Smoothing Caster DPS

Should we abandon the new resist system?

  • Yes, bring back the old all-or-nothing resists.

    Votes: 24 28.2%
  • No, keep the damage scaling.

    Votes: 61 71.8%

  • Total voters
    85
aka Spell Damage Modulation via Resists, aka resists = mitigation rather than all-or-nothing

This idea has been floating around for a bit. Put simply, the idea is to remove full resists ("Your target has resisted your Archaic: Moon Comet spell!") and to make nuke (and probably DoT) damage always scale based on the target's resist value instead. The random chance to be fully (and partially) resisted would instead become a non-random multiplier on the spell's damage.

In other words, if a particular nuke you cast would have a 5% chance to be resisted on a particular target with a particular resist value under the current system, it would instead always deal 95% damage on that target as long as its resist value remains at that level, with no chance to be fully resisted and do nothing instead.

Resist adjusts would still help, with a negative resist adjust effectively increasing the minimum resist value the target would need to start mitigating the spell's damage. If the resist adjust is greater than the target's resist value, the spell would simply do 100% damage (no bonus). This would also make the effect of resist debuffs much clearer, directly increasing the damage values of spells.

This change would apply unilaterally to both players and NPCs, changing the way both react to spell damage. Some fights may need to be rebalanced, but I'm hoping the impact will be minimal. On the other hand, we may remove the current non-melee mitigation spells (Relic: Melody of the Shield and Nejax's Dampening Curse) since they will be a bit out of place and have long been problematic, so some amount of balancing will likely be necessary.

Non-damaging spells will still use the old all-or-nothing resist system due to the lack of any one mitigation-style system that would work well for all debuff effects (a 45% slow with its duration reduced by 20% would just be a mild annoyance, whereas a 20% reduction in its effect would be a huge nerf and hard to notice; something like mezz could only have its duration reduced on the other hand, and mitigating that by resists on top of the level-based mitigation would greatly reduce the number of mobs an Enchanter could keep locked down, for instance). Nukes and especially DoTs with debuff effects would be a borderline case that would most likely just stick with the old system, otherwise we'd most likely have to split all debuff effects from damaging ones, which would be a pain.

Just as an afterthought this may alleviate the perennial "low CHA at low levels is horrible" issue and also basically remove the idea of something being "immune" to damaging spells of a certain element, although in both bases the damage may be reduced quite a bit. Unresistable damaging spells like Relic: Lure of the Void will, of course, always deal their full base damage.


Some potential issues:

*Monk FD pulling - not being able to fully resist damaging spells may make some pulls much more difficult. However, since we will still be preserving the old resist system for debuffs anyway, we may be able to direct nukes and DoTs to it whenever the target is currently feigning death to get around that issue, though the inconsistency would be less than ideal.

*Varied damage - much as with spell variance this change may make it difficult to determine when the base damage of your spell has gone up, since the damage may vary from target to target. However, it is non-random, so it should at least be less of an issue; at worst you'll still be able to test a spell against a green con mob, then swap in the new item or what have you and cast it again against the same mob to see if there's a difference.

*That Wizard tome that does something whenever you are fully resisted - would obviously have to change.
 
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Jumping in with two comments:

(1) This concept has already been explored on the side of NPC spell damage. Some high tier encounters have nukes and AEs that are unresistable but directly mitigated proportionally to resists, and this seems to have been a good thing on those encounters.

(2) There's plenty of wizard tome ideas floating around. This change along with last year's 5mana nuke change to make them able to ultimate/primal addresses the issue that I perceive the Reclaimed Mana wizard class tome line was intended to address when it was designed back around 2009. I don't think anyone really should complain about this tome changing.
 
Well the only thing i can say which i only have partial experience with would be the ability to keep mobs on lock down as an enchanter. Example: The first pull of a certain Tribe in turuj you need to mez like 5-8 mobs and keep them on locked down. (i never let the mez timer run out on these cause ench mana is lol) but its not easy to keep that many mobs locked down as it is. How much harder will this become?

on a different note. PALADIN AGGRO!!! obviously these dudes are gonna be able to keep aggro on alot more mobs and be able to do it alot easier. like say 4.2 example noone brings paladins cause the damn named is magic immune or stupid high resist idr. But if this change goes in they will be in their prime during a couple of phases there. Will paladins get another change because of this?

