U57 Preview 1: Hit Point Pass

[ghale]

No animal domain is a flat bonus per level it doesn't actually change your die type.

Can we not have 20% hp bonuses in T5s when other classes such as fighter/paladin get them in T3...

[ice584]

To keep the delta between a wizard and a barbarian tighter we shift the class dice around a little.

Why is this even a goal? This is the exact opposite of what I was hoping to see.
I would still advocate against this goal regardless of the reason provided, but I would love to better understand where the idea for this goal comes from.

The hp difference should be large and it should stay that way. In fact, I would have likely argued it should be larger than it is currently.
Leaving room for players to be able to build a higher-than-normal hitpoint Wizard is fantastic, but the way to do that is not to close the hitpoint gap for all Wizards.

[Duhboy]

It does "Rogue
T5 Assassin Light Armor Mastery Rank 3 - Grants a 20% competence bonus to hit points in addition to it's original bonuses."

Oh then I stand corrected. Could of sworn I didn't see that on lamm. Oh well thank you for clarification.

[tsotate]

Why is this even a goal?

Probably WotC. They've narrowed the gap quite a bit in the last couple of decades, and would probably like their licensees to do the same.

[GeneralDiomedes]

Probably WotC. They've narrowed the gap quite a bit in the last couple of decades, and would probably like their licensees to do the same.

My guess is they want to increase monster and/or trap damage in some way shape or form.

[rabidfox]

Why is this even a goal?

It's probably really hard to balance a game when some players are in 1-shot range and others only lose 1/10 of their HP bar off the same hit. Guessing this HP stuff is one of many phases of work to improve overall game balance and difficulty settings in the long term.

[enkka1]

It's probably really hard to balance a game when some players are in 1-shot range and others only lose 1/10 of their HP bar off the same hit. Guessing this HP stuff is one of many phases of work to improve overall game balance and difficulty settings in the long term.

Huh. To simplify melee is always in 1-shot range and a ranged / caster is never (or shouldn't be). Melees should be lots more durable and have more hp than ranged / caster types.

[Lotoc]

Huh. To simplify melee is always in 1-shot range and a ranged / caster is never (or shouldn't be). Melees should be lots more durable and have more hp than ranged / caster types.

Please keep in mind all classes have melee builds and frankly Wizard is one of the stronger melee classes in terms of dps, a much better melee dps than a nuker in fact.
Most melee are going to see more HP with this update and effectively taking melee weapon style feats doubles your base hit dice.
A barbarian with no feats and a wizard with no feats are going to see a smaller difference, a barbarian with weapon style feats and a wizard with none will see a bigger difference and a wizard with melee feats will have about the same base HP as a barbarian with none.

[Sarandra]

Why is this even a goal? This is the exact opposite of what I was hoping to see.
I would still advocate against this goal regardless of the reason provided, but I would love to better understand where the idea for this goal comes from.

The hp difference should be large and it should stay that way. In fact, I would have likely argued it should be larger than it is currently.
Leaving room for players to be able to build a higher-than-normal hitpoint Wizard is fantastic, but the way to do that is not to close the hitpoint gap for all Wizards.

Exactly. We barbarians are always in the front line, taking the brunt of all the damage. Taking aggro by damage or intimidate, whatever the build.

And as you might know, on R10 you'll be taking lots and lots of it, if not all of it. Taking barbarians' hit-points down is the opposite of what needs to happen. You probably know what happens if you take a champion's blow to the head: You'll be in an inch of death. Or a Famine's/Vengy's disintegrate to the face and happen to roll a 1: you die.

And guess who gets the ED ability to not fail a fortitude save on a 1... Yeah, it ain't no barbarian ED AFAICS.

This hitpoint pass from a barbarian's perspective is the wrong way to go. It can't go down in any build.

[Sarandra]

It's probably really hard to balance a game when some players are in 1-shot range and others only lose 1/10 of their HP bar off the same hit. Guessing this HP stuff is one of many phases of work to improve overall game balance and difficulty settings in the long term.

It would be better they do it all in one pass in that case.

[TheAlicornSage]

Even from level 1, it doesnt take long to get to 20 on a first life character, even for a casual player.

That's false. Took me ten years to hit 20, and even now I'm barely level 24.

On the flipside, I have friends who are the complete opposite of casual players, and their idea of a casual player is so screwed up it is miraculous.

Sure, I'm odd. And since I only get 2-3 hours of play a week, and not even every week, ten years is probably not literally a fair timeframe, but that's still hundreds of hours of gametime and only 1 epic character at merely lvl 24.

People who sit there and grind in the most boring way you can play a game, just to watch numbers tick up, are not what I consider casual players. In fact, every such player I know who is like that wouldn't know a casual player if one jumped up and bit them on the nose. Those players don't even see the game really, they just see numbers, and they are focused entirely on making their numbers bigger. Everything to them is about making bigger numbers as quickly and efficiently as possible. And they resent any significant time they "wasted" when the path they took turns out to be suboptimal, or nerfed.

