Alright people; so let's come up with a revamp that will help melee without gimping other classes, and we may even help Dorfs out there in the process.
Keep the flames down, the name calling out, and give constructive feedback for a system that will work for everyone. I'd like to invite Mystril to think about proposing a full scale test on the PTS for people to sign up, and give people signing up full level 75 toons with maxed out skills, and top gear in order to conduct a trough laboratory test for 200 people.
I'd suggest the addition of passives that enhanced Mdef OR resistance to elements, but sepparated among races say: Dorfs get a resist sleep passive, DE a resist Paralysis passive, Humans a general Magical resistance, Orcs a resist fire passive and LE a resist Wind passive.
Wouldnt mind those, however, I have (of course) something of my own to add. The real strength of a nuker is in his ability to dish out high Damage Per Second. This is a result of, by definition, extremely high casting speed and extremely high damage per nuke. I like the amount of damage they put out, I dont like the speed at which they do it.
If this is put on the PTS (which is unfortunately doubtful) I would suggest using several methods to lower casting speed. Examples: less than 15% bonus from armor sets, less than 15% bonus from acumen, and less bonus, if any, for BSPS.
I would also like to experiment with the land rate of debuffs and slow spells in PVP, as being slowed is death for a melee.
And one last thing: Melee should be able to use their skills on kiting characters. If you dont know how frustrating this is, roll a melee, get your first set of skills, and try to hit a friend who is running away from you. Your char will autofollow and not swing. Should you attempt to use a skill, your char will stop running and the system window will read "Target is too far." This needs to be fixed.
While I don't necessarily have anything to propose for improving melee survivability, I do want to voice my agreement on the frustration incurred when chasing a kiting character.
I'm a dagger user and thus a bit faster than most, yet when I try and use a skill on someone running away I almost always get the "Target too Far" system message. This especially annoys me since this is the perfect time to use Backstab, a skill I almost never ever get to use in pvp successfully.
I am not really hoping for a change in game design, but a troughful test may help ease the feelings... or confirm that indeed, this thing is broken beyond repair :P
Some nice ideas. But I have just about given up. After several cronicals now. I have reached the conclusion that NCSoft doesn't care that thier game is broke.
In another few months the servers are going to be 99% nukers and archers anyway. They are almost there now.
hm. interesting. how about two buffs to be cast from bishops and EE only: Magic shield (stacks on Bless the shield) and/or "target practice" a buff for arrow resistance.
this would help the defence out, but now some offense...
lets keep the blade spark that Glads get, but transpose it for other classes... sword and shield (or blunt and shield) get "thrumming" a kind of striking of the shield that makes a high pitched squeal that silences (for small duration) the target. healers already get good mdef with their magic resistance passives (imo) so we can dish out some wee bit of damage using our own hp...
healers (bishop and EE and SE) cast using their HP together to form a kind of "seed of water/fire" effect, except its also like bigboom. its a small summons that nears a target and blasts it, soaking up hp AND mp form the target and evenly distributing it among the 3 seed sowers only.
Casting speed is the biggest problem in this imbalance imho. Nukers should hit big, and they should hit hard, but they shouldn't do it anywhere near as fast as they do. Poor SH, probably the most balanced of all mage classes, but they still cast too fast. Now take a look at an sps, who, nowadays, doesn't care that aura flare was nerfed. They can fire their hydroblast just as fast. Its sick.
so then a toggle skill with range of 1000 for all melee; "Weighty glare" where casting speed inside this range is decidedly cut down. doesnt stack when multiple melee toggle in same area, can be removed by cancel.
so then a toggle skill with range of 1000 for all melee; "Weighty glare" where casting speed inside this range is decidedly cut down. doesnt stack when multiple melee toggle in same area, can be removed by cancel.
that's an excellent idea imo, but it's just as good (or bad) as nerfing the cast speed anyway.. Cause mages won't be able to use their un-debuffed cast speed while soloing with melee around, not to mention party with melee.
Part of the problem is that certain classes need skills for PVE but they're completely overpowered in PVP. I think that the skill lists need to be reworked and that the philosophy needs to be changed a bit as far as how the game should run. It should be a group game but every class should have solo potential.
OR
No class has solo potential.
The problem is that the classes with solo potential can solo a player as easily as they solo a mob.
