Discussion Topic: Upcoming Weapon Changes

[Zarth]

The problems of abs weapons is combined with the warrior changes for 2 reasons.
1) One of the explicit reasons for removing berserk attack was that it made it possible to balance abs weapons. The assumption from the players hearing this was that abs weapons were generally weak, but berserk attack on warriors either made them competitive or slightly overpowered. The expectation was therefore that abs weapons would be generally upped compared to combo/dodge. When it turned out that abs weapons would not be upped that expectation was foiled and people get mad.

2) Especially on DS most absers were warriors. The combination of zerk attack and the near constant presence of fades reducing the usefulness of autotrack made abs hunters even less prevalent on DS as compared to LS. At least on LS an abs hunter could lead a group with tracking, but on DS that isn't as helpful. So you have most of the DS absers getting a double whammy, not only was their damage cut by 15-40% (depending on how berserk they played), but it turns out that their hits are getting parried even more now even while bashed.

To me, the entire thinking behind the weapons and equipment changes were flawed. It may have started from a reasonable assumption of "dodge is too weak", but the important question of comparison was answered incorrectly in my opinion. Let's say we have the weapons from December 2020 but remove berserk attack (I personally don't think that berserk attack affected the balance that much as people still played combo very frequently). Is dodge weak with these equipment stats? I can see the answer being yes as it wasn't played that much. The follow up question though is just as important, "is dodge weak compared to abs or is it weak compared to combo?" Worded differently, were people not playing dodge because dodge couldn't beat absers or were they not playing dodge because combo was simply better (except of perhaps a few specific setups like channelers or stabbers). The subsequent weapon and equipment changes seem to have taken the first option that dodge was weak compared to abs, but I think this is the wrong answer. Dodgers would explode vs abs (especially with berserk attack), and those logs would get posted, but generally dodge was perfectly fine 1v1 vs an abser simply practicing kick would mean the abser could never hit them. Against multiple absers (either because they're trying to fight out numbered or because their group has splintered) dodgers could reasonably complain about unbashed hits and dying too quickly. However I have to point out that absers in that same outnumbered situation are also in a pretty bad spot.

Instead I think the answer was that dodge was not played because combo was simply better in almost all situations. The equipment changes didn't do anything to affect this and probably made it worse by reducing the amount of OB/DB and increasing PB. These changes directly cause 3 of the biggest things people complain about in pk.

1) Parried bashed hits. Bashers hate these.
2) Unbashed hits. In a 1v1 this wasn't really affected, but the main complaint from dodgers was they would get eaten unbashed by multiple people as they were trying to flee. Moving DB->PB increases this as PB is split and DB is not.
3) Combo weapons being too good, especially at bashing dodge. Not only do the dodgers have less DB, the combo user has more PB which increases their bash chance. Also, the combo weapons did not generally have their ob downed as much as abs weapons so they're comparatively better at offense.

Put simply what we may have had before was:

Dodge ------ ABS ---------- Combo
and what we have now is
ABS--Dodge--------------------- Combo
or
Dodge--ABS--------------------- Combo

The changes may have reduced the difference between abs and dodge, but they've also just made combo even more dominant over both of them. I think the better changes would have been the following:
1) Increase DB, decrease PB. Do this basically in a 1/1 fashion so you don't really need to touch OB. To adjust the balance of combo you could remove PB from trinks but add DB to dodge basics.
2) Adjust weapon weight to get bash % where you want them.

This addresses the main complaints without exacerbating the difference between combo and dodge.

[Taziar]

What about 20lbs shields that gives more PB than etched and has a -10 DB penalty?? ABS parry would go up and could use I&G as an abser and no other setup would use the shield because of the hit to DB.

and

Rebalance all the ABS eq to negatives in DB and remove the PB negatives.

[Davor]

This is completely untrue. My mains are ABS. Several other imms I know play ABS actively. I get that you want to believe the immortals are out of touch, but you're just wrong.

Well. Either you had a hand in the recent weapons and abs changes in which case I am completely correct and you are out of touch even despite playing abs. Or and this is more likely, you had nothing to do with the changes and I should/could have just said the immortals involved likely don’t play absers.

So much hubris in one post.

Agree. But...again, based on the goal of weapons changes.... I am right I also have nothing to gain from this other than another set-up to play.

This is Kryyg:

o HP:Healthy DP:Bursting MV:Full > You are a 466 year old male myrddraal.
Your height is 7 feet, 0 inches, and you weigh 255.0 lbs.
You are carrying 0.0 lbs and wearing 55.8 lbs, very light.
Your base abilities are: Str:19 Int:17 Wil:14 Dex:19 Con:18.
Offensive bonus: 153, Dodging bonus: 85, Parrying bonus: 219
Your mood is: Wimpy. You will flee below: 202 Hit Points
Your posture is: Defensive.
Your armor absorbs about 78% on average.