Over all though i mean it sounds like a really good idea, i wouldn't complain at all if this went in and i can see alot of places where it would increase dps. BUT it sounds like ALOT of work rebalacing and changing fights, classes, mechanics of fights and ecetera ecetera. Is the Time/work VS benefit worth it? You are the dev's so i suppose its up to you to decide! either way Good luck with it and i look forward to see'ing what will happen!
 
Well the only thing i can say which i only have partial experience with would be the ability to keep mobs on lock down as an enchanter. Example: The first pull of a certain Tribe in turuj you need to mez like 5-8 mobs and keep them on locked down. (i never let the mez timer run out on these cause ench mana is lol) but its not easy to keep that many mobs locked down as it is. How much harder will this become?

on a different note. PALADIN AGGRO!!! obviously these dudes are gonna be able to keep aggro on alot more mobs and be able to do it alot easier. like say 4.2 example noone brings paladins cause the damn named is magic immune or stupid high resist idr. But if this change goes in they will be in their prime during a couple of phases there. Will paladins get another change because of this?

Perhaps you could actually read the thread before you post.
 
i did and im assuming you're talking about this:

"Non-damaging spells will still use the old all-or-nothing resist system due to the lack of any one mitigation-style system that would work well for all debuff effects (a 45% slow with its duration reduced by 20% would just be a mild annoyance, whereas a 20% reduction in its effect would be a huge nerf and hard to notice; something like mezz could only have its duration reduced on the other hand, and mitigating that by resists on top of the level-based mitigation would greatly reduce the number of mobs an Enchanter could keep locked down, for instance). Nukes and especially DoTs with debuff effects would be a borderline case that would most likely just stick with the old system, otherwise we'd most likely have to split all debuff effects from damaging ones, which would be a pain."

i see tons of information about spells with debuffs, i see information about mez's having a shorter duration. Here i am coming at you with legitimate questions which i thought were throrough. but maybe i didnt get the same courtesy.

HOW MUCH DURATION FOR ENCHANTER WILL BE REMOVED? is it gonna make strats go from hard to ZOMG HARD!?

Sure non damaging spells will work the same way just maybe reductions such as the slow example. but Say blind spells for paladins initial H8 from the spell? does this get reduced because the effect is less or does the spell have a "Cast and do this and then +50 hate? or is it a cast spell and it does this and this + this which results in this much hate?:

" im unsure cause im not a dev and am not 100% sure on how spells like that work.

sorry if im being a smart ass but i did read the entire post the first time unlike half the people that will come in and read a paragraph and then post. maybe im missing something or maybe im just not smart enough to understand it all.
 
Yes please!!!!!

This is such an amazing idea!

For the spell varience thing, maybe there could be a cutoff point, like if the mob resists less than 2-3% of a nuke, it will just hit for full damage? If this idea isnt liked that is fine, i would still be all for the change and it would still be possible to parse/test things.

I do forsee an issue for monks. Some lower tier pulls really required them resisting certain things. Maybe add a new stance to monk/sk that will just make them spell immune for moderate sta drain?

I never liked Reclaiming Mana, so replacing this with something more fun/useful would be hugely appreciated!

This thread made me smile a lot thank you Zae (and whoever else thought this up)
 
HOW MUCH DURATION FOR ENCHANTER WILL BE REMOVED? is it gonna make strats go from hard to ZOMG HARD!?

The example about mez duration reduction was just an example of what wouldn't really work.

She made it clear that debuffs would keep the old all or none system.
 
Non-damaging spells will still use the old all-or-nothing resist system due to the lack of any one mitigation-style system that would work well for all debuff effects

They'll still use the old all-or-nothing resist system, as the very first sentence of what you quoted says. Everything after that was justification for WHY THIS CHANGE WILL NOT AFFECT THEM AT ALL. Which is also why this thread is called "Smoothing Caster DPS" and why the qualifier "damaging" is all over the place. I'm not sure how much clearer I can make it.
 