Massive ranged damage with extensive crowd control and debuffs? This is the reason mages don't need groups and have such an easy time in PVP. High damage plus control spells means that they control the outcome of the fight. If they really wanted balance the class would be focused on big ranged damage and that's it. I would suggest that they get a mana shield instead of all the control spells. Leave the control/debuff spells for the buffers and healers instead.
High speed/High damage kiting classes that are capable of snaring their opponent? These obviously weren't designed with PVP balance in mind. Give archers some aoe multi-shot and rain of arrows type skills instead... If they need to keep a mob off of them perhaps they should join a group with a tank.
Regeneration should go up while slept (as in Chant of Life 5+). This would end the slept/nuke/slept/nuke endless chain.
Warriors should all have a dash ability of some sort and be capable of short bursts of speed to close the gap. As it stands most fighters willl end up snared and debuffed before they even get close to the target. Treasure Hunters and Tyrants both have dash skills which make them far more formidable to ranged damage dealing classes.
Casting speed robes were obviously designed for healers. I mean this in the same way that certain sets of heavy armor are designed for tanks and others for damage dealers. If the robes were intended to help healers... make the casting speed bonus only work for heal spells and buffs.
Let every class play with all of their stats. Every fighter could then lower their int and raise their men in the same fashion that mages can tinker with their str and con.
All fighters should have passive magic resistance or the supposedly 'glass cannon' classes shouldn't get any armor resistances.
Why are dots 100% or 0%? Why don't they fail like a damaging spell rather then a debuff? After all they can already be counteracted with easy to get reagents, why not make them not completely worthless. Their damage should be doubled with BSPS as well. They're worthless against 2x or greater HP mobs and in PVP.
This would be a good start towards making the classes equally as effective (big picture) but retaining much of their flavor in how they go about their job. The class inbalances wouldn't be so glaringly obvious in PVE and PVP.
Alright people; so let's come up with a revamp that will help melee without gimping other classes, and we may even help Dorfs out there in the process.
how do you buff a class w/o nerfing the others? as of now, the mages, and lesser extend archers, have range, high dmg, high atk rate, efficient cc skills, and better gear stats specific for them.
modify the dmg formulae so pdef/mdef are more important? that's nerfing mage and archer's atk dmg; introduce bless soulshot that increase atk spd and skills land rate? they're more beneficial to archers; give some classes resistance to cc? that's nerfing other classes cc skills; give better gear bonus for some armor set? it doesn't prevent archers to pick those up; boost melee's weap SA to match acumon? if you're down in 5 ranged hit, your 2k atk spd won't matter; let everyone access to all tattoo, and balance the tattoo so the - is actually counteract by the +? you're hurting all mages since they all go -8 men.
when you have classes that're so unbalanced, you can't really try to boost other classes without directly or indirectly effect the unbalanced classes. for every major update, NC's applies ad hoc method to "fix" imbalance w/o considering the overall effect of the supposed fix. this only fixes short term problem, but it doesn't do anything in long term.
or, maybe NC thinks this is how the game should run? we'll never know
Double the SA values on the weapons. Instead of 25%hp, put 50%. Instead of 8% atk spd, make it 16%. Mage sa's are overly too high as it is and if we lowered them they would get all moany about it.
There's a lot more to this problem than simply tweaking melee characters. First, the PTS would need L78 characters with full skills, not L75. The 76+ skills are super skills, and may bring balance to the game, or it might make it even worse. I suspect it's going to make the balance problem even more severe.
NA players need another month before many players get to L78, so we won't know until then if the balance problem is still here. Korea should know, but hell, melee classes have been terrible for 3 chronicles (minus the C2 dagger) so who knows what they are doing over there.
Even if the balance problem is fixed, or helped, by these L77+ skills, why should melee characters need to wait until L77+ to become useful in PVP?
Another issue is balancing the Olympiad. Anyone who spent a lot of time in the Olypiad in the PTS knows it has decent balance across the DD classess, even though nukers seemed to do the best. Any changes to regular PVP have to make sure they don't break the Olympiad too much. I don't see this as a major issue though, since players can opt to fight against their own class if there are any out there for them.
I'll go back to what I've been saying a lot lately in these threads. NC balances this game on PVE first, and PVP second. Everyone who knows how to PVP is aware that ranged DD classes are much better than melee DD classes, and by a huge amount. Any change they make can't disrupt the "balance" they think exists in PVE.