I am missing 1 silver medallion and 1 scabbard. The fade shirt is sweet (even after its been downed) but even if you exchange for an ornate it would still be pretty ridiculous, now this is the highest tier kit which probably should edge out a standard abs kit. But by doing simple calculations on the EQ trainer I would still have defense in the high 260s-270s without the rares/uniques. Maybe my perspective is different because I remember when this same kit would get you 220 defense and full dodge kits were topping out at 270s-280s?

Anyways, I apologize if I made any offense to you Paladyr or any other immortals. Excuse my brashness and just know it comes from a place of trying to improve the situation for the poor abs players. And hubris and all..I acknowledge I could be wrong in all my thoughts on abs (weapons). But the chance of that is slim

Also, Zarths suggested changes to trinkets would be fantastic. By moving alot of the poinst to dodge, combo players will still get an unchanged "total defense", but their dodge bonus won't mean much because they will probably top out at 95-115 which is still easily bashable and they will take the bashed hits and still avoid many unbashed hits. Concurrently, dodgers will avoid some more bashes, but when they are sat down, they will take the hits.

Also, I agree with Isabel. This thread has basically drawn in every player of the game. I think motives range from starving for alternative playstyles (my personal one), keeping the weak down so farming bread and butter qps is still intact, and a feeling of being wronged by the recent changes. Despite all the above, it still has been pretty civil. Congratulations WoTMUD! We have found a cause to rally behind!! Razhak still sucks in combo. We can rally behind that too. Just kidding. But not really?!@!#!

[Snorgg]

Is it just me who doesn’t get all this then? I see people die just as easily as they did before the changes. Oh no I got parried by a dude in a full kit/rares. Shrug still killed them. Can’t honestly really complain with much. PK is still pk. It’s amazing what happens when you just continue to play like nothing ever changed. The same results still happen with effort. Parry is annoying, oh well. Use a mob to split it and frag them twice.

[tekela]

I'm not sure anyone is expecting trolloc rogues to feel the hurt of ABS weapons being downed with parry going up and short blades being completely bonkers. There will always be people who play through any changes -- that's not mutually exclusive with recognizing balance issues and tweaking them for a better game.

[tekela]

The problems of abs weapons is combined with the warrior changes for 2 reasons.
1) One of the explicit reasons for removing berserk attack was that it made it possible to balance abs weapons. The assumption from the players hearing this was that abs weapons were generally weak, but berserk attack on warriors either made them competitive or slightly overpowered. The expectation was therefore that abs weapons would be generally upped compared to combo/dodge. When it turned out that abs weapons would not be upped that expectation was foiled and people get mad.

Absolutely this, because it's a reasonable expectation and tracks with the given reasons why berserk attack was broken and needed to be removed. It really makes no sense to increase the damage on abs weapons while lowering OB across the board and removing parry completely from weapons like gold swords. Upping damage =/= upping an abs weapon. I would venture a 6d6 that can actually hit bashed targets is far more desirable than a 11d4 that misses 50% of the time because of dung OB and inflated parry stats.

To me, the entire thinking behind the weapons and equipment changes were flawed. It may have started from a reasonable assumption of "dodge is too weak", but the important question of comparison was answered incorrectly in my opinion. Let's say we have the weapons from December 2020 but remove berserk attack (I personally don't think that berserk attack affected the balance that much as people still played combo very frequently). Is dodge weak with these equipment stats? I can see the answer being yes as it wasn't played that much.

Honestly, as someone who played dodge pretty frequently, the answer is no. That's what frustrates me to no end. If you take December 2020 weapons and balance overall and remove JUST berserk attack, miss me with Invincible Warriors for Free Alt QPs Month, and give warriors 5-10 OB, you have pretty decent balance. The solution to dodge was not to make it more or less unhittable than it already was -- it was to make it so that you could survive being hit a little bit better. Removing attack alone would have had a big impact on that and then you could maybe tweak dodge equipment a little bit and THEN focus on weapons.

The follow up question though is just as important, "is dodge weak compared to abs or is it weak compared to combo?" Worded differently, were people not playing dodge because dodge couldn't beat absers or were they not playing dodge because combo was simply better (except of perhaps a few specific setups like channelers or stabbers). The subsequent weapon and equipment changes seem to have taken the first option that dodge was weak compared to abs, but I think this is the wrong answer. Dodgers would explode vs abs (especially with berserk attack), and those logs would get posted, but generally dodge was perfectly fine 1v1 vs an abser simply practicing kick would mean the abser could never hit them. Against multiple absers (either because they're trying to fight out numbered or because their group has splintered) dodgers could reasonably complain about unbashed hits and dying too quickly. However I have to point out that absers in that same outnumbered situation are also in a pretty bad spot.

