Proposal: Remove PB from the bash landing calculation

[matheus]

-I will now propose a new bonus for armor characters that will be widely rejected and then embraced in the coming years. "Glancing Blow" or "Deflect". Whenever an armor character has 3 or more opponents engage on them - there is a X% chance (10-20%, add 10% per opponent, etc) that chest shots will be "deflected" for zero damage. I initially had a variety of thoughts on this like - "Absers should have an inherent 10% deflect" or "Absers should have an inherent deflect against piercing weapons". I like making it a benefit against more opponents because it makes the benefit more in line with max engage code that dodgers benefit from. You could say "this is a powerful bonus, it exceeds the warrior 1d2, a deflect could be worth a lot of hps". Yes - how many hitpoints does a dodger save when only 2 people can max engage. How many hitpoints does a comboer save when they deflect 2/3 shots in a room. Defense and absorption are just techniques for increasing total hitpoints and in some circumstances defensive characters essentially have infinite hitpoints when their defense holds up. Abs hitpoints are finite. The last thing you want to be other than bashed as a dodger is an abser who was the last to flee and has 5 people on you. This wouldn't mitigate 1v1 or 2v1, but it could provide a reduction against higher numbers. This somewhat makes it comparable to weave reduction as an idea.

-The changes to how rares are crafted essentially put abs rares out of reach for me on darkside. I could tolerate low token cost + additional gear much more easily than I could tolerate high token with no gear. Its substantially easier for me to lose an abs rare than it is a combo rare.

Basically good ideas of implementing what I am saying. Survivability is all that matters. The avoided hits are what is important. Everyone arguing against it can state all day long that "we all played abs and the style" but they still keep wanting combo and dodge to be the most powerful and they sucked anyways and even in todays game of more gear than players - continue to play like its the first time they have seen this kind of gear.

Also, Trinkets should give abs %. 1% per trinket

[isabel]

Eol is genius
I have spoken

[Olajuwon]

Eol - great ideas!

[reil]

Survivability is all that matters.

You either die a Kryyg or live long enough to see yourself become a Ryalth.

Anyways, on to more serious posts, since I love me a meaty Eol post:

-Months ago I posted a suggestion for moving the +5% mounted bash bonus to mood ie. brave. It was widely panned which is strange to me because it answers so many of the concerns raised here. It creates an actual bashing differential between characters who are wimpy and characters who are brave. It forces characters to decrease their parry for an opportunity to increase their bash. Relevant to this thread - its less drastic than anything that has been proposed here and works within the already known confines of the game without creating a new balance paradigm. No one is getting anything that hasn't already been seen/played with. We're just moving around when you get it and creating some sacrifices. Within this thread people have said they want to see less parry on combo and a higher underlying bash rate. Boom. Its right here waiting for you to get aboard the train.

Think at the time, I agreed with the idea, but my primary criticism had something to do with messing with mounted bash bonus without considering that 20/21 str on DS effectively off-sets it. I feel like there was more context to the thought, for some reason I thought the suggestion was more about evening the playing field between trolloc bashers and mounted bashers. I also don't know that the difference between wimpy bash and brave bash against absers changes enough to go through the effort of the change. Everyone else you're either trying to bash brave anyways, or you're an idiot.

-"Claymores have been 7d5 since like 1998". Yes, and their OB and weight have been dramatically upped since then.

Believe under one of the longer metas (2012-2021-ish?) claymores, mallets, and e-axes were all 6d6 with differing weights and parry, but very similar otherwise in terms of ob and damage. I think it was because it was clear that an abs weapon really needs to be able to bash, hit, and do damage for the weaknesses of the set up to be worthwhile.

-"We need to increase abs weapon damage." A lot of abs weapons do already have really high damage which is problematic for dodge. I might sometimes feel that over the history of the game combo weapons have increased in damage more relative to abs weapons. A lot of the craftable rares feel like poor-man's herons while some abs weapons seem to still fall around historic templates ie. 7d6, 8d5 abs weapons existed forever ago. I can't find the most recent docs.google page to really know if my feelings line up with reality though.

See above - I could be totally wrong, but I think you may have inflated the damage on regular abs weapons, historically speaking. The 8d5, 7d6, 4d12 etc. type craftables definitely represent an increase.

-"This gold armor seems way overpowered". Gets a set. Puts it on. Wow, I have like no dodge in this ..though my parry is still 180 wimpy.

i.e. it's good unless you've got more than one on you. That sounds about right to me.

