP differs from the Boss kobolds, let me know ASAP.

The Mean DPS for the Standard builds was 15,952.9, with the standard deviation being 680.1 (4.26%).

The Mean overall, for all builds, was 15,041.2, standard deviation was 2097.4 (13.94%).

Just like the previous data, the first percent is the deviation from the Standard Mean, the second is the deviation from the Overall Mean. However, the THIRD percentage is the increase in damage compared to the Boss Kobold numbers.

• SWF Kensei: 16,539.6 (+3.68%) [+9.96%] {+67.01%}
• TWF Kensei: 16,111.7 (+1.00%) [+7.12%] {+87.05%}
• THF Kensei: 15,207.4 (-4.67%) [+1.11%] {+77.41%}
• VKF Kensei: 11,660.5 (-26.91%) [-22.48%] {+34.16%}
• Assassin: 17,873.8 (+12.04%) [+18.83%] {+73.48%}**
• Tempest: 13,195.9 (-17.28%) [-12.27%] {+54.51%}
• Barb Swash: 14,699.2 (-7.86%) [-2.27%] {+47.72%}

** It's important to note that the numbers for Assassin are likely inaccurate. I noticed that, despite not taking Stunning Blow or any other means of making a target Helpless, I had near 100% helpless damage during the tests. I didn't realize until after I TR'd to the next build, that I was doing tests with Shadow Form toggled on, meaning that I was dealing stat damage to the Kobolds, and thereby making them helpless when their Str is reduced to 0. If Lammania was still up, I'd love to try the tests again, but...it's not.

The builds with Falconry (the standard builds) performed very well compared to most of the other builds, which is only logical. Not only do they have an extra way to induce helplessness (the Falconry Trip Ability), they get extra Helpless damage as part of the tree.

VKF Kensei, in addition to have mediocre damage to begin with, only has 1 way to force helplessness (Stunning Blow), and gets no bonus helpless damage.

However, it is incredibly interesting that both Standard TWF and THF showed a larger increase in damage compared to SWF. I might theorize that TWF is getting in more blows more quickly, and is therefore taking advantage of the helplessness more effectively, but I have no explanation as to why THF would be performing so well. It may just be a funky quirk of the testing, a coincidence.

Conclusion

If you're interested in looking at the actual records I took during testing, you can check out the Spreadsheet here.

All in all, these numbers aren't meant to be representative of the entire playerbase when it comes to damage, it's not even meant to represent most of the playerbase, I was deliberately using subpar weaponry and not taking advantage of debuffs, because I wanted the tests to be as scientific as I could make them, with as few different variables as I could manage.

The takeaway, and what I want to highlight, is the ratios. How well each build does compared to each other, rather than "how well this build does compared to me."

If the Devs intend SWF to do better single-target damage than TWF, then I guess they're in a good spot, and more changes aren't really needed apart from bugfixes. If it's not what they want, well, they can do whatever they like with the data here.

tl;dr
For boss: VKF Assassin > SWF > TWF > THF
For trash: THF > TWF > VKF Assassin > SWF

[hit_fido]

If the Devs intend SWF to do better single-target damage than TWF, then I guess they're in a good spot, and more changes aren't really needed apart from bugfixes. If it's not what they want, well, they can do whatever they like with the data here.

tl;dr
For boss: VKF Assassin > SWF > TWF > THF
For trash: THF > TWF > VKF Assassin > SWF

As per your final ranking - if TWF is better for trash than SWF then it makes some balancing sense that SWF would be better than TWF for bosses.

[Monkey_Archer]

As per your final ranking - if TWF is better for trash than SWF then it makes some balancing sense that SWF would be better than TWF for bosses.

Something seems wrong there. TWF having slightly better trash dps than THF makes sense if the method for helplessness is self, rather than an ally (ie THF is more likely to fail a stun due to less attacks and would result in a slightly lower average) It makes no logical sense for SWF to be that much lower however, so I suspect either something went wrong in the test, or something is bugged.

