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Re: Discussion Topic: Upcoming Weapon Changes

Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2021 8:17 pm
by Harun
After PKing some with the new changes, my basic feeling is that PB is too high. More particularly, sitting parry is too high. It just feels silly to be in a combo vs combo fight, land a bash, and then have both hits parried. And that's not even getting into dodge PB. On the other hand, I do think it's best if parry isn't being constantly broken unbashed or by random mobs.

Unfortunately, the simplest solution is a coding one: reduce sitting PB. Right now, in a pretty average combo set, my sitting PB is 147. That's just too damn high.

Land a bash, deal damage. That makes sense to me. Any two players who randomly encounter each other should have means to actually deal damage, without having to resort to gimicks or heavy mob support.

Re: Discussion Topic: Upcoming Weapon Changes

Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 4:07 am
by Dimmu
Harun wrote:
Sun Apr 04, 2021 8:17 pm
. . .
Land a bash, deal damage. That makes sense to me. Any two players who randomly encounter each other should have means to actually deal damage, without having to resort to gimicks or heavy mob support.
Amen brother, but I fear you are preaching to the deaf.

Re: Discussion Topic: Upcoming Weapon Changes

Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:18 am
by Razhak
Dimmu wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 4:07 am
Harun wrote:
Sun Apr 04, 2021 8:17 pm
. . .
Land a bash, deal damage. That makes sense to me. Any two players who randomly encounter each other should have means to actually deal damage, without having to resort to gimicks or heavy mob support.
Amen brother, but I fear you are preaching to the deaf.
You land bash, you should get your TWO rounds of bashed damage!

Re: Discussion Topic: Upcoming Weapon Changes

Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:48 pm
by Drybones
I wouldn't necessarily agree with the "landed bash should equal two bashed hits". What follows is not rigorous statistics, but I think it sums up how I think about it.

Lets say your two dice rolls deal 25 damage on average, using a 18 lb weapon with 170 OB.

Scenario 1: abs vs abs > land a bash deal ~ 3 damage per hit (6 total after 85% reduction)
Scenario 2: abs vs combo -> land a bash deal ~7.5 damage per hit (15 total after 70% reduction)
Scenario 3: abs vs parry -> land a bash deal ~ 20 damage per hit (40 total after 20% reduction)
Scenario 4: abs vs dodge -> land a bash deal ~ 25 damage per hit (50 total after 0% reduction)

Part of the damage mitigation for dodge is a roughly 40% reduction (from 65% to ~25%) in bash landing rates.

Part of the damage mitigation for parry is a ~6% reduction (from 65% to 59%) in bash landing rates.

Adjusting for bash land rates at 65%, 65%, 59%, 25% for abs, combo, parry, dodge respectively, the expected damage you will deal if you run a bash timer is 1.95, 4.88, 23.6, 12.5 versus each of those setups.

Ideally, you would want the expected damage to be in the same ballpark if you want setups to be balanced somewhat. Obviously, parry setups aren't viable if they can't parry bashed hits, b/c 122 db is fairly useless vs abs weapons. With the hypothetical weapon setup, a comboer will parry bashed hits 29% of the time, a dodger will parry 37% , and a parry setup will parry 66%. This changes the expected damage output of running a bash timer to 1.95, 3.88, 8.02, and 7.875. Things get skewed dramatically worse for dodge and parry as the number of attackers increase b/c of parry split.

I think the expected damage should be slightly higher (as it currently is) versus dodge and parry to make up for the ease of getting away in low numbers PK.

Note: I picked random setups (fblade staff parry kit w/19 str 19 dex, combo I&g sword, dodge I&g), and the numbers will be different depending on your exact setup. I'm also not saying that the parry numbers are perfect, but I do not think that a landed bash == two bashed hits. Otherwise, you would have to down bashing land rates more aggressively to make dodge/parry viable.

TLDR: every setup has some form of damage mitigation, and parrying bashed hits is necessary to make parry/dodge kits viable. You can either land 10% of your bashes and land 100% of bashed hits, or 20% of your bashes and land 50% of your bashed hits. I know that I would prefer to land more bashes b/c you control the pace of the fight, and can take advantage of parry split to crush. If it doesn't make sense to you logically, watch some Jackie Chan movies. He's always on his back, dodging melee hits, and parrying with random dung he finds on the ground :P

Re: Discussion Topic: Upcoming Weapon Changes

Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 1:08 pm
by Drybones
Just as an aside, most people I see fighting dodgers give up when the fight is scratched to wounded in the dodger's favor. But you really have to give it time for the RNG to balance out, and let those big damage hits catch you up. In my experience, standing toe to toe vs a dodger in abs, I crush them (FC's not included). But, it's a jumpy fight and I'm often losing early and dominating as the fight goes on longer. Plus, I have lots of strategies (like fighting at a wolf or tree set) that I can use to split parry if I've had a bad string of rolls.