They'll still use the old all-or-nothing resist system, as the very first sentence of what you quoted says. Everything after that was justification for WHY THIS CHANGE WILL NOT AFFECT THEM AT ALL. Which is also why this thread is called "Smoothing Caster DPS" and why the qualifier "damaging" is all over the place. I'm not sure how much clearer I can make it.

guess i just wasnt thinking straight. im my head i read this a few times over and still missed it i guess... was thinking even if they were working just the way there just the fact that according the the client they were landing hate would still be given. Example: The blind does say -25atk. I figured with these new changes the spell would land but would do no change to attack but still give the same amount of hate because the hate portion was unresistable. for some reason i thought that HATE in itself was unresistable, if the spell is resisted the spell didnt go off, but say the spell did land but the effects from the debuff don't make any difference but the hate would still land. also i have a bad case of dyslexia, sometimes it takes me a long time of rereading to get it. Thanks for taking the portion out reading it by itself made it make more sense =)
 
The baseline idea for FD breaking is that we just leave the check exactly the same. Monk still takes damage, but won't get popped up unless he would have gotten popped up anyway.

It is not the best idea! But it's a starting point for what will emerge as the best idea for addressing this issue.
 
I really dont have an issue with paladins becoming a viable tank on fights where you used you require a war/sk if that is an end result of this. It sounds like most of their stuff will remain fully resistable though.

Maybe making the stuns follow the partial resist route would be a nice way to actually give paladins a little leg up on resistant things.
 
The baseline idea for FD breaking is that we just leave the check exactly the same. Monk still takes damage, but won't get popped up unless he would have gotten popped up anyway.

It is not the best idea! But it's a starting point for what will emerge as the best idea for addressing this issue.

Oh, this would certainly work!
 
My dps is already pretty smooth. I don't primal. Sounds like a nerf so wizards can be even more god mode.
 
This idea involves a major overhaul of the spell system with numerous obvious (monks, blinds, damage debuffs) and who knows how many yet unknown problems. The best case scenario for implementation looks like a patchwork system that would be a massive time sink and require patches upon patches as new issues are discovered with spells and encounters. For what?

My dps is already pretty smooth. I don't primal. Sounds like a nerf so wizards can be even more god mode.
 
I mean I read this and this is what I see;

Your Archaic Claws of the Chill does 140 damage to blah
Your Caress of Sivyana does 108 damage to blah
Your Marlow's Cremation does 940 damage to blah <- can't bone mages*
Your Funeral Pyre of Malath does 740 damage to blah
Your Scitterpox does 65 damage to blah
Solosolki primals for 50000 damage


There are mobs in pofrost I have never landed on and probably cannot now. Does this mean, I will land on the mob but be completely mitigated? I mean I already have this on blazewind under 10% when the zone is so lagged out that dots don't land.

*Unless its magic, then I'll just be oom at 80%.
 
For one thing Claws of the Chill has a -200 resist adjust which is more cold resist the vast majority of raid mobs have, especially after resist debuffs. And if a -200 cold spell was being mitigated by like 80%, there's no way in hell a -25 cold spell like moon comet would get anywhere near 50k, primal or not.

As a side note I've put the necro DoT adjustments in for the next patch. I appreciate that every change is necro vs wizard for some reason much like AoD being made to not affect crits apparently was (?), but if I may ask: please, please, please fuck off. Unless you have some actual arguments to offer. Thank you.
 
To primal for 50k? Unless they have a big fire spell I don't remember, going by the numbers you picked out of a hat. Or if Lure of the Void is a lot beefier than I remember.
 
I think there might be an argument in what has been said regardless, I'm guessing something about non-resisted consistent damage being a defining (upper tier raid) Necro trait and this being a threat to that. But as it is we've got "I've decided this is bad" and "Here's some random numbers and yes, that is my whole argument." So who knows.
 
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