202 réponses à ce sujet

[Aesir Rising]

Matthew you started talking in sloganism ("cc should not be the answer to every combat question", "the only problem it creates is nerfing one dimensional builds", " the default for NM should be 'does this make the game harder?'") so I think we're at the point where I can safely say that I disagree and wouldn't support an across the boards boss invuln to CC spells/skills.

[Yaron Jakobs]

I'll just try to clear up a few things about the changes to these 4 spells.

First, class balancing or spells being overpowered is not the only reason we might tweak an ability. Most of the time it's actually because the spell is too annoying or powerful when used by the AI against the player. Other reasons could be related to the specific ability. For example: in the case of Force Field the duration was often longer than the duration of the fight, so fights sometimes ended with the player running around the target, waiting for the Force Field to end.



Still, class-balancing or in-class balancing is also a valid issue - we don't want players feeling they have to take a small selection of spells to feel effective - players should feel as if they have lots of options - all of them effective.



With that said, here are the more specific details of the changes:



Force Field: duration lowered from 30 to 18 seconds (cooldown remains the same).



Crushing Prison: duration lowered from 20 to 9 (cooldown remains the same - total DOT damage remains the same)



Cone of Cold: freeze duration lowered from 10 to 8 seconds. Cooldown increased from 10 to 15 seconds. Damage remains the same.



Blizzard: The overall duration remains the same, but the freeze duration was lowered from 20 seconds to 4 seconds. Note that this duration can be re-applied every 2 seconds if the target is still inside the AOE. Cooldown remains the same.

[themaxzero]

Matthew Young CT wrote...

every game devolves into a calculation of tank/dps/heal. its inevitable if you used a hitpoint based combat system. all combat in such a case is a matter of getting your opponents hp to 0 before he can get yours to 0.

Only because people keep trying to nerf anything that could offer an alternative.

[Taleroth]

Crushing Prison: duration lowered from 20 to 9 (cooldown remains the same - total DOT damage remains the same)

Holy crap. I feared this spell before, now I'm terrified.

[Matthew Young CT]

themaxzero wrote...

Matthew Young CT wrote...

every game devolves into a calculation of tank/dps/heal. its inevitable if you used a hitpoint based combat system. all combat in such a case is a matter of getting your opponents hp to 0 before he can get yours to 0.

Only because people keep trying to nerf anything that could offer an alternative.

no...i have no issue with cc, only with cc on bosses. all the big fights in the game have LOADS of minions to crush as well. you can use cc on them. i just have a thing against dragons being paralyzed and such.

thanks for the info Yaron. Don't suppose you can say if you fixed all the spells not dropping on oom or just shimmering shield? /me wants Arcane Warrior hit hard with the nerf/fix bat

[themaxzero]

Taleroth wrote...

Crushing Prison: duration lowered from 20 to 9 (cooldown remains the same - total DOT damage remains the same)

Holy crap. I feared this spell before, now I'm terrified.

150 +1.5 SP over 9 seconds. With 100 Spellpower thats 300 damage in 9 seconds. One tick a second of 33.

[Creature 1]

Aesir Rising wrote...

It's a tier 3 cone AoE. I don't have an issue with damage. In fact, I didn't have a huge issue with it's cooldown, but that's because I play with 100% friendly fire damage and don't tend to keep my hand on the space bar. In other words, I didn't find much opportunity to spam it. But for this reason, I'm okay with extending the CD. I don't want it to be a boring tier 3 spell. It needs to be on par with other tier 3 energy spells like Fireball (which has a nice size area impact to go along with it's nice damage and knock-down effect).

I pause frequently and find it's pretty easy to get 3 or more enemies lined up for CoC without hitting friendlies (two melee characters side by side, mage to their side at a 90 degree angle; or mage ready to dart between two melee characters to freeze an individual enemy).  In fact, in an encounter with a certain party member's acquaintances I froze almost every enemy combatant with one CoC, but that was mostly luck.  I've also occasionally frozen my own party members purposefully.  Having one out of commission for a bit is sometimes worth it if you additionally incapacitate an enemy that needs immediate neutralization.  CoC is much more useful than Fireball. 

I wish normal difficulty had 100% friendly fire, actually.  

[themaxzero]

Matthew Young CT wrote...

no...i have no issue with cc, only with cc on bosses. all the big fights in the game have LOADS of minions to crush as well. you can use cc on them. i just have a thing against dragons being paralyzed and such.

thanks for the info Yaron. Don't suppose you can say if you fixed all the spells not dropping on oom or just shimmering shield? /me wants Arcane Warrior hit hard with the nerf/fix bat

And I have a thing about how anyone could survive being hit by a 30 foot Dragon. I learn to suspend my disbelief.

[Damar Stiehl]

Yaron, thanks for clearing things up. You rock, man!

[DragoonKain3]

Yeah, Crushing Prison has been buffed. Its still slightly stronger than your AoE DOT, but not terribly so.