Something has to be done, but I really don't know what. Archers became super strong when Song of Water's large evasion bonus was gimped. Nukers became super strong from BSpS. Maybe they should change Song of Water back to what it was, increase the accuracy on mobs so people arent evading mobs all the time like they were, remove BSpS from the game, reduce the MP cost of nukes, increase the land rate of debuffs, and give all melee classes a resist-slowing passive skill. PVE remains intact, the Olympiad stays the same, and real PVP becomes a little better for melee classes.
Ok why nukers do so BIG amount of damage over time ?
Lets look at it carefully.
How Melee peole increase their damage output:
With weapon mastetiers and skills. BUT melee char are doomed to use damage skills VERY rare cause of the really low mp/ big cooldown time.So at the end:
Melees upgrade their damage/time only from weapon masteries.
Onthe other hand.Mages upgrade their damage output with weapon masteries AND skill upgrades cause unlike melees Mages ONLY USE SKILLS. And skills that are Big % affected by m.atk.
Its like a Treasure Hunter killing a mob ONLY with deadly blow.
Well that would be fast like a mage.
Another problem is the DMG/TIME mages have cause they cast once and deal massive damage. A mage can deal 1000 dmg at 2 secs and another 1000 damage after 2 secs.The average melee char needs 9 hits to do 1000 damage (9 hits x 100 dmg and one crit that does 200 dmg)
Unlike mage that only needs 2 secs to deal 1000 dmg melee people need 9 hits.And 9 hits need about 8 seconds.
So here we can see a HUGE difference at
*Damage upgrade/lvl up - damage - damage/time - Range*
Mages have over melees who not only need 4 times the seconds a mage need to kill a mob BUT they are being hit those seconds cause they lack of Range.Mages dont need to be hit cause they kill each mob before it reaches em to hit..
Another big delay at kill/time melees suffer is walking from the one target to another cause againt the lack of range.
I dont think NC will manage to balance the game at all.
The servers will have 99% mages-Archers at some months like another guy said above and thats all folks...
This game was never balanced and i believe they dont care about it at all..
Oh the joke of the day. Forget the maxed 1400 casting speed of c3. Now Seve signs NPC buff for M.atk and casting speed.
I look at a mage stat like 1700 m.atk 2000 casting speed yesterday..
Welcome to the 'Mage balance cronicle" C4 . Enjoy you stay...
Ok why nukers do so BIG amount of damage over time ?
Lets look at it carefully.
How Melee peole increase their damage output:
With weapon mastetiers and skills. BUT melee char are doomed to use damage skills VERY rare cause of the really low mp/ big cooldown time.So at the end:
Melees upgrade their damage/time only from weapon masteries.
Onthe other hand.Mages upgrade their damage output with weapon masteries AND skill upgrades cause unlike melees Mages ONLY USE SKILLS. And skills that are Big % affected by m.atk.
Its like a Treasure Hunter killing a mob ONLY with deadly blow.
Well that would be fast like a mage.
Another problem is the DMG/TIME mages have cause they cast once and deal massive damage. A mage can deal 1000 dmg at 2 secs and another 1000 damage after 2 secs.The average melee char needs 9 hits to do 1000 damage (9 hits x 100 dmg and one crit that does 200 dmg)
Unlike mage that only needs 2 secs to deal 1000 dmg melee people need 9 hits.And 9 hits need about 8 seconds.
So here we can see a HUGE difference at
*Damage upgrade/lvl up - damage - damage/time - Range*
Mages have over melees who not only need 4 times the seconds a mage need to kill a mob BUT they are being hit those seconds cause they lack of Range.Mages dont need to be hit cause they kill each mob before it reaches em to hit..
Another big delay at kill/time melees suffer is walking from the one target to another cause againt the lack of range.
I dont think NC will manage to balance the game at all.
The servers will have 99% mages-Archers at some months like another guy said above and thats all folks...
This game was never balanced and i believe they dont care about it at all..
Oh the joke of the day. Forget the maxed 1400 casting speed of c3. Now Seve signs NPC buff for M.atk and casting speed.
I look at a mage stat like 1700 m.atk 2000 casting speed yesterday..
Welcome to the 'Mage balance cronicle" C4 . Enjoy you stay...
