New bane on items.

[cian2]

i'm starting to think this can work out okay if MANY more items have bane added (5x+) and the damage added is increased significantly, say, scaled to 10 delay per point or so (it was 25 pre-changes, seems to be 0 now)

i kind of like the idea of only certain thematic mobs having their entire loot table drop a certain bane. ie. rujik, who hates saitha, would have reptile/amphibian on most of his drops. i guess it could lead to congestion, but it certainly already does: the thought of how many people from fwf (t13) would link on shroud of ambitious (t10-11 item) is comical

 

[Apros]

Ok, from my testing today I can see bane damage is indeed affecting procs and spells, but in no way is it affecting songs; be it: relic dot, poison dot, bellows all unaffected. Not sure if this is intentional or a side affect of songs not being affected by focus effects that aren't instrument mods. So far I have found that worn elemental damage works as a 3:1 ratio on bard dots, and a straight up add to the refuge song nuke. (as in 15 worn magic is +5 a tick on dots, and +15 to nuke)

I was also using http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/Galeforce,_The_Eye's_Edge and
http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/Symbol_of_Frost
to test out the Bane damage from http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/Hellhound_Ring (Nature 6)

My test subject was http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/A_soothing_petal in Overgrowth

The Hurricane proc was doing 75 a tick without the bane damage mod, and 111 a tick with it.
Pogonip was doing 120 a tick, and 228 with the ring.

So I hope this helps, because I don't think its affecting melee vs spells the way you intended.

Bane damage never worked on bellows or songs previously, so i am sure it wont now. Only affects procs (melee, bracer) on bards.

Apparently also people never realized Bane Enhancement affected bane damage spells (OMG Bane affects Bane? no way) and you will gain more damage out of your bane on casted spells or procs.

Damage like this to never be seen again!

The Custodian on 3/25/2013 in 313sec

Total
--- DMG: 3459628 (100%) @ 11053 dps (11053 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 1093770 @3517dps

Gares
--- DMG: 388137 (11.22%) @ 1256 dps (1240 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 876 @40dps

 

[Anti Eh]

The four of us doing the itemization

This would be Waldoff, Slaar, Jumbers and ??
just curious cause im hoping the 4th person is the one im waiting for to finish hightier overgrowth quests
but we've had rumors in vent so thought id ask.

 

[mechkl]

These changes just feel like they are watering down the experience of the game over all... Almost feels as though you are trying to artificially extend the game in ways that seem to dampen the actual fun of it... I understand that want to create a sustainable rate of growth for the server.. but i dont think this is the correct way to do this.

 

[Waldoff]

These changes just feel like they are watering down the experience of the game over all... Almost feels as though you are trying to artificially extend the game in ways that seem to dampen the actual fun of it... I understand that want to create a sustainable rate of growth for the server.. but i dont think this is the correct way to do this.

How do they water down the experience?

Why is attempting to make power increases happen in small increments so old content is not obsolesced "artificial"?

If it is artificial, is there a natural way to do it or is the game just going to end/grow unsustainably?

What is the correct way to do it?

 

[Anti Eh]

think u missed a post above the one u quoted woldaff just heads up

 

[Waldoff]

To be honest there were 5 of us who looked it over, but 4 who actually inputted into the spreadsheet.

You are being a little cryptic about "rumors" but if you are talking about Marza he has been around in IRC but not actively part of the bane balancing. Not sure what to tel you about OG quests, but that is pretty far off topic.

 

[Anti Eh]

hrm i dont think its that far off topic being that they would be items that most likely could include bane damage.
Is that not something that you would be able to implement?

 

[Nebi]

How do they water down the experience?

Why is attempting to make power increases happen in small increments so old content is not obsolesced "artificial"?

If it is artificial, is there a natural way to do it or is the game just going to end/grow unsustainably?

What is the correct way to do it?

- Well what you do when power increases happen in big increments then you lower the increment. not something like cella and crystallis where you completely obliterate the item. a simple solution would have been to lower the healing done (instead of keeping the heaing the same and just increasing the mana consumption dramatically) A healer with these weapons used them to pad at a low cost of mana. keep the same low cost of mana but also lower the healing .

- blazewind gloves = you could just decrease the proc rate, decrease the aoe damage.. something to keep the fun of the item still there but lower.

I think as a whole the entire server liked the out of box thinking that some of the marza items brought.... and to be honest and blunt your idea of progression is boring. from what i can see your idea of what a new tier should bring is a more difficult mob than the previous tier and 20 - 30 hp and 20 - 30 mana. the end..

(obviously this might be me talking out of my ass because i do not know EVERYTHING you have done. you might have made some of the items / spells encounters that i find real fun)

-=-=-
And just so you dont think this is just a omg let me bash woldaff thing. here is an idea for an item from the mind of an insane person who has no reason to be on staff.
9
Make a bracer / earing / ring / whatever you want with a proc. Call the proc Fire_Earth_Wind_Water_Heart - make this proc require a gem which you can purchase from the vendor. randomly the spell will proc one of those spells and the spell will only successfully land if the person has a specific gem in his bags.