But man, why hasn't Crushing Prison been allowed to target friendlies in order to be able to use Shockwave, like it is so in the console versions?

[TheMadCat]

I don't like what they did with the spells honestly, they seemed to go in the wrong direction fixing and killing off what their original use seemed to be.



Crushing Prison has essentially been made into a high powered DOT instead of a CC spell. 10 secs on a white, 6 on a elite, 4 on a boss with damage doubled and cooldown the same. I would have rather seen the duration stay the same and the DOT cut in half or something along those lines.



Force Field was fine as it was, the AI and mechanics around it is what needed to be changed. Don't allow the target to be selectable, force any target in the FF to loose all aggro that would have removed the exploit involving it while still keeping it's practical value. The original exploit is still possible to create, you heal them while in the FF keep them alive for 10 secs after it ends and recast the field but it's original use seems to have been completely removed as bosses break it after a couple of seconds. This fix didn't accomplish anything really.



Cone of Cold would have been better off with just a shortening of the frozen state it inflicted rather then adding to it's duration. It's still possible to go in and shatter a dozen enemies before it wears off, and that's the part I viewed was overpowered and not necessarily the ability to almost perma-freeze a group of NPC's.



Haven't gotten to try Blizzard, never actually took the skill before so not sure how to compare it between then/now. Everything I've read though was that it was already a fairly poor tier 4 spell, not sure what about it needed to be changed.

[Matthew Young CT]

themaxzero wrote...

Matthew Young CT wrote...

no...i have no issue with cc, only with cc on bosses. all the big fights in the game have LOADS of minions to crush as well. you can use cc on them. i just have a thing against dragons being paralyzed and such.

thanks for the info Yaron. Don't suppose you can say if you fixed all the spells not dropping on oom or just shimmering shield? /me wants Arcane Warrior hit hard with the nerf/fix bat

And I have a thing about how anyone could survive being hit by a 30 foot Dragon. I learn to suspend my disbelief.

i dont have a realism issue with it, i have a gameplay issue with it. it makes bosses far too easy.

[themaxzero]

Matthew Young CT wrote...

themaxzero wrote...

Matthew Young CT wrote...

no...i have no issue with cc, only with cc on bosses. all the big fights in the game have LOADS of minions to crush as well. you can use cc on them. i just have a thing against dragons being paralyzed and such.

thanks for the info Yaron. Don't suppose you can say if you fixed all the spells not dropping on oom or just shimmering shield? /me wants Arcane Warrior hit hard with the nerf/fix bat

And I have a thing about how anyone could survive being hit by a 30 foot Dragon. I learn to suspend my disbelief.

i dont have a realism issue with it, i have a gameplay issue with it. it makes bosses far too easy.

No it would simply reduce the options with dealing with bosses from 2 to 1.

[DragoonKain3]

*Sigh* How many times must I say that FF doing an aggro wipe on the target is easily as abuseable? Being able to do Feign Death on any party member (in conjunction with dispelling magics) is pretty darn powerful, considering Feign Death is 5 minute cd and only can be done on caster.

Really, 5 second duration, 10/15 second cooldown, with no aggro wipe. Lasts long enough to save the intended target in clutch situations, but not long enough to abuse AoEs on top of him. Sure it only lasts 1 second against bosses, but FF taking out an enemy boss long enough for you to deal with its minions is a wee bit too powerful.


Also, CC not working on bosses still does not address the issue that grabs are basically instant death on a failed save. There is a REASON why there are no save-or-die spells in DAO after all.

Modifié par DragoonKain3, 08 décembre 2009 - 04:24 .

[Georg Zoeller]

Comicbook guy: Worst .... Patch .... Ever!

[Creature 1]

TheMadCat wrote...
Haven't gotten to try Blizzard, never actually took the skill before so not sure how to compare it between then/now. Everything I've read though was that it was already a fairly poor tier 4 spell, not sure what about it needed to be changed.

Blizzard's utility is in slowing down or freezing people so my Tempest can kill them. 

[Creature 1]

Yaron Jakobs wrote...

I'll just try to clear up a few things about the changes to these 4 spells.

Great, good to see numbers!

First, class balancing or spells being overpowered is not the only reason we might tweak an ability. Most of the time it's actually because the spell is too annoying or powerful when used by the AI against the player. Other reasons could be related to the specific ability. For example: in the case of Force Field the duration was often longer than the duration of the fight, so fights sometimes ended with the player running around the target, waiting for the Force Field to end.

I have zero problems with waiting for Force Field to wear off a boss. 

[themaxzero]

Georg Zoeller wrote...

Comicbook guy: Worst .... Patch .... Ever!

I registered my disgust on the Internet immediately.

[Matthew Young CT]

themaxzero wrote...
No it would simply reduce the options with dealing with bosses from 2 to 1.

ya the options change from "make the boss completely useless and pound him to death" to "pound the boss to death while he tries to do the same to you".

i wouldnt be very upset at losing that first "option"

[Damar Stiehl]

All I want for Christmas is all the nerf herders, gravedancers and general similar malcontents packed in a box with a bow and shipped back to World of Warcraft... gods save us from vocal minorities that will harp, drone and warble until the experience is ruined for everyone.



