167 réponses à ce sujet

[WillieStyle]

Matthew Young CT wrote...

changing weapons for every encounter? gimme a break. im not going to give melee the assumption of putting in perfect runes and using perfect weapons for every encounter either, its absurd.

Huh?! It just involves switching between 1 of 2 staffs. The game even provides a nice user interface to allow you to do just that. My cunning rogue typically switches between daggers and bows depending on situation (fights with nasty anti-melee abilities or that involve a lot of target switching).
This is nowhere as inconvenient as switching runes between fights.  Furthermore, you don't even have to switch between every fight.  Most zones are either mostly undead or mostly demons.  Few zones have both so you don't have to switch weapons very often.  In anycase, switching between 1 of 2 staffs you have equiped doesn't seem like an unreasonable strategy to me at all. Clearly your milage may vary.

Sigh! No need to take my word for it.  I've provided enough details that anyone who cares to can try it for themselves.

where are your details? all youve provided is mods, which melee gets too.

I've provided the details on the stats to boost (magic) and the spells to take inorder to boost a mage's auto-attack. Anyone who cares to can try it for themselves and see the results.

Um. I'm not sure how to respond to this. The above things lower the dps of the 2h relative to a mage or increase the damage they take.

correct. by an insignificant amount.

Wrong! Mark of death DRAMATICALLY (+20%) increases ALL damage, including staff auot-attack damage.  Affliction hex and vuln hex only increase elemental rune and poison damage which is bad for 2 handed warriors since runes and poisons aren't normalized for attack speed.

yes my bad i misremembered. why are you comparing regular autoattacks from a 2h with a spell+autoattack from mage? thats not very fair.

I'm comparing regular auto-attacks + relevant debuffs to mage auto-attacks + relevant debuffs.
However, I forgot to add sunder-armor/shattering shot.  Even if you add those, mages auto-attack still comes out ahead.

Modifié par WillieStyle, 06 décembre 2009 - 04:40 .

[Matthew Young CT]

WillieStyle wrote...
Hugh?! It just involves switching between 1 of 2 staffs. The game even provides a nice user interface to allow you to do just that. My cunning rogue typically switches between daggers and bows depending on situation (fights with nasty anti-melee abilities or that involve a lot of target switching).

i find it very annoying to do, what can i say:) its still worse than physical dmg

This is nowhere as inconvenient as switching runes between fights.  Furthermore, you don't even have to switch between every fights.  Most zones are either mostly undead or mostly demons.  Few zones have both so you don't have to switch weapons very often.  In anycase, switching between 1 of 2 staffs you have equiped doesn't seem like an unreasonable strategy to me at all. Clearly your milage may vary.

clearly but yes if you do that it is an advantage. though you lose the +elem bonuses youre wearing, and its still a disadvantage compared to phys dmg

I've provided the details on the stats to boost (magic) and the spells to take inorder to boost a mage's auto-attack. Anyone who cares to can try it for themselves and see the results.

not seeing how this is different to saying "put points in cunning and get exploit weakness". ya it boosts it, but without base numbers its totally meaningless.

I'm comparing regular auto-attacks + relevant debuffs to mage auto-attacks + relevant debuffs.
However, I forgot to add sunder-armor/shattering shot.  Even if you add those, mages auto-attack still comes out ahead.

not seeing any math. my experience says otherwise but i am quite amenable to being convinced otherwise if i see some numbers.
and anyway, i think most ppl would consider 2h lacking (i certainly would), so perhaps the problem is there rather than mage attack. mage attack cant get into the same galaxy as cun rogue for example.

[0mar]

Elanareon wrote...

WillieStyle wrote...

0mar wrote...

Willpower only increases the stamina pool by 5 per point. That makes it useless if you want to build a stamina pool up. The typical skill takes 30-45 stamina to activate, so you need to drop 3-4 levels in willpower to gain an extra ability use during battle. Also, I might add, using that ability will drop your overall DPS, so it's not like you even gained anything. Willpower stat increases are one of the worst ways to distribute your attribute points. Basically, all you should be doing is upping Dex to 36 (if you care about 4th tier talents for DW/S+S) and dumping the rest into strength. Anything else is just making a suboptimal character.

^This!

The problem is stam [b]regen[\\\\\\\\b].  Willpower has a very tiny effect on ones stam pool and a trivial effect on ones stam regen.  Spending 6 willpower so I can do 1 extra dual-weapon sweep per fight is stupid.  I am much better off either:
-Spending more points in dex/str/cun so that my other abilities hit harder so I don't need that extra dual-weapon sweep
or
-Popping mana pots on my mage and then converting mana to stam via rejuv. and mass rejuv.