-I will now propose a new bonus for armor characters that will be widely rejected and then embraced in the coming years. "Glancing Blow" or "Deflect". Whenever an armor character has 3 or more opponents engage on them - there is a X% chance (10-20%, add 10% per opponent, etc) that chest shots will be "deflected" for zero damage. I initially had a variety of thoughts on this like - "Absers should have an inherent 10% deflect" or "Absers should have an inherent deflect against piercing weapons". I like making it a benefit against more opponents because it makes the benefit more in line with max engage code that dodgers benefit from. You could say "this is a powerful bonus, it exceeds the warrior 1d2, a deflect could be worth a lot of hps". Yes - how many hitpoints does a dodger save when only 2 people can max engage. How many hitpoints does a comboer save when they deflect 2/3 shots in a room. Defense and absorption are just techniques for increasing total hitpoints and in some circumstances defensive characters essentially have infinite hitpoints when their defense holds up. Abs hitpoints are finite. The last thing you want to be other than bashed as a dodger is an abser who was the last to flee and has 5 people on you. This wouldn't mitigate 1v1 or 2v1, but it could provide a reduction against higher numbers. This somewhat makes it comparable to weave reduction as an idea.

This seems like an uncharacteristically not-well-thought-out rationale and doesn't seem to consider rate. Who cares how many hps a comboer or a dodger "saves" on parry relative to what's being absorbed if the amount of damage taken by the dodger or comboer when their defense *doesn't* hold up, is reasonable? It all comes down to rate and ABS feels bad when things like attack cause that rate to go by too fast. Dodge feels "bad" to most people (wrongly, imo) because the rate of loss is so fast when things go pear-shaped. And combo just becomes bad abs when things start hitting the fan. So with rate in mind, I think the "deflect" idea may be good if it's limited to things like attack rounds or melee rounds when you're at hps above wounded. I personally do not want to lose the vulnerability of being low in abs because that justifies a lot of the damage you can deal and the things and the damage you can take fairly early on.

-The changes to how rares are crafted essentially put abs rares out of reach for me on darkside. I could tolerate low token cost + additional gear much more easily than I could tolerate high token with no gear. Its substantially easier for me to lose an abs rare than it is a combo rare.

Are you considering the upped token rewards on craftables you turn in? Believe combo/dodge ones give more tokens now than abs ones turned in. That's an easy way to off-set the cost of tokens.

-And because my wife and kids still aren't home yet - here's how I'd destroy the statting system which is just a waste of time to write because it will never ever happen.

One of us had to, but I didn't waste time with specifics. I think it gets to the same point though - tradeoffs in terms of strengths and weaknesses.

[Jestin]

I think downing shield PB by like 10 and removing PB of defensive postures would actually fix a lot of things - worse bash for combo and make it much harder to survive vs multiple opponents in combo without affecting dodge too much.

[Aira]

This while non-rare combo already isn't competitive? The problem is combo rares, not combo eq.

[Rig]

This while non-rare combo already isn't competitive? The problem is combo rares, not combo eq.

Someone gets it smh. While I agree, I disagree the problem is necessarily combo rares and more the fact that combo rares aren’t actually “rare” anymore.

The only “rare” combo weapons are:
Herons
Triple blades
Maybe heron foils
Shocklances

The rest are either craftable or were on some smob (looking at you, wicked axes & evil Elyas) that got farmed into oblivion. We took a problem (top players having the best access to rares) and created a bigger problem.

Ideally we would have just made it so that you can’t store rares in rents. Now we have weird posts where people claim they’re going to use their massive storages for a whole month and see if they can have more fun doing that instead of typing list every time they log on and jerking off.

Anyway, tokens need to be gone away with and “craftable” rares need to be just made into common weaponry and downed, because they’re already common.

[Kryyg]

I think non rare combo is also pretty powerful. It’s all relative. Non rare combo will destroy non rare abs but to be fair - non rare combo will destroy rare abs weapons too. If rare abs was more common and rare combo was actually rare I think balance could be struck.

Abs weapons still need 1-2 dice added across the board. Who gives a dung about dodge anyways? All the losers defending it are Channelers who can nuke players and all the people who played rogues and stab. No one goes bash dodge and they shouldn’t. firetruck dodge rogues and Channelers. You guys are glass cannons. Deal with it. Both are the easiest class to get kills with.

[Rig]

I think non rare combo is also pretty powerful. It’s all relative. Non rare combo will destroy non rare abs but to be fair - non rare combo will destroy rare abs weapons too. If rare abs was more common and rare combo was actually rare I think balance could be struck.

Abs weapons still need 1-2 dice added across the board. Who gives a dung about dodge anyways? All the losers defending it are Channelers who can nuke players and all the people who played rogues and stab. No one goes bash dodge and they shouldn’t. firetruck dodge rogues and Channelers. You guys are glass cannons. Deal with it. Both are the easiest class to get kills with.

Kryyg I’m begging you look at a firetrucking spreadsheet and compare non-rare combo to non-rare abs/rare abs

[Asandra]

Non rare combo is better than rare abs (barring heron long and the unique sword) in 1v1s it's not even close.

The fact that you're hitting abs -always- makes up for any small difference in dmg dice. Once it's low vs low you just hitflee or melee and dodge a bash.