*sigh* but mages cant take more than 5 hits. they are WEAK.
Remove Mage CP, just the offensive mage classes. This resets them in their glass cannon state.
Heavy armor users get 50% reistance to arrows.
Mage kills Melee (if the melee can't get in close)
Melee kills Archers (Archers can kite just catch them when they fire)
Archers kill Mage (mage still has sleep)
basic rock paper scissors where a players skills can still determine the fight.
*sigh* but mages cant take more than 5 hits. they are WEAK.
so the system is O.K.!
I hope you're kidding.
A Sorc my level has more CP than I do.
A SH my level does *twenty* times the damage I do.
A Necro my level can have nearly *twice* my HP and CP combined with his pet up.
A SpS my level has a casting speed *four* times my melee attack speed, and *fifteen* times the damage.
Sure, I crit more often, but any of the above need only crit once.
Sure, I can nearly double my MDef, but that doesn't actually reduce their damage by half (more like 20%, meaning they need 1 extra nuke).
Sure, I can make myself run faster to close the gap... assuming I don't get slept.
At this stage of the game, class balance is an impossibility.
*sigh* but mages cant take more than 5 hits. they are WEAK.
so the system is O.K.!
I hope you're kidding.
A Sorc my level has more CP than I do.
A SH my level does *twenty* times the damage I do.
A Necro my level can have nearly *twice* my HP and CP combined with his pet up.
A SpS my level has a casting speed *four* times my melee attack speed, and *fifteen* times the damage.
Sure, I crit more often, but any of the above need only crit once.
Sure, I can nearly double my MDef, but that doesn't actually reduce their damage by half (more like 20%, meaning they need 1 extra nuke).
Sure, I can make myself run faster to close the gap... assuming I don't get slept.
At this stage of the game, class balance is an impossibility.
Being a SwS you should realize that through your songs you can HALF nuker damage (its reduced even MORE with Resist buffs or Elemental Protection), with HP weapon SA you can hit 9K+ HP. Hit UD and it would take a nuker like half his **** MP to even bring you down and thats IF you do not use CP pots and healing pots. There is no nuker force out there that could bring down a force of archers with SwS songs and resist buffs. As for Necros, drop their summon first, they die fast.
*quote*
Hit UD and it would take a nuker like half his **** MP to even bring you down and thats IF you do not use CP pots and healing pots.
you have got to be kidding right?
hit UD against a mage or archer and spam heal and cp pots? it doesnt matter how much mp it takes a nuker/archer to get rid of me.. i think ur missing the point here... what r u tryin to say?
imgie this if u will
nuker/archer: harhar u got owned by my uberz skillz
melee: it doesnt matter i won because u had to use all ur mp hahahahahaha
next day :
player A : did u hear? a paladin owned a mage :eek:
player B : really ? :eek: how?
player A : the paly used UD adn spammed heal and cp pots
tha mage had to use all his mp to take the paly
down
player B : aw man screw my necro im rerolling a paladin
now brb
player A : no fair i wanted to reroll a paladin first.. thsi archer is useless against those tactics
yadayadaydada
thats jsut a waste of money UD does not help with the range problem
if it didnt make u immobiel maybe it coudl help but all u r is a sittign target.. now the archer/nuker can sleep u, root u, stun u, debuff u at their leisure while u stand there wasting money :eek: i mean spamming pots, if ur not slept or stunned.. they dont even have to kite u anymore
maybe if aggresion worked on ppl ud could work .. ive had a clan hall buffed lvl 63 glad take me down as a lvl 61 paladin in doom armor. i hit UD and all he did was step back a couple steps and we talked whiel UD ran out foudn out his family si doing fine and his dog was sick, and then he went right back at it when it ended .. if agresion worked i couldve brought him closer and beat him a little :D
wouldve been nice but alas no can do .. id liek to c aggression adn hate skills made availabe for pvp ... this could even things out a bit.... maybe.. in this case UD would really be useful .. its saved my *** a coupla times in PVE but in pvp? never... imagine runnign int o the thick of it in a seige and hitting UD and then hate :P hehe awesome :) that woudl be nice and give me a purpose in Seiges
well this is the end for me thanks for putting up with it :P
later
*quote*
Hit UD and it would take a nuker like half his **** MP to even bring you down and thats IF you do not use CP pots and healing pots.