Having Bioware developers/mods suggest pumping willpower is especially distressing.  If they just said either:
1) "We wanted to balance the system but we ran out of time." 
Then I'd know they understand the system isn't balanced.
2) "We know the system isn't balanced but we don't care because we like mages being overpowered."
Then at least I'd know they understand the system isn't balacned.

Instead, it sounds as if they built the system thinking it was balanced which suggests they don't really understand how their own game works.  That's the scariest part of all this.

P.S.
Even if you fixed stamina v. mana, the fact is that melee abilities are FAR worse than magical ones and yet cost roughly the same (they cost far more if you consider mana pots). 
Compare the following abilities:
-Holy smite v. mana clash.
-Cripple v. Misdirection Hex
-Dirty fighting v. paralyze.
I've seen the lead developer state that they didn't balance the classes with regards to dps. Well it's far from of obvious that they even tried to balance the classes at all.

What this? To balance the class soley based on DPS? WTF? This is WoW mentality talking. Raid Leader:  You have 2k DPS L2P suck ass go home! We don't need you!" Seriously... Besides if you know that the best dps in game would be auto attacking and you want to get the max DPS possible what are you complaining about? AND if you time your abilities with the auto attacking you can attain much more dps! You don't spam them! 

Unfortunately, DPS is one of the only tools by which you can judge warriors/rogues.  Consider the fact that you face 2:1 or even 3:1 numbers in every battle.  Any other metric of measurement becomes useless.  How else are you going to judge how effective your rogue/warrior is?  By incapacitations (eg crowd control)?  Warriors/Rogues can usually only incap one or two enemies per battle, so that metric is useless.  By debuffs?  Again, you can only debuff one or two enemies per battle, at the most.  So it basically boils down to how much damage can you do in a given amount of time.  Any most activated abilities reduce your DPS in a number of ways.  They don't take into account runes, they usually attack at a slower pace and they often come with drawbacks (lower attack for greater damage).

For mages, you can look at things other than DPS because mages can actually incap the entire battlefield, debuff the entire battlefield and do massive damage to the entire battlefield.

[Matthew Young CT]

pity they cant do massive damage to a single target. or tank. (pls dont mention bug abusing AW)

[0mar]

Matthew Young CT wrote...

pity they cant do massive damage to a single target. or tank. (pls dont mention bug abusing AW)

Yea, they can.  Crushing prison + flame blast + fireball + autoattack is easily 100+ damage a second.  Plus the enemy is incapped, plus you do auxiliary damage to anything around your target.

Also, AW is working as intended, there is no bug abused.  It's just that broken.

[Osprey39]

 Unfortunately, DPS is one of the only tools by which you can judge warriors/rogues.  Consider the fact that you face 2:1 or even 3:1 numbers in every battle.  Any other metric of measurement becomes useless.  How else are you going to judge how effective your rogue/warrior is?  By incapacitations (eg crowd control)?  Warriors/Rogues can usually only incap one or two enemies per battle, so that metric is useless.  By debuffs?  Again, you can only debuff one or two enemies per battle, at the most.  So it basically boils down to how much damage can you do in a given amount of time.  Any most activated abilities reduce your DPS in a number of ways.  They don't take into account runes, they usually attack at a slower pace and they often come with drawbacks (lower attack for greater damage).

For mages, you can look at things other than DPS because mages can actually incap the entire battlefield, debuff the entire battlefield and do massive damage to the entire battlefield.

I don't know, the only metrics I use are a couple of yes/no questions:  1.  Did I complete the task placed in front of me?  and  2.  Was it fun?

If the answer to both of those is 'yes' then I have been successful in what I set out to do.  As Adolph Galland once when describing air combat:  'See the enemy and shoot him down.  Everything else is rubbish.'

[Matthew Young CT]

0mar wrote...

Matthew Young CT wrote...

pity they cant do massive damage to a single target. or tank. (pls dont mention bug abusing AW)

Yea, they can.  Crushing prison + flame blast + fireball + autoattack is easily 100+ damage a second.  Plus the enemy is incapped, plus you do auxiliary damage to anything around your target.

uh nope. you must be living in a different world where seconds are really long!
here i'll do the boring math for you. lets be REALLY NICE and assume you can cast 3 spells instantly. I'll even assume you have 100 spellpower (110 magic). For my third SUPER NICE wrong assumption the target has no resistance.
Flame Blast: 16.36 damage per second (for 5.5 seconds)
Fireball: 60 instant, 12 per second for 5 seconds.
Crushing Prison: 15 per second (for 20 seconds).
Total: 60 instant, 43.36 per second, dropping at 5, 5.5, and 20 seconds marks.

