MECHANICS: Combat skills formulas

[ecthus]

Concerning dodge itself, I believe it is extremely sub par, especially now that we can play with the actual percentages.

For me, the problem is more that it's either terrific (like against a group of non-master trollocs) or awful (against mounted masters with rares and uniques.) And that it doesn't scale linearly, so the numbers we see are kind of fake.

The most counter-intuitive part of the equation is that PB is such an important factor. I can kind of see how the coders would get there, though. Every player needs to have a way to do damage to every other player, and there's nothing more boring in a fight than a combo basher missing on a dodger who can't break his parry.

While we're here, any insight on probability of breaking parry?

[Aishana]

To me it looks like most of the top end abs weapons are pretty well balanced when it comes to bash. It's the combo rares and uniques that are really out of whack, and I think it will just continue to get worse as people find out how to maximize their bashing.

Additionally the difference between mounted and non-mounted as well as master vs nonmaster is huge. Unfortunately no way to really fix or account for that.

I'd personally like to see a "squishing" of the bash ability of weapons, with normal 1h combo weapons being increased (aside from bone club which probably needs downed slightly), and rares being downed. Several rares and most of the uniques can bash 160 db as well as 100, and that's just nuts.

It really is unfortunate though that if you say a 20-25% land rate on top end non-rare dodge is where you want to be, because how do you actually accomplish that? The same weapon on a non-master troll might land 10% and in a mounted fade or master warder land 30%. And there's no equivalent buff version of dodgers aside from some people are able to be dismounted and have armor more often than others, but you dont exactly master and get 10 extra db or something like that.

I do think the recent buffs to regular dodge have been a good thing though, along with the nerfing of rare dodge trinks so that the difference between a top-end normal dodge set and an egown/dbelt/onyx etc is only 5-6 db, which is in reality a significant difference but not as crazy. Probably though, dodge could use a couple more points somewhere and/or another upping to the abs % (some pieces still have none), and as mentioned a lot of regular combo weapons need to be adjusted up a bit as they've been left behind as dodge has incrementally been increased over the last 1-2 years. Get dodge so that 1-2h combo weapons bash it around 15%, 2h abs weapons 20-25% on a non-master, and rare/unique combo weaps similar to abs weaps in the 20-30% range not in the 50%+ range. Just off the top of my head, but it'd be an ok starting place.

[Trucido]

Top end abs weapons are garbage. And by top end I mean mauls. Their bash is actually very, very bad.

[Aishana]

I meant taxe, mallet, csword etc. not sure why rare abs weapons bash worse than their non rare counterparts.

[stark]

I meant taxe, mallet, csword etc. not sure why rare abs weapons bash worse than their non rare counterparts.

Because of the insane damage that abs rare weapons have. Tmaul and heron great have a whopping 27 damage on average, upwards of 45 max hit. You put that on a zerk mounted fade or warder and it's utterly insane. Also, I'm not sure where this idea that t-mauls don't bash great comes from. They are 17.5 lbs, pretty high ob and they get the clubs bonus. If you compare it against eaxe for example, it bashes better, about 3% better against 150db. Even for the ones that bash a little less well than t-maul, rares that are better than regular weapons in every single dimension are annoying. It makes the gap between players who play a ton and whose who only a good amount too great. Choices and tradeoffs are interesting.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that game balance is great right now. The biggest takeaway I got from fiddling with numbers a lot is that non-rare 1h combo weapons should be buffed a little (though I very much disagree that bone clubs need to be downed), and that's about it. Buffing dodge too much is risky because channies tend to be dodge, and are already immensely powerful. Stabbers also, to a lesser extent.

Dodge has never been about never getting bashed. There is nothing interesting about a character standing in one room and auto-winning because they can't be sat.

[Fermin]

Can someone confirm that the +5 ob that trollocs get to compensate for being dismounted carries over to fade?

Based on the numbers it looks less terrible, but in reality it feels much worse. Maybe its the fact that a bash is like death a decent amount of the time in dodge...

[Aishana]

Dodge has never been about never getting bashed. There is nothing interesting about a character standing in one room and auto-winning because they can't be sat.

Def agree there have been on both sides of that. But between weapon damage being so high, zerk attack being prevalent, and rares that can bash anyone 50% of the time resulting in a death at a pretty high rate even against top end dodge, something's got to give. Like I said I think the abs weapons are for the most part in a pretty good spot balance wise, its just the (combo) rares/uniques that are way out of line. As you said being significantly better in every way (even than abs weapons) is not a good thing. The best bashers should be abs, they get all the malus that goes with abs in trade for that.

[Rig]

What's the point of dodge if it's not about not dodging getting bashed? Curious here!

[stark]

Well, for starters it makes you be hit less by melee and buff multiple opponents while timers run, which lets Fermin do things like stabbing you to death pot while 6 others are engaged on him... comf Rig. Similar deal with weaves.

Dodge is also about getting bashed less, and it definitely does that. All I'm saying is that it's not meant to assure that you can sit in a room and never get bashed at all. It's just about what kind of chances you want to take.

[Rig]

Yea that makes sense. I still think you should be able to be bashed, but when you're wearing full kits dodge dbelt like fermin and I, and getting sat by the non master hunter with a claymore you wonder what the point is