you have got to be kidding right?
hit UD against a mage or archer and spam heal and cp pots? it doesnt matter how much mp it takes a nuker/archer to get rid of me.. i think ur missing the point here... what r u tryin to say?
imgie this if u will
nuker/archer: harhar u got owned by my uberz skillz
melee: it doesnt matter i won because u had to use all ur mp hahahahahaha
next day :
player A : did u hear? a paladin owned a mage :eek:
player B : really ? :eek: how?
player A : the paly used UD adn spammed heal and cp pots
tha mage had to use all his mp to take the paly
down
player B : aw man screw my necro im rerolling a paladin
now brb
player A : no fair i wanted to reroll a paladin first.. thsi archer is useless against those tactics
yadayadaydada
thats jsut a waste of money UD does not help with the range problem
if it didnt make u immobiel maybe it coudl help but all u r is a sittign target.. now the archer/nuker can sleep u, root u, stun u, debuff u at their leisure while u stand there wasting money :eek: i mean spamming pots, if ur not slept or stunned.. they dont even have to kite u anymore
maybe if aggresion worked on ppl ud could work .. ive had a clan hall buffed lvl 63 glad take me down as a lvl 61 paladin in doom armor. i hit UD and all he did was step back a couple steps and we talked whiel UD ran out foudn out his family si doing fine and his dog was sick, and then he went right back at it when it ended .. if agresion worked i couldve brought him closer and beat him a little :D
wouldve been nice but alas no can do .. id liek to c aggression adn hate skills made availabe for pvp ... this could even things out a bit.... maybe.. in this case UD would really be useful .. its saved my *** a coupla times in PVE but in pvp? never... imagine runnign int o the thick of it in a seige and hitting UD and then hate :P hehe awesome :) that woudl be nice and give me a purpose in Seiges
well this is the end for me thanks for putting up with it :P
later
You are extremely short sighted, lol. I only mention the 'lasting so long and using a nukers MP' to prove that nukers have a great disadvantage because they are MP dependant. The high def and HP classes were not made to be killers really, they are more of a nuisance that if avoided DO become killers, however when a nuker has to dispatch one they use A LOT of their resources (MP) and thus after a while become useless as they have to regen MP. I'm well aware a SE or EE can regen MP but healers can also regen HP, pots can regen HP....MP is a resource that isn't as easily replenished as HP. Being MP dependant is a HUGE disadvantage in a thing like a siege. A nuker could very easily dump their entire MP stock in a matter of 5 minutes and then they have to regen their MP. Don't look at my post as a way to kill mages or to prove melee can beat them, look at my post as it was intended which was to show that nukers have great disadvantages to being able to kill the most efficiently.
hehe sorry :p didtn mean to snap ... i kept thinkign about the post and the mnore i thought about it the more i thoguht about what i said about aggression and hate working on pvp .. anyoen think that would even things out a bit?
aggression has a pretty good range and it woudl be a nice "defense" agianst ranged chars ... enough to make a ranged char think twice about messing with a tank
and hate in large scale pvp ? i thnk that sounds like a good tactic UD and spam hate inside a castle? and that wouldnt get over used since in a seige u might get to use UD twice amybe 3 times throughout the whoe seige and honestly how often will u really get the chance? not taht often (and this is for attackin party shouldbve made that more clear)
i thin i ve read the idea in other posts but not sure if anyoen elaborated on it ( not sure if i am (its late and im tired :P))
and if anyone can plz tell me if there is even a chance that these changes we talk abou twill ever really c their way into the game? thsk preciate it
later all
I think its balanced as it is. Dwarfs are kind of stupid because they dont get much but they are farmers and they can craft so that i really dont care about. Mages are GLASS CANNONS! It doesnt take much for a dagger to kill a mage. Few hits and they are down. Plus the aura flare and what not doesnt matter since it is a lower damager higher mp skill. Mages use tons of mp. Once they are they out of mp they are done for. They dont regen that fast. So yes they are balanced whether you think so or not.
3rd class change tanks do get a hate type skill for PvP, its called Vengeance. Also a lot of 3rd class melee skills make enemies lose their target, thats far more of a boon on ranged chars than it is on melee chars. Ranged have disadvantages too, its just that people seem to underestimate these disadvantages or just simply ignore them.