Please try again.

Also, AW is working as intended, there is no bug abused.  It's just that broken.

AW per se is WAI, sustained abilities (which AW relies heavily on) are broken.

Modifié par Matthew Young CT, 06 décembre 2009 - 05:47 .

[WillieStyle]

Vuln Hex + Afflic. Hex + Death Hex + Death Cloud can do up to 2k damage.

Mages have the best single target and AoE dps in the game.

[Matthew Young CT]

and necros in d2 used to be the best class. then blizzard fixed one broken ability (corpse explosion) and they kind of sucked.



try get anywhere near rogue dps without using that broken spell combo?

[Solica]

Is the OP and those that even slightly agree with him for real? This isn't some kind of subtle sarcasm?

Or parody on forum complainers?

[WillieStyle]

Matthew Young CT wrote...

and necros in d2 used to be the best class. then blizzard fixed one broken ability (corpse explosion) and they kind of sucked.

try get anywhere near rogue dps without using that broken spell combo?

Ok.
Aff. Hex, + Vuln Hex + Virulent walking bomb + weaving in winter's grasp and auto-staff attack.

[throttlesays]

Apart from the stamina thing, which is very much a problem in itself, melee would be alright if:



1) they had access to at least a little bit of utility. It's all damage, vague debuffs, a stun and maybe a knockdown if you're lucky. There's no actual crowd control or interesting cooldowns. I know everyone instinctively loses the ability to think clearly whenever anyone brings up the following, but take a look at what WoW's melee classes have. They can do much more than just swing their weapons in three different ways. Mages in Dragon Age can do all kinds of things while warriors and rogues have so few activated abilities - my dual-wielding warrior has a whopping three to choose from, did noone ever intend to make melee interesting? Spending 90% of your career auto-attacking is not a very fulfilling gameplay experience.



2) the abilities were actually better than auto-attacking. This is not the case for many melee talents. Take Flurry, for example: the three attacks are barely faster than auto swings but do not get the benefit of runes or weapon buffs, so the actual damage output is worse than auto-attack. A skill that lowers your damage output with no other purpose. Attack skills in general seem to stall the swing timers in general, even if they seem to be instant. Dual-weapon sweep has a second or two after use where you won't attack, but at least this and Whirlwind can hit more than one enemy (or, frequently, none) to mask the fact that clicking the buttons tends to reduce your effective DPS.



This is very poor game design, and it seems obvious to me that the developers were only really interested in designing mages.

[Matthew Young CT]

WillieStyle wrote...

Matthew Young CT wrote...

and necros in d2 used to be the best class. then blizzard fixed one broken ability (corpse explosion) and they kind of sucked.

try get anywhere near rogue dps without using that broken spell combo?

Ok.
Aff. Hex, + Vuln Hex + Virulent walking bomb + weaving in winter's grasp and auto-staff attack.

virulent is also 15 per second, winters grasp at 72 and cooldown 8s = 9 dps so um, thats 24 dps? how does auto-staff attack + hexs quadruple that?

[Matthew Young CT]

also do you know how entropic death can hit 2k damage. its 200+2*SP, so even with +30% spirit and -100 spirit resist it should only be doing 1k tops?

[0mar]

Matthew Young CT wrote...

0mar wrote...

Matthew Young CT wrote...

pity they cant do massive damage to a single target. or tank. (pls dont mention bug abusing AW)

Yea, they can.  Crushing prison + flame blast + fireball + autoattack is easily 100+ damage a second.  Plus the enemy is incapped, plus you do auxiliary damage to anything around your target.

uh nope. you must be living in a different world where seconds are really long!
here i'll do the boring math for you. lets be REALLY NICE and assume you can cast 3 spells instantly. I'll even assume you have 100 spellpower (110 magic). For my third SUPER NICE wrong assumption the target has no resistance.
Flame Blast: 16.36 damage per second (for 5.5 seconds)
Fireball: 60 instant, 12 per second for 5 seconds.
Crushing Prison: 15 per second (for 20 seconds).
Total: 60 instant, 43.36 per second, dropping at 5, 5.5, and 20 seconds marks.

Please try again.

Also, AW is working as intended, there is no bug abused.  It's just that broken.

AW per se is WAI, sustained abilities (which AW relies heavily on) are broken.