So you have the item. it randoms 1 = 5 and it rolls a 3. it procs buff 3 / debuff 3 only if you have the gem in your inventory.

-------
could also make spells / procs that in conjunction with another spell or proc it does something different.

-------

TL;DR - Standing in front of a mob that does auto repos and enrage is borinng. more boring is having all your upgrades be +20hp +20mana.

 

[Animand]

I think as a whole the entire server liked the out of box thinking that some of the marza items brought.... and to be honest and blunt your idea of progression is boring. from what i can see your idea of what a new tier should bring is a more difficult mob than the previous tier and 20 - 30 hp and 20 - 30 mana. the end..

(obviously this might be me talking out of my ass because i do not know EVERYTHING you have done. you might have made some of the items / spells encounters that i find real fun)
-------

TL;DR - Standing in front of a mob that does auto repos and enrage is borinng. more boring is having all your upgrades be +20hp +20mana.

For the love of God, someone do Thaz. It sounds not boring and different, maybe even like Marza-content goodness. With a few exceptions, everyone I've talked to got afraid by the differences and potential difficulty and wrote it off. That kinda happened with Nadox, too. Who knows, the itemization there might be fantastic, but we wouldn't know yet. I retain my high hopes, and I don't think it's truly fair to levy judgment on Waldoff or the Dev team until we see the fruits of the things they've done since he retook SoD's helm.

Granted, if Thaz blows chunks, I'll probably just post to complain once and leave SoD. Seeing as I'm actually increasing my playtime, I'm really not expecting this.

 

[Anti Eh]

lower thaz earth mini was really ez.
lower thaz water mini shit on t13 raid.
why do thaz?

 

[Animand]

A tier 13 raid should be able to breeze through most/all of Lower Thaz, I'd bet. Maybe there's some tuning needed, maybe you guys just weren't paying attention for water mini, who knows? Then what about any of the bosses? What about Upper Thaz, or Thaz 1/2, or whatever the heck else might be happening there? If Lower Thaz is like Yclist level, then what level do you think Upper Thaz and Thaz 1/2 would be? It also sounds like it's not just the same thing as everything else. Just because you're full of malaise and ennui doesn't mean that content just 2 tiers below you can't still be fun and entertaining, especially to the several guilds who could be attempting it nearly on-tier who have most of the same concerns FWF has.

 

[saintonan]

Not to backseat mod, but if you want to talk about Thaz, maybe start another thread? I'd like to keep this one relatively clear and focused on bane items if at all possible. Thanks!

 

[Daffie]

It does require loot hoarding, just a different kind of hoarding, and spread out over different foci. Having players from a tier 13 guild seriously contemplate backfarming tier 8 and 9 zones to get specific items that would otherwise be gigantic downgrades speaks to how item hoarding has shifted instead of disappeared.

I think that the idea of bane damage is always going to cause loot hording unless the amount of damage added by the bane is fairly negligible. If the added damage from bane was only a very tiny DPS bump, there would be no need to switch to gear that is clearly a 'downgrade' just for the added bane damage. In this case bane would be: just neat to have, maybe a hording thing for the super hard core min/maxer, not a significant DPS source for a raid stacked with melee.

Honestly, with the amount of body types now out there, it seems as though severely watering down bane damage was the intent. Personally, I see nothing wrong with making bane a fun little thing instead of a drop dead must have... (I don't even have any bane damage mod items on my characters, so maybe my perspective is skewed.)

The balancing issues and dps 'disparities' between casters/melee, which were caused by changing body types and bane damage, should be looked at as a separate issue.

Finally, yet another balancing issue to review is spells and class skills targeting certain bane types as classes and content were balanced around these abilities. ('slay' undead, summoned only spells, animal only spells, plant only spells, undead only spells, Etc. One example of a suggested fix for the spells/abilities is to expand the undead spells/abilities to include undead-corrupt-rangers.)

 

[saintonan]

I think that the idea of bane damage is always going to cause loot hording unless the amount of damage added by the bane is fairly negligible.

There's merit to that idea, but why would you go to the effort of recategorizing several thousand mobs, redoing several hundred items, and reconstructing an entire tradeskill if it becomes something that 99% of the server pop can safely ignore? The server work alone implies that bane has to have some meaningful value and not be just a rounding error on a parse.

The balancing issues and dps 'disparities' between casters/melee, which were caused by changing body types and bane damage, should be looked at as a separate issue.

It should, and also in the context of how fights were balanced, since many high end fights were created with a certain raid dps in mind; raid dps that now will be harder to achieve given the significant hits a bunch of melees have taken. I can't speak for other guilds since I only raid with one, but the few on-tier fights FWF has have become much more challenging since our raid dps dropped through the floor.

Finally, yet another balancing issue to review is spells and class skills targeting certain bane types as classes and content were balanced around these abilities. ('slay' undead, summoned only spells, animal only spells, plant only spells, undead only spells, Etc. One example of a suggested fix for the spells/abilities is to expand the undead spells/abilities to include undead-corrupt-rangers.)