[DrawingGuy]

tl;dr
For boss: VKF Assassin > SWF > TWF > THF
For trash: THF > TWF > VKF Assassin > SWF

Not exactly sure how you determined those rankings, especially with SWF doing more DPS than TWF in the helpless tests as well. TWF also only has an option for strikethrough via a single class with Tempest, and every other class or build option without Tempest lacks that. SWF not only has better cleave animations, but also can get strikethrough natively with b-sword or d-axe (there is a reason so many are calling for the b-sword to be added again as raid loot). I would either split off Tempest like you did for VKF assassins (Rogues), or not factor them in for Trash rankings.

My opinion and what I thought the original intent of rankings was:

For Boss: TWF > SWF > THF
For Trash: THF > SWF > TWF

The update cleanly put THF at the peak of trash killing with strike-through. The +3x stat damage compounded with the power creep of stats and melee power made them compete single target wise too. Quoting outlier cases of VKF rogues I don't find as the right bar, and the trim of 3x to 2.5x I find to be a very good position for THF. Not so far behind as to make them obsolete for raids (unless you're min-maxing for high reaper raids, but typically then you're cherry picking specific builds anyways and not making a character that is good at both questing and raids), and still amazing for questing. I consider the initial overtune of THF as why so few Tempest builds were left - Pally just was better in everything with THF. This puts them back in the running.

All that said, the buffs to SWF also might be a tad too much. The buff to PSWF was all it needed I think, and the new feat pushes it over the edge. Though

Unfortunately trying to balance all of these is tough because of two major issues: VKF - an entire tree dedicated to a weapon gives it a leg up, and that coupled with Rogue SA+assassin and amazing dagger options (ravenloft raid daggers in particular), they create an outlier TWF DPS tier. The other major issue is animation chopping/twitching. This provides a substantial DPS increase (% increase in the double digits), and while they fixed some sources, not all. The game should not be balanced around cheesing, but until those options are fixed, the meta will gravitate towards it, so it will be tough for the devs to land in a good spot. Overall I still feel they went in the right direction. I feel that a trim to VKF and a boost TWF (such as just adding the combat style bonus to the tiers) would be a good idea, but we'll see.

[Monkey_Archer]

tl;dr
For boss: VKF Assassin > SWF > TWF > THF
For trash: THF > TWF > VKF Assassin > SWF

So as a second data set, I ran the (unboosted) numbers for a basic kensai build using a generic L29 weapon (like your test) vs a keen raid weapon:

L29 weapon base (+ sneak attack)
TWF : 6561 (7481)
THF : 6684 (7298)
SWF : 7607 (8404)

Raid weapon base (+ sneak attack)
TWF: 7359 (8279)
THF: 7523 (8136)
SWF: 8299 (9096)


Overall similar numbers, but the raid weapon does helps close the gap for THF a bit. Whether THF or TWF are higher single target dps depends on how much sneak attack damage you have.

I'd also not that if you aren't using trance on the Vistani and Tempest builds then you are missing out on 500 dps minimum, if not closer to 1000 dps depending on offstat and melee power.

Given this, I'd rate the styles for single target dps:

Vistani Assassin > Swashbucker > SWF > Vistani Kensai > Tempest > TWF > THF

With the caveat that for reliable dps (aka not 100% sneak attack), swashbucker may be better than Vistani assassin and THF is better than TWF.

[Ballrus]

Any chance we could get "Main hand double strike applies to shield bashes" somewhere on one of the shield feats? Even if it is just as a stopgap until the animation issues can be resolved?

Or is that also not technically feasible?

Please don't allow that for bards.For paladins ok because the vanguard is really bad right now but bards with swashbuckling are too strong already.

Add it to Vanguard core 6, so if want it, no multiclass.

[Stravix]

Add it to Vanguard core 6, so if want it, no multiclass.

This was proposed as more of a stopgap measure, until they could get around to a shield bash animation rework

While Vanguard's benefit most from it, a fighting styles basic functionality should not be locked behind a capstone.

I think improved shield bash would be a great place to put it, as it is a feat designed to support smacking people with your shield, and yet is mostly useless with the animation cap in place.