Re: Discussion Topic: Upcoming Weapon Changes

Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:15 pm
by Razhak
Very long post, all I want is that when I bash someone, that autowimpy will not take someone out before I get my two bashed rounds. If my hits get parried/dodged, thats fine in itself, but seriously: 0-1 round bashes are the bane of pk.

Re: Discussion Topic: Upcoming Weapon Changes

Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:25 pm
by Drybones
Oh yeah, I always hated autowimpy :P

Re: Discussion Topic: Upcoming Weapon Changes

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2021 3:47 am
by Dimmu
@Drybones

As long as all other damage causing offensive skills have the potential to deal 0 damage, I'll sign up to what you're selling. But I can already taste the salt of successful landed charges/stabs/weaves failing to cause any damage. Why should bash, which is the bread and butter of many a player be the only exemption?

Re: Discussion Topic: Upcoming Weapon Changes

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2021 4:12 pm
by Drybones
I'd say there are two reasons :

1. To maintain viability of parry kits

To the first, every setup needs to have roughly the same damage mitigation in terms of percentage, if the setups are to be relatively balanced.

Dodge mitigates about 80% of bashes + 30% of bashed hits (0.8 + 0.2*0.3 => 86% mitigation).

Abs mitigates 35% of bashes + 85% of melee damage (0.35 + 0.85*.65 => 90% mitigation).

Parry mitigates 45% of bashes, parries 66 % of bashed hits, and absorbs 20% of bashed hits (0.45 + 0.55*(0.44*0.2 + 0.66) -> 86% mitigation).

Combo mitigates 35% of bashes, parries 29% of bashed hits, and absorbs 71% of bashed hits (0.35 + 0.65*(0.71*0.71 + 0.29) -> 86% mitigation)

Those percentages look pretty balanced, abs has higher mitigation b/c they get hit all the time. Granted, the damage mitigation goes through the roof if you're fighting against a non-basher, but it drops dramatically if your parry gets split. So, each setup is relatively balanced in 1v1, and dung changes drastically depending on the circumstances.

If bashed hits landed 100% of the time, then parry kits would not work (drops to 56% mitigation). So, to make it viable, the ABS on parry eq would need to be upped, and it would basically become combo. This is how it was when OB was so high, and why no parry hunters existed. Everyone played abs or combo b/c they were the only viable setup, unless you had rare dodge eq where the damage mitigation went through the roof b/c your DB was so high. The current changes, as far as I can tell, are trying to make each setup viable so that it's not just combo and abs everywhere.

2. Bash is the only multi-functional combat skill

To the second, bash serves three purposes: decrease opponent's defense, apply damage multiplier, and lock a player in place. It's the only skill in the game (afaik, maybe hammer of air?) that does this. So, if you land a bash you've effectively given yourself X number of pulses for other players to join you in screwing the bashed opponent over. They can run weaves, throw stuff, move ahead to block, bash horses, engage for parry split, etc. No other combat skill gives you ground control like that.

So even if your hit is parried, you still gain a benefit from landing a bash. B/c bash is multi-use, you can change its effectiveness with land rates AND hit rates. This was why I said in my first post that I would prefer a 20 % land rate with a 50% melee miss rate compared to a 10% land rate with a 100% hit rate (b/c those numbers keep the mitigation the same). As for the other skills, they are single use skills (damage only), so you can control their effectiveness with only one parameter (success/land rate). B/c bash is multi-use, you can change its effectiveness with land rates AND hit rates. I think bash is better for having high land rates and lower hit rates, rather than the other way arround.

But bash can't have massive damage (abs weapons), high land rates (abs weapons), and high hit percentages (if bashed hits were 100%) if any low-abs kits are to remain viable. This is why if parried hits are removed, either damage would need to be nerfed (screwing up all other setups) or bash rates would need to be downed (and parry kits removed).

I think this speaks to razhak's comment too. If they autowimpy out, then bash is the only skill where a successful land does nothing (zero damage, zero ground control). I agree that shouldn't be the case, but I think that's more of an autowimpy issue.

Re: Discussion Topic: Upcoming Weapon Changes

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2021 7:04 pm
by Sanguine
Don't we have any statiticians who can create a formula for the handful of variables and plot things out and tweak until balanced? First decide on auto-flees and if we have access to that function in the code, perhaps the flee rate can be downed and incorporated at a higher factor into dodge's "survivability" rate.

Just seems like someone smart can show us some graphs and stuff! Do it for 2-3 equip setups.