Again your ideas have merit, but it seems from here that the staff has decided to go in the opposite direction and make this kind of damage more specialized, not less. The corollary to what's happened to melee would be not to make existing spells more broad, but to force casters to farm or quest for fifteen different bane spells and swap them in and out as targets change or face a significant dps loss.

 

[cian2]

i'm not against quested/raid dropped spells that can only be cast on certain bodytypes, say with a small improvement over the regular damage spells of that class. ie. saitha could drop an wizard ancient race nuke for use in turruj, slightly better in some way to moon comet

edit: now that i think about it, i kinda like the idea of having something like, say every mob in spires has a chance to drop a spell fragment, and once you get x number of them you turn them in for an ancient race bane spell for your class. basically similar to archaic quest except it rewards a bodytype damage spell. it opens up the possibility for more interesting spells, such as a nuke thats a bit lower damage but with a higher resist adjust. or a nuke thats fast casting but has a 30 sec cooldown. also allows for interesting thematic questlines, ie. someone sends you to kill various iksar bosses to get a reptile bane spell

 

[sheer1]

the few on-tier fights FWF has have become much more challenging since our raid dps dropped through the floor.

just want to point out that this is not really accurate. removing humanoid bane and changing all the body types did effect raid dps and melee's numbers are lower, but it really is not effecting the outcome of any raid encounter. i mean really the most difficult on tierish fight we can do was never even a humanoid mob so it was not effected at all. the other on tier encounters, we couldnt kill before the change, and we still can't now (or we havnt tried cause the zone crashes and messes up scripts and no one answers our petitions qq).

 

[saintonan]

I didn't mean to imply that the drop in raid dps was solely due to loss of humanoid bane, but more to the cumulative effect of several changes. The trash leading up to Taeshlin 2.0, the boss itself, and the trash behind it have all taken longer to kill the last couple of attempts, as well as Blazewind being more of an adventure (and hardmode continuing to stymie us, especially parts that appear designed as dps checks).

Further dps reductions due to bane changes would accentuate this, which is why I brought it up above. It seems more than just a melee vs caster issue.

 

[Daffie]

There's merit to that idea, but why would you go to the effort of recategorizing several thousand mobs, redoing several hundred items, and reconstructing an entire tradeskill if it becomes something that 99% of the server pop can safely ignore? The server work alone implies that bane has to have some meaningful value and not be just a rounding error on a parse.

I think they went through the effort because they wanted to fix a horribly broken function, and wanted to attempt to balance the game. My opinion is that somewhat marginalizing worn bane damage effects helps to further balance the game, and allows for a more linear upgrade path based on tier.

Again your ideas have merit, but it seems from here that the staff has decided to go in the opposite direction and make this kind of damage more specialized, not less. The corollary to what's happened to melee would be not to make existing spells more broad, but to force casters to farm or quest for fifteen different bane spells and swap them in and out as targets change or face a significant dps loss.

The spell portion of this could be a good solution for the raid environment where spells can be swapped out for the type of mob being pulled. How will this effect the XP environment for all gear levels?
I believe the innate bane skills for paladin, and to a lesser extent woodelves, will defiantly need reviewed (maybe there are other class/races with innate bane stuff I don't know about?) This class and this race were specifically balanced around these skills. I don't know how many undead mobs changed to a different body type, or how many animals changed to something else, but these are direct nerfs to this class and this race. (Paladin have such low dps, that any potential DPS nerf could be a considerable problem.)

just want to point out that this is not really accurate. removing humanoid bane and changing all the body types did effect raid dps and melee's numbers are lower, but it really is not effecting the outcome of any raid encounter. i mean really the most difficult on tierish fight we can do was never even a humanoid mob so it was not effected at all. the other on tier encounters, we couldnt kill before the change, and we still can't now (or we havnt tried cause the zone crashes and messes up scripts and no one answers our petitions qq).

Interesting! I would also like to point out that one of the devs posted that bane stacking was only happening, with any consistency, in one guild. This means that basically all other guilds in the game will have no significant negative DPS effects. (Their max potential dps options have changed, but not their current dps values.) Basically as you said, the stuff they could kill prior they can still kill, and the stuff they couldn't kill prior they still can't kill.

 

[Waldoff]

Interesting! I would also like to point out that one of the devs posted that bane stacking was only happening, with any consistency, in one guild. This means that basically all other guilds in the game will have no significant negative DPS effects. (Their max potential dps options have changed, but not their current dps values.) Basically as you said, the stuff they could kill prior they can still kill, and the stuff they couldn't kill prior they still can't kill.

Quite a few individuals used some bane stacking, one guild just happened to be the outlier using it ssystematically as their main dps source for nearly all applicable new content.

So there may be some negative dps effects, thats not really arguable. But nothing was made undoable for anyone outside thst guild by this change. Then again I think they are complaining about other changes (which really should stay out of the bane thread) and their effects.