Dodge, when it's working, is not weak compared to combo or abs, just different. The "problem" was that when it *didn't* work, you exploded. So the actual question is "Does dodge "work" often enough?" -- And I think it did work often enough because untouchable dodge is bad for PK, so the solution was in mitigating the issues around when it *doesn't* work. There's a massive gulf in between dodge absorption and combo absorption to work with in order to find a better balance for that particular issue. As I mentioned above, removal of berserk attack alone mitigated a lot of that and some other relatively low-effort tweaks to dodge eq would have addressed it completely. So you end up with dodge as it basically was (good when it's working) with the change of "just bad" when it doesn't work rather than "you're completely out or dead in one bash" type of situation. With those changes, I think you can reasonably work at removing things like self-casting WVD too.

[Detritus]

Too late now, the first thing i would have changed with weapons before trying to balance them at all is reducing how much parry contributes to bash.
Just tweaking ability to prac attack or how much pracs effected firing rate of attack would have fixed zerk warriors(after clan prac removal).

There's positives and negatives in the changes.

Rares are getting played MUCH more, because they're parry heavy and not just saved and stored to go on your perfect kit dodger you dont play because it's 10x worse than combo main.

Less people are playing absers, as well as combo hunters just became much easier to stat and people already quit their not fun warrior and stated new chars. (which have trickle down effects)

ABS decay skews perception a LOT. Sometimes that short blade just carves through like butter, it's usually chest piece worn down.
Current mob warrior humanoid mitigation applying to PvP might be a good thing, couldnt be a bad thing.(unlike 4 flat mitigation *roll*)

This whole discussion is because warriors were told to wait until after weapon changes before discussing, majority of weapons warriors used are abs weapons which got pretty dung on in weapon changes.

The design philosophy was to down obs across the board and raise weight to compensate bash. This indirectly boosts combo weapons that have a high parry contribution to bash as well that was untouched.
2handed parry weapons and clan pracs have always been terrible for balance as they remove pracs from the equation and choices.


I'm not super negatively effected by the changes(like most ghars for example), i quite happily smob mostly on my warrior gaidin main and hardly play my ghar.
There was some damage increases but that does no good if can't actually deal the damage. 6d6(21aveage) or 8d4(20average) were acceptable weapons to use.
From memory mallet gained 6% bash chance and nearly every other non-rare abs weapon got worse bash and nearly every combo weapon got better bash. (this is quite apart from any parrying issues with the lower obs)

Combo weapons also got damage increased and there was ZERO diversification within weapon classes.
I dont actually think dodge is far off where it should be, combo is a little bonkers.(take a look at dreadlord shirt and how much that little db change jumps it)
When lots of rogues and channelers are playing combo instead of dodge something is not quite right however.

[arjuna]

Short blade damage needs to be downed across the board (other than jade dagger, which is a beautiful weapon).

All non-rare ABS weapons could use some improvement. DST could also use some love. Fencing blades probably, too.

Intricate silver coils should be +5 DB, and if they load anywhere other than Taim those loads should be removed.

[Zarth]

It's also important to note that upping damage and lowering ob for abs weapon actually hurts absers. They get to eat all of the extra damage when they're buffing absers and don't get to actually deal damage against combo or dodge because they're getting parried while bashed.

Similarly, the changes to mob weapons are biased against absers. Take nasty spiked club for an example, it went from 60ob 4d5dmg to 47ob 4d6dmg. They're dealing on average 2 more damage against abs hunters and an average of 0.5 more damage against abs warriors and they're probably never going to hit the dodger/combo user unless they're bashed with multiple on them.

[Mikhan]

Something I wrote in a discussion about bonuses on the DL forums, but this also applies to warriors IMO

I think the type of bonus that is interesting to most of us are bonuses that make the character type feel more distinct in the way a WB or a Warder or a Fade feels distinct from other character types. Following that line of thinking, the trick is to find bonuses like that that don't confer broad PK advantages on us.

One way of doing this for warriors would be to expand on Blademaster. Currently only LS and SS warriors can get blademaster. Make a DS equivalent, and give a low level of attack to berserk Blademasters?! <<An idea that just popped into my mind that I'm not particularly attached to, other than as an example


I think Zarth, Kryyg, Tekela, etc have posted some pretty good ideas for balancing ABS