That said, the duration and damage "fixes" are undone by substituting a pre-patch version of spell_constants_h.ncs, plus the partial abi_base override I cooked last night to restore the cooldowns to their original values. Easy, if a touch crude. I'll be posting the mod up when I get home tonight.



Yaron, you wouldn't be so charitable as to post a way to undo the "shimmering shield drops on 0 mana" change, would you? Or is that hardcoded now?

[Matthew Young CT]

Georg Zoeller wrote...

Comicbook guy: Worst .... Patch .... Ever!

Seriously though whoever QA'd the rally fix needs a trout slapping

[themaxzero]

Matthew Young CT wrote...

themaxzero wrote...
No it would simply reduce the options with dealing with bosses from 2 to 1.

ya the options change from "make the boss completely useless and pound him to death" to "pound the boss to death while he tries to do the same to you".

i wouldnt be very upset at losing that first "option"

Whats next though? Some melee attacks are too strong, remove them. Healing too effective, reduce that. Pots too good nerf them (you already asked for that).

When we are doing nothing but auto attack with potions on 5 min CDs i'm sure Nightmare will be very challenging.

Of course the game loses all depth, flavour and is about exciting as watching paint dry.

[soteria]

DragoonKain3 wrote...

*Sigh* How many times must I say that FF doing an aggro wipe on the target is easily as abuseable? Being able to do Feign Death on any party member (in conjunction with dispelling magics) is pretty darn powerful, considering Feign Death is 5 minute cd and only can be done on caster.

Really, 5 second duration, 10/15 second cooldown, with no aggro wipe. Lasts long enough to save the intended target in clutch situations, but not long enough to abuse AoEs on top of him. Sure it only lasts 1 second against bosses, but FF taking out an enemy boss long enough for you to deal with its minions is a wee bit too powerful.


Also, CC not working on bosses still does not address the issue that grabs are basically instant death on a failed save. There is a REASON why there are no save-or-die spells in DAO after all.

People take feign death?  You know combat stealth does the same thing like every 10 seconds, right?  The idea of having an aggro dump on-target every 30 seconds really isn't very game-breaking.  Besides, in the current iteration, it's better than an aggro dump--I can CC one of my party members for 20 seconds AND everyone who was targetting them.  That's way better than being able to drop aggro off my mage.

Are you seriously saying that being able to use this as an aggro dump in a tactical fashion using multiple abilities is as powerful as using it as a mass-CC with one spell?  I guess the answer to your question is, you'll have to say it a lot more often before we believe you.

[Magus_42]

The changes to CoC don't bother me. It was a bit overpowered before, mostly due to the short cooldown. I can't use it as much now, but it's still an incredibly powerful spell.

I don't see the need for the force field changes. The spell seldom lasted much longer than the fight, and if it did I usually just dispelled it.

The only use I had for blizzard before was setting up the combo with tempest, and that was highly situational. The changes don't really effect anything.

The only thing that really bothers me is the changes to crushing prison. Using that spell to remove a key foe, usually a caster, from a fight long enough to thin out a mob was a key part of my tactics, and that's essentially gone now with the massively shortened duration. It's also much worse to have the spell cast on me know, since damage accrues faster, so the targeted character will be in worse shape by the time I dispel the effect with Alister or force field.

Can I also say that I really dislike the idea of "balancing" spells in a single player game. After beating the game, I've been playing around with three parties in parallel, exploring alternate paths, all of whom are fairly deep in the game at this point. I've made a significant investment in talent points to get certain spells based on how useful those spells were to the way I played the game. Well, some of those spells aren't as useful to me anymore, but I'm stuck with them, with no option to re-spec the characters and develop alternative tactics without starting over from scratch. I see no benefit to these changes, either. If the AI is casting disabling spells on me and preventing me from acting, and this has certainly happened from time to time, that means that my tactics are bad and I need to find a better approach to the fight. I can solve this problem in-game. I don't need Bioware to do it for me.

Modifié par Magus_42, 08 décembre 2009 - 04:42 .

[Matthew Young CT]

Damar Stiehl wrote...
Yaron, you wouldn't be so charitable as to post a way to undo the "shimmering shield drops on 0 mana" change, would you? Or is that hardcoded now?

You know that's a bugfix right? It was always meant to drop, and indeed it was fixed for the console versions.
Most spells are supposed to drop like that.

If you don't want them to though the .xls with the flag is ABI_Base. Change the spell flag from 128/196 to 0 (or 64 if you want it to be dispellable still).

ETA: themaxzero: if you can't see the issue with a spell that completely debilitates an opponent affecting a boss, then I don't know how to explain it to you. It's an "I-win" button. I don't like those.

Modifié par Matthew Young CT, 08 décembre 2009 - 04:35 .