You also forget that you've crowd-controlled the area, did extra damage to 3-4 other guys and have taken a single enemy completely out of the battle.  And this is not even a very powerful spell combo.  It's probably at the bottom tier of spell combos.  Even with this very unoptimized spell combo, you've so much more than any warrior or rogue can hope to do.  In the time span of this spell combo, what can a rogue do?  Or a warrior?  Throw a couple flasks?  That's probably the best option if you want to do some AoE damage.  Otherwise, what else?  Attack a single enemy?  wow.  And if you activate any skills, you've dropped your DPS significantly while applying minor debuffs to a single person.  Any way you look at it, rogues and warriors are simply badly designed.

And the AW sustaineds are working as intended.  It's just plain bad design.  There's nothing bugged about the specialization.

[Matthew Young CT]

[quote]throttlesays wrote...
1) they had access to at least a little bit of utility. It's all damage, vague debuffs, a stun and maybe a knockdown if you're lucky. There's no actual crowd control or interesting cooldowns. I know everyone instinctively loses the ability to think clearly whenever anyone brings up the following, but take a look at what WoW's melee classes have. They can do much more than just swing their weapons in three different ways. Mages in Dragon Age can do all kinds of things while warriors and rogues have so few activated abilities - my dual-wielding warrior has a whopping three to choose from, did noone ever intend to make melee interesting? Spending 90% of your career auto-attacking is not a very fulfilling gameplay experience.
[/quote]
you're meant to play your party, not just one character. so no they wouldnt have designed each class to be equally interesting solo.
[quote]
2) the abilities were actually better than auto-attacking. This is not the case for many melee talents. Take Flurry, for example: the three attacks are barely faster than auto swings but do not get the benefit of runes or weapon buffs, so the actual damage output is worse than auto-attack. A skill that lowers your damage output with no other purpose. Attack skills in general seem to stall the swing timers in general, even if they seem to be instant. Dual-weapon sweep has a second or two after use where you won't attack, but at least this and Whirlwind can hit more than one enemy (or, frequently, none) to mask the fact that clicking the buttons tends to reduce your effective DPS.
[quote]
adding effects to ability damage isnt hard. will probably happen.

[Matthew Young CT]

0mar wrote...
You also forget that you've crowd-controlled the area, did extra damage to 3-4 other guys and have taken a single enemy completely out of the battle.

All things which I specifically WAS NOT TALKING ABOUT. I said single target DPS.

And this is not even a very powerful spell combo.  It's probably at the bottom tier of spell combos.  Even with this very unoptimized spell combo, you've so much more than any warrior or rogue can hope to do.

Utter rubbish.

In the time span of this spell combo, what can a rogue do?  Or a warrior?  Throw a couple flasks?  That's probably the best option if you want to do some AoE damage.

SINGLE TARGET DPS. 600+ in that time frame, to be exact.

Otherwise, what else?  Attack a single enemy?  wow.  And if you activate any skills, you've dropped your DPS significantly while applying minor debuffs to a single person.  Any way you look at it, rogues and warriors are simply badly designed.

SINGLE TARGET DPS. Please go back to school. Pay special attention in comprehension class.

And the AW sustaineds are working as intended.  It's just plain bad design.  There's nothing bugged about the specialization.

Their abilities have the flag ABILITY_FLAG_END_ON_OUT_OF_MANA. This does not happen. They are bugged.

Why do I even respond to such ignorant people, sigh.

[WillieStyle]

SIgh. Matt instead of arguing how about you try the spell combos yourself. Mages can out dps rogues. Even on single targets. I'm not the only one who's done 2k damage with entropic death.

[Matthew Young CT]

i have tried them out, i couldnt get near rogue single target dps. multi target dps? sure, easy. not single target tho.



i wasnt saying you didnt get 2k entropic death, im wondering how, since the code just doesnt seem to allow it. clearly missing something, was wondering if you knew what

[Osprey39]

WillieStyle wrote...

SIgh. Matt instead of arguing how about you try the spell combos yourself. Mages can out dps rogues. Even on single targets. I'm not the only one who's done 2k damage with entropic death.

So what did you do on the next target since all those debuffs were on cooldown along with Death Cloud?  I know on my rogue, I'd just go to the next target and do the same damage I did on the prior one.

Let me ask you a question Willie.  I hope this doesn't offend because I don't mean to do that, I'm genuinely curious.  Why do you even play a game like this?  It seems clear that you're a min/maxer and this game is clearly not designed with min/maxers in mind nor do I think it ever will be.  I don't see how someone that looks at the game the way you do (as a spreadsheet) could enjoy it.  Again, I'm not trying to rip on you, I'm just curious about what makes the game fun to you.

[Mordaedil]

deathwing200 wrote...