To me this is still new. ...
I have played the evolution from beta, to F2P, pre and post MotU.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but these seem like contradictory statements to me.

Still, in my opinion, reaching cap is not a new player unless it's pay 2 win. A casual will not get there quickly. Anyone who gets there quickly, paid for it or is a spreadsheet player who understands mmos at such a level that a new mmo is not really a new game to them but just new content on the game they've been playing for years.

Now, casuals who reach cap, might need help, but honestly, rule fixes like this will never ever bring casuals to the same level as spreadsheet players. To big a difference in mentality and focus. Casuals will rarely ever be useful in a fight alongside spreadsheet players, except maybe as secondary support, and even more rarely able to be anything more than bug under the spreadsheet player's boot. No rule balancing tricks will ever fix that. So it's not worth considering.

The focus should be on the different groups of players as independent groups. New players who don't yet really understand how to play (a phase that lasts a few hours of game time for casuals and about 5 seconds for spreadsheet players), casuals who don't understand how to break things like spreadsheet players, and spreadsheet players who don't understand the other two groups. Then maybe things can be made to work well enough. But comparing casuals to spreadsheet players and trying to get them on par is doomed to failure.

Personally, I say leave reaper to spreadsheet players and non-reaper to casuals. That's probably just me though.

[TheAlicornSage]

Why is this even a goal? This is the exact opposite of what I was hoping to see.
I would still advocate against this goal regardless of the reason provided, but I would love to better understand where the idea for this goal comes from.

The hp difference should be large and it should stay that way. In fact, I would have likely argued it should be larger than it is currently.
Leaving room for players to be able to build a higher-than-normal hitpoint Wizard is fantastic, but the way to do that is not to close the hitpoint gap for all Wizards.

Not everyone believes the holy trinity (heal, dps, tank) is a good thing. Some of us think it should be locked in a chest then eaten by a mimic and burnt to ash by mahic and then distintigrated in a sphere of annihilation.

But, to be more fair, the biggest reason is that balancing encounters relies on comparing a range of numbers on one side vs a range of numbers on the other for each of the different aspects in which characters can "attack" or defend, such as hp, saves, ac, etc.

But as an mmo, they have no idea what builds the players will bring, so they must deal with everything from all wizards to all fighters. However, the wider the variance from minimum likely values to maximum likely values, the more difficult it becomes to create a challenge appropriate to both the whole range of likely values, and if the possible range for players to show up with is orders of magnitude wide, it basically becomes impossible.

I've been warning of such problems since they went epic. And then they raise the level cap. Watch them do it again in a couple updates.

[jskinner937]

That's false. Took me ten years to hit 20, and even now I'm barely level 24.

On the flipside, I have friends who are the complete opposite of casual players, and their idea of a casual player is so screwed up it is miraculous.

Sure, I'm odd. And since I only get 2-3 hours of play a week, and not even every week, ten years is probably not literally a fair timeframe, but that's still hundreds of hours of gametime and only 1 epic character at merely lvl 24.

People who sit there and grind in the most boring way you can play a game, just to watch numbers tick up, are not what I consider casual players. In fact, every such player I know who is like that wouldn't know a casual player if one jumped up and bit them on the nose. Those players don't even see the game really, they just see numbers, and they are focused entirely on making their numbers bigger. Everything to them is about making bigger numbers as quickly and efficiently as possible. And they resent any significant time they "wasted" when the path they took turns out to be suboptimal, or nerfed.



Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but these seem like contradictory statements to me.

Still, in my opinion, reaching cap is not a new player unless it's pay 2 win. A casual will not get there quickly. Anyone who gets there quickly, paid for it or is a spreadsheet player who understands mmos at such a level that a new mmo is not really a new game to them but just new content on the game they've been playing for years.

Now, casuals who reach cap, might need help, but honestly, rule fixes like this will never ever bring casuals to the same level as spreadsheet players. To big a difference in mentality and focus. Casuals will rarely ever be useful in a fight alongside spreadsheet players, except maybe as secondary support, and even more rarely able to be anything more than bug under the spreadsheet player's boot. No rule balancing tricks will ever fix that. So it's not worth considering.

The focus should be on the different groups of players as independent groups. New players who don't yet really understand how to play (a phase that lasts a few hours of game time for casuals and about 5 seconds for spreadsheet players), casuals who don't understand how to break things like spreadsheet players, and spreadsheet players who don't understand the other two groups. Then maybe things can be made to work well enough. But comparing casuals to spreadsheet players and trying to get them on par is doomed to failure.

Personally, I say leave reaper to spreadsheet players and non-reaper to casuals. That's probably just me though.