Compared to melee in CRPG's they are. Like I already mentioned NWN series have 10 times more combat and the number of spells per day hasn't changed from PnP, which is balanced for 4x encounters per day. Not sure why I am still arguing this - do you actually disagree that melee was overwhelmingly superior in combat in NWN series?

A sorcerer could beat any warrior with a single spell and one would have no defense against it. Melee was NOT superior in NWN by any stretch of the imagination and anyone claming differently could educate oneself at the main forums.

deathwing200 wrote...

So because I love this game and give suggestions on how to improve it, I am whining? Take your trolling elsewhere.

Likewise.

deathwing200 wrote...

You're one of the "RP tards" I was talking about earlier. The game should be enjoyable for all classes because the combat is balanced, fun and enjoyable. That is a true success behind replayability of a game. Do you think for a moment the story kept people replaying BG2 10 times? No, it was because the game was FUN, with a ton of builds, classes and amazing combat system.

Explains why I never even played through it once, I guess.

What's wrong with being an "RP-******" anyway? That just elevates me to a much higher level than you anyway.

deathwing200 wrote...

Not for many people

Except it's not.

I disagree.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Mordaedil wrote...

A sorcerer could beat any warrior with a single spell and one would have no defense against it. Melee was NOT superior in NWN by any stretch of the imagination and anyone claming differently could educate oneself at the main forums.

This is absolutely correct.  In the many threads describing whatever elaborate combination of classes would produce the most cheesily overpowered level 40 character, the conversation ended as soon as someone pointed out that a single-classed level 40 wizard would always be better.

[Setz69]

Honestly. Who cares if your mage out dps's your rogue. Or if your rogue out dps's your mage in single target. it doesn't matter. Its YOUR mage and YOUR rogue. There's no balance issue there as your PARTY doesn't have to be balanced around dps. Your entire party shouldn't out the same amount of damage. This isn't an mmo where you need to balance every class around the other to make sure they are all contributing equally. This is a SP game, where one class (mages) do heavy dps, rogues have great utility, and warriors come with a large amount of knockdowns, stuns and debuffs.



SP games have been like this forever, and its only been with this increase of mmo's are people starting to whine about "balance". Balance in a sp game is hero party vs npc monsters. Thats it. Not hero's mage vs hero's roge vs hero's warrior. If you find warriors and rogues to be useless, don't use them. There's no point comparing single target damage, as its been pointed out many many times this is a party based game.



So what if your warrior can't uber dps like a mage can. Get out of this epeen elite attitude. You don't need to be the best uberest dps character, no matter what class you play.

[soteria]

Better how? At needing to rest every fight or something? By the time you got done with NWN you could have immunity to pretty much every status ailment + death and mind spells, and wield, what, +8 or +10 weapons or something stupidly obscene like that? Plus the +12 stat bonuses, which help a warrior more than a wizard.



Are you and Mordaedil talking about some sort of PvP better-ness outside of the campaigns or something? Cause in HotU, I just can't see wizards or sorcerors being "better." Some fights they could handle better than a fighter, other times the fighter would do better, but the fighter always always had less downtime because he didn't have to rest and spend half a minute buffing every major battle.

[deathwing200]

soteria wrote...

Better how? At needing to rest every fight or something? By the time you got done with NWN you could have immunity to pretty much every status ailment + death and mind spells, and wield, what, +8 or +10 weapons or something stupidly obscene like that? Plus the +12 stat bonuses, which help a warrior more than a wizard.

Are you and Mordaedil talking about some sort of PvP better-ness outside of the campaigns or something? Cause in HotU, I just can't see wizards or sorcerors being "better." Some fights they could handle better than a fighter, other times the fighter would do better, but the fighter always always had less downtime because he didn't have to rest and spend half a minute buffing every major battle.

Pretty much. Also love how the above people are talking about mage PvP superiority ("My mage could beat warrior in one spell"), which I already agreed with and acknowledged as true (the game is over when sorcerer casts timestop, basically). What I was talking about is PvM viability where mages were pretty much useless because their spells stop scaling as per DnD rules after level 20 and epic level system is very poorly implemented.

This is absolutely correct.  In the many threads describing
whatever elaborate combination of classes would produce the most
cheesily overpowered level 40 character, the conversation ended as soon
as someone pointed out that a single-classed level 40 wizard would
always be better.

It's funny how these guys are so utterly clueless, suggesting that pure wizard was the best build and how mages were overpowered. I had a good laugh. Let me guess, you only ever played on RP server and never actually built characters seriously? (for the record the best mage build was sorc/pal/monk).

Modifié par deathwing200, 07 décembre 2009 - 08:52 .