Do you write political ads for candidates? Cut and pasting two different statements together is not cool. Your whole reply as a matter of fact seems like a grossly unrealistic experience. 10 years to go from 1-20 with 2-3hrs a week? Talk about contradictory. Clearly there were breaks in between.

[Paisheng]

1.) Monks do not receive a base die improvement even though they are melees. Rangers and Rogues and Casters even did though not melees. Monks seem quietly ignored.

2.) Shintao monks HP % bonus is only 15% while all other melees, and even rogues, are getting 20%. You say, 'oh its 25% if running in earth stance.' So you limit choices, style and flexibility by limiting our buff to run in only one stance that is supposed to be our tank stance? To be sure Earth stance should get 25%....but the other stances should be still 20%. Many monks don't want to be limited into one play style to get the benefit. Did you handicap any other classes? Further each stance already comes with a punishment for its benefit. Only pure monks can get rid of that punishment but not until level 20 which makes the tier 5 Meditation somewhat meh anyway in heroics. Who else has tier 5 enhancements that come with detriments?

3.) Shintao monks which are melees, I remind you again, get no benefits to damage output, nothing in imbuements for example as Ninja and Henshin do, while remaining at the bottom of DPS production.

At this point Shintao handwrap monks don't even get a bone throne to them in this update, just crumbs that fall from the table. We need an entire steak thrown to us.

[Stravix]

1.) Monks do not receive a base die improvement even though they are melees. Rangers and Rogues and Casters even did though not melees. Monks seem quietly ignored.

2.) Shintao monks HP % bonus is only 15% while all other melees, and even rogues, are getting 20%. You say, 'oh its 25% if running in earth stance.' So you limit choices, style and flexibility by limiting our buff to run in only one stance that is supposed to be our tank stance? To be sure Earth stance should get 25%....but the other stances should be still 20%. Many monks don't want to be limited into one play style to get the benefit. Did you handicap any other classes? Further each stance already comes with a punishment for its benefit. Only pure monks can get rid of that punishment but not until level 20 which makes the tier 5 Meditation somewhat meh anyway in heroics. Who else has tier 5 enhancements that come with detriments?

3.) Shintao monks which are melees, I remind you again, get no benefits to damage output, nothing in imbuements for example as Ninja and Henshin do, while remaining at the bottom of DPS production.

At this point Shintao handwrap monks don't even get a bone throne to them in this update, just crumbs that fall from the table. We need an entire steak thrown to us.

Agreed 20% should be the baseline for non-caster melees. Keep classes with access to spellcasting at 15%, while those without at 20%, and "tank" trees should get a full 25% imo.

Trees which can support both melee and ranged should have a multi-selector between the juicy melee thing and the juicy ranged thing, with the HP tied to that melee option.

[EdsanDarkbane]

I was wondering if you guys have considered bringing back armor class as a form of damage mitigation.

Wasn't sure if there was some kind of combination of theories (damage reduction, armor class, additional hit points)on damage mitigation that could be considered.

I miss armor class.

[Evendor]

With the rationalization of almost all the competence boosts to tier 5s, an undead tank wizard will be unable to grab their profane and competence boosts to %hp. I think similar to what the Occult Slayer Barb is also facing from this first pass.

I'd like to see some of these tier 5 bonuses moved to core 4 or core 5, allowing for better interplay.

[Stravix]

With the rationalization of almost all the competence boosts to tier 5s, an undead tank wizard will be unable to grab their profane and competence boosts to %hp. I think similar to what the Occult Slayer Barb is also facing from this first pass.

I'd like to see some of these tier 5 bonuses moved to core 4 or core 5, allowing for better interplay.

Would prefer them not added to the cores. Too little investment for the people who shouldn't have it, with too much investment for multiclass builds.

T5s are exclusive, and a perfect place for it, IMO.

[slarden]

I was wondering if you guys have considered bringing back armor class as a form of damage mitigation.

Wasn't sure if there was some kind of combination of theories (damage reduction, armor class, additional hit points)on damage mitigation that could be considered.

I miss armor class.

My R10 tank is at about 450 or so AC which is far from the max and it's extremely good mitigation in R10 questing. Reaper raiding is completely different - I don't do that much on my tank and I know in some raids AC doesn't seem to work at all.

It's rare I get more than a few stacks from a doom reaper because they miss much more than they hit.

When my AC is debuffed I definitely notice the difference.

[TheAlicornSage]

Do you write political ads for candidates? Cut and pasting two different statements together is not cool. Your whole reply as a matter of fact seems like a grossly unrealistic experience. 10 years to go from 1-20 with 2-3hrs a week? Talk about contradictory. Clearly there were breaks in between.

No contradiction. It really did take ten years playing fairly consistently. The thing is, reaching level cap was never a goal, and so my playstyle is very different from those people who aim straight for the end game. Once again, spreadsheet players find it difficult to